HumanWORKS

Let’s discuss a serious issue that has plagued human societies since approximately fifteen minutes after we climbed down from the trees and someone declared themselves “Chief Banana Distributor” – namely, that the people most desperate to be in charge are precisely the ones who should be kept as far away from power as humanly possible, preferably in a soundproof room lined with pictures of kittens and motivational posters about ‘synergy’ so they can at least feel at home.

Such a reflection, whilst possibly exaggerated for effect, isn’t merely a cynical observation on my part – one only need look around at the liberal sprinkling of proverbial self styled “hard men” in our contemporary political environment.

It’s a structural problem that manifests with the reliability of a British train cancellation announcement – predictable, depressing, and somehow still surprising when it actually happens. (Depressing might not be the case for all people as my right hand man at work actually likes cancellations – on the proviso that he gets a decent refund. Bless you Marrows).

Consider the psychological profile of your average power-seeker. The person who looks at a leadership position and thinks, “Yes, what the world desperately needs is ME telling everyone else what to do.”.

This individual – and I’m sure you’ve met a few like I have – typically possesses the exact cocktail of traits you’d want to avoid in someone making consequential decisions: unshakeable self-belief detached from actual competence, a conviction that complex problems have simple solutions they alone can see, and an ego so robust it could survive a direct nuclear strike.

Meanwhile, the person who might actually make a decent leader – thoughtful, self-aware, cognisant of their limitations, capable of balancing competing perspectives – is often found desperately trying to avoid being nominated for the role whilst muttering something about “just wanting to get on with some actual work.”

What we’ve got here is a classical selection problem that would make Darwin reach for a stiff drink. Don’t worry me old mucker, Charlie – we’ve got some ideas!

The Douglas Adams Rule of Leadership

The late, great Douglas Adams perfectly captured the paradox of leadership in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” when he wrote:

“The major problem – one of the major problems, for there are several – one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”

This isn’t just witty science fiction (I mean it is that also), but rather it’s practically a mathematical theorem that plays out with depressing regularity across organisations from corporate boardrooms to parish councils to national governments. No locale is safe – Vogon inhibited or no.

Sadly, the desire for power often correlates inversely with the wisdom to wield it responsibly. Those most attracted to leadership positions tend to be those most enamoured with the trappings and status rather than the actual responsibility of stewarding an organisation or community through difficulty and uncertainty.

The Confidence/Competence Inversion

I’ve spent enough time in corporate environments to witness what I’ll call the Confidence/Competence Inversion Principle: the relationship between someone’s certainty about their capabilities and their actual abilities often bears an unfortunate negative correlation.

You know ThatGuy™. I talked about them briefly a few weeks ago in one of my recent articles.

They’re the one who speaks first, loudest, and with unwavering certainty about topics they discovered approximately 37 minutes before the meeting. (I can play catch up on learning with AI, you know!)

The one who has never encountered a moment of self-doubt that couldn’t be immediately crushed under the weight of their own magnificence (behold the glory that is constrained within this mid-range Next two-for-one suit!).

The one whose confidence in their prescriptions is matched only by their complete ignorance of the subsequent clean-up operations required after their brilliant ideas implode. (I always find it remarkable the amount of people who think they are great drivers but constantly have near misses with accidents – funny that).

These individuals don’t merely suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect; they’ve turned it into a leadership philosophy, that would have a whole saleable framework of what was involved in being as good as them – if it wasn’t for the ego delusion and the fucking inability for them to do any actual work of value.

These people have mistaken certainty for competence, volume for insight, and stubbornness for principle.

Meanwhile, somewhere in your organisation sits someone with actual expertise – thoughtful, nuanced, aware of complexity – who prefaces every contribution with “This might be wrong, but…” or “I’m not entirely sure about this…”

Guess which one gets promoted?

Precisely.

