This book plays around two key concepts:
1) the underrepresentation of women in leadership was not due to their lack of ability or motivation, but to our inability to detect incompetence in men.
2) men’s character flaws help them emerge as leaders because they are disguised as attractive leadership qualities

This is done explaining clearly the reasons why, just to give one example:
Women have greater emotional intelligence than men do, so they display more self-control, empathy, and transformational leadership when they are in charge.
But they tend to be shot down quickly if their ideas contained even the slightest flaw, so they felt they need to be 110 percent sure of their ideas before they would venture to share them.
Hence they look less confident. And most people look at a confident person assuming that he is also competent. But in the real world, confidence is rarely a sign of competence.
Finally we choose leaders by how confident they appear rather than by how confident or competent they really are, So we not only end up choosing more men to lead us but ultimately choose more-incompetent men.

Then the book describes common attributes that effective leaders should have, gives guidelines to distrust our instincts in leaders selection, to improve leader's leadership and to measure leader's impact.

I received a free copy of the book as Netgalley reviewer.

Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic has asked a pertinent question and provided insight on how to fix the issue of incompetent people becoming leaders.

Although it focuses on why incompetent men become leaders, he identifies behaviours, traits and characteristics incompetent leaders have that many organisations can spot.

These behaviours are seemingly masculine and Tomas investigates why.

He also discusses how to pioneer competent leadership and encourage more females to step up - not by encouraging them to be like men, but showing them how to be the competent leader that organisations need.

Using the example of Auder Capital, Tomas describes how 2 women who were appalled by their colleagues approach to risk taking launched the company. Instead of blindly copying the status quo, they contributed in their own unique way.

But does assertiveness equate to leadership competence? This is a question I kept asking while reading the book. There are many indications that less assertive people are generally relied on to maintain the status quo and not necessarily relied on for pro activeness.

After detailing how organisations can crack the formula for effective leadership at the most detailed level, he teaches how to identify better leaders.

WHY DO SO MANY INCOMPETENT MEN BECOME LEADERS? is a challenging question and title of a new book by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, a professor of business psychology at University College London and at Columbia University, and an associate at Harvard's Entrepreneurial Finance Lab. Chamorro-Premuzic explores various facets of leadership in chapters with titles like "Why Most Leaders Are Inept," "What Good Leaders Look Like," and "Measuring a Leader's Impact." Along the way, he discusses, the gender imbalance in more powerful positions; noting for example, that at Fortune 500 companies in 2017 women made up 44% of the workforce, 36% of first-line and mid-level managers, but only 20% of board members and 6% of CEOs. He argues that men's character flaws (e.g., overconfidence or self-absorption) "help them emerge as leaders because they are disguised as attractive leadership qualities" (e.g., charisma), resulting in reduced leadership opportunities for both women and men "while keeping the standards of leadership depressingly low." Chamorro-Premuzic himself "calls for a different type of analysis" and his work certainly offers a unique perspective which will be valuable for our Psychology students and Junior Theme researchers investigating women's roles in the workforce.

I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

On first glance, this book may appear to be anti-male or disparaging. That is not at all the case. This book instead, is enlightening about what is required for leadership and why we have so often put those who are unqualified there - particularly men.

The study, stats as well as practical advice for better leadership hiring and practices make this a great read. I recommend to anyone who is involved in the leadership world.

My main take away fro this book is the idea that organizations should look for the best characteristics of leadership rather than just increasing the number of women in leadership positions. By doing this we can avoid incompetent leaders from both gender not just from men.

This book is easy to read and full of insights in leadership. The title of the book is catchy while the content live up to it. Personally, I find the witty approach of the author amusing.

Unfortunately this book has expired so I am unable to review it. I would be quite happy to review it if the publisher can send me a mobi file. It takes a bit longer to read and review academic books and I think publishers should take that into account when placing books on NetGalley.

I am lucky enough to know some truly wonderful male leaders, however, as this book explains, there are so many incompetent men out there leading in boardrooms and business worldwide. This book is great narrative on how we must make changes in the way we identify, develop and manage our leaders if we ever expect to see change. This book is fascinating and well constructed, with messages we all need to receive.

The reason I requested this book is the title, a sort of click bait.
It was an interesting read that gave a lot of food for thought.
I like how the author handles one of the biggest issues in organization, the role of women, and I liked some of the boldest statement.
Even if it doesn't supply any real solution it was an interesting read.
Recommended!
Many thanks to Harvard Business Review and Netgalley for this ARC

Thanks to Harvard Business Review Press and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

Once I read the title of this book, I knew I had to read it. Yes, it’s a little clickbait-y but it’s certain to grab attention and get people talking. In my current role my team and I work to develop leadership skills in our organisation, and we’re often left scratching our heads as to what these should be, how we can develop them and what the barriers to leadership are, particularly for women.

This book is quite unusual as it throws out the “fake it till you make it” advice that is often given to aspiring female leaders and eschews the type of “lean in” approach suggested by Sheryl Sanberg. It is peppered with current examples used to illustrate the points made and covers a wide range of topics current in leadership thinking such as self-awareness, resilience and emotional intelligence. It also touches upon some less discussed themes such as narcissism and psychopathy and argues that for no good reason these traits have been valued for leaders to possess.

The book is clearly well researched and draws from a wealth of evidence and studies. Particularly interesting was the research evidence around how there is really very little difference between the genders and the exploration around misunderstandings about confidence vs competence (“Competence is how good you are at something. Confidence is how good you think you are at something”) and how what is traditionally valued in business doesn't actually translate into tangible results and in many cases leads to team dysfunction and poor outcomes. The author argues that for women there is a Catch 22 where “traditional” leadership characteristics such as assertiveness are seen as masculine and unappealing for women to possess yet when women fail to demonstrate these traits they are seen and not having leadership potential.

The title will put some people off and anger others, it’s controversial. The book doesn’t really touch much on what the solutions might be, and it makes some bold claims e.g. “the best and most accurate measures of psychological capital are psychometric tests” but it certainly provides a lot of food for thought. If you take a look, you’ll see there is a lot of common sense here. I would particularly recommend this book for those involved in recruitment, leadership development and aspiring leaders both male and female.