The Reluctant Leader Hypothesis

There’s a persistent myth in modern management that leadership requires unbridled enthusiasm for the role. That the person who wants it most deserves it most. This is roughly equivalent to suggesting that the person most eager to perform brain surgery on you – despite having no medical training but owning a really sharp kitchen knife and having watched several YouTube tutorials – should be allowed to crack on. (Several videos – not one. How much more evidence do you need!?)

Perhaps we should consider what I’ll call the Reluctant Leader Hypothesis: those best suited to positions of responsibility are often those most aware of its burdens and limitations.

History offers some support for this idea.

Cincinnatus, the Roman dictator who relinquished power voluntarily to return to his farm.

George Washington refusing a third term and establishing the peaceful transition of power.

Even the mythological King Arthur, a man pulled from obscurity by a sword that apparently had better leadership selection mechanisms than most modern organisations. (There’s a real thought – maybe we should seek out mythical swords to determine who should be king, except I’ve just checked the stock levels at the Mystic Warehouse, and they’re all out).

What unites these examples isn’t merely their reluctance, but their sense of service rather than entitlement. Leadership as duty rather than as a prize. Authority as responsibility rather than playground dynamics of who has the sharpest title. You know – God forbid – actual leadership.

The Corporate Selection Problem

In theory, modern organisations should have sophisticated methods for identifying and developing genuine leadership talent. In practice, most promotion systems operate with all the nuance and discernment of a hungry toddler at a birthday party buffet, grabbing the brightest, loudest things while ignoring the vegetables of quiet competence sitting forlornly on the side.

The standard corporate selection process rewards several traits that have at best a tenuous relationship – and arguably an inverse one – with actual leadership capability:

– Unwavering self-promotion – Because nothing says “I’m focused on organisational success” like an obsessive documentation (and associated proclamations) of personal achievements

– Strategic visibility – Ensuring one is seen doing things rather than simply doing them well (because why do the work when you can just take the credit?)

– Confident proclamations – Making assertions with certainty regardless of their relationship to reality

– Relationship cultivation with existing power structures – Proving one’s fitness to lead by demonstrating a profound capacity for strategic flattery and a fondness for the taste of human excrement of staff who, obviously coincidentally, sit further up the hierarchy

None of these correlate strongly with the ability to navigate complexity, build consensus, acknowledge uncertainty, or make difficult decisions under pressure – you know, the actual job of leadership.

The Quiet Competence Conundrum

Meanwhile, genuine capability often manifests in ways that are systematically overlooked or undervalued:

– Thoughtful consideration – Interpreted as indecisiveness rather than prudence

– Nuanced perspectives – Dismissed as “complexity” in a world enamoured with false certainty

– Acknowledgment of limitations – Seen as weakness rather than self-awareness

– Focus on work rather than self-promotion – Resulting in the organisational invisibility of the actually competent

The result is a persistent filtering mechanism that elevates the confidently inadequate whilst overlooking the quietly capable. It’s not merely an unfortunate coincidence but a structural feature of systems that mistake confidence for competence, certainty for clarity, and self-promotion for achievement.

Beyond the Binary: The Confident-Competent Unicorn

Despite my ongoing affinity for hyperbole, surrealism, and aligned topics, let’s acknowledge the legitimate counterargument: confidence and competence aren’t mutually exclusive.

Occasionally – about as frequently as a total solar eclipse visible from your precise geo-coordinates where you read this article – these qualities align in a single individual.

These rare creatures – the confident-competent – do exist.

They combine genuine capability with the self-assurance to deploy it effectively.

They’re the unicorns of the organisational world, and finding one feels about as likely as discovering your cat has been quietly paying half your mortgage.

The problem isn’t that these individuals don’t exist; it’s that our selection mechanisms are catastrophically bad at distinguishing them from their more common doppelgängers: the confident-incompetent. From a distance, and particularly to existing leadership equally afflicted with the confidence/competence inversion, they appear identical – how are people going to deduce the difference between bullshit and brilliance if at least part of their own rise to the top involved a suitable amount of bluff and bluster?

The Selection Renovation Project

If we accept that our current approaches to identifying leadership talent are fundamentally broken, how might we improve them? How do we find those capable but not necessarily clamoring for power?

Here are some horribly unfashionable suggestions that would probably get me removed from any corporate HR function within approximately 17 minutes:

1. Value proven problem-solving over persuasive self-presentation

Track record of quietly solving complex problems without creating new ones might be a better indicator of leadership potential than the ability to create a compelling PowerPoint about one’s own magnificence. Projects that never go red are probably better places to find leaders compared to the ”heroes” who always seems be in the thick of the latest corporate bomb site.

2. Seek evidence of epistemic humility

The capacity to say “I don’t know” or “I was wrong” indicates an intellectual flexibility essential for navigating uncertainty. Someone who can’t recall the last time they were mistaken isn’t displaying confidence; they’re displaying delusion.

3. Observe behaviour under genuine pressure

Not the manufactured pressure of interviews or presentations, but the authentic stress of unexpected challenges. Character reveals itself not in rehearsed moments but in unscripted responses to difficulty. As the old saying goes – “adversity introduces a man unto himself”.

4. Listen to those being led

The people working directly with potential leaders often have the clearest perspective on their actual capabilities. 360-degree feedback isn’t perfect, but it’s frequently more accurate than upward-only assessment, because often the nature of senior leadership is that they don’t have the understanding of the detail, because the detail has probably changed in the last 20 years since they were doing the actual work on the ground.

5. Create selection mechanisms that don’t reward self-promotion

Design processes that identify capability without requiring candidates to engage in competitive displays of ego and certainty. (The amount of people I see overlooked simply because they aren’t extroverted enough still baffles me to this day).

6. Value the questioners, not just the answerers

Those who ask thoughtful questions often have a deeper understanding of complexity than those offering immediate, confident solutions.

The Fundamental Recalibration

Perhaps most fundamentally, we need to recalibrate our collective understanding of what leadership actually is. It’s not about being the loudest, the most certain, or the most eager.

It’s most certainly not about having immediate answers to every question or projecting an image of infallibility.

Leadership in a complex world requires the capacity to:

– Navigate uncertainty without resorting to false certainty

– Integrate diverse perspectives without losing decisiveness

– Acknowledge limitations without abdicating responsibility

– Maintain direction without ignoring changing conditions

– Build consensus without avoiding necessary conflict

None of these capabilities correlate strongly with the traits we typically filter for in our leadership selection processes. None emerge reliably from processes designed to identify the most confident rather than the most capable.

The Reluctant-But-Capable Draft

Maybe we need leadership term limits with mandatory periods of actual work in between. “Congratulations on your three-year stint as Director of Strategic Initiatives! Please enjoy your new two-year residency in Customer Support where you’ll experience the joyful consequences of all those ‘streamlining processes’ you implemented. Your corner office has been converted into a supply cupboard, but we’ve left you a lovely desk lamp.”. (That sort of thing tends to sharpen the mind in a way that no abstracted thinking can really illustrate when there’s a chance that making one’s subordinates lives hell might come back to burn one’s own backside in future)

I’d like to propose the Turvey-Serve-y leadership selection process. (I’ll admit the naming needs work).

Imagine an organisational world where leadership positions came with an obligation rather than a corner office, premium brand electric vehicle, and stock options.

Where selection focused on demonstrated capability rather than performed confidence.

Where the question wasn’t “Do you want to lead?” but rather “Given your demonstrated capabilities, would you be willing to serve?”

Servant leadership isn’t a particularly new idea, and this approach would likely encounter immediate resistance from those most invested in the current system – particularly those whose rise has been fuelled more by confidence than competence. It would require restructuring incentives, reconceptualising leadership development, and fundamentally challenging our collective assumptions about what leadership looks like – far from an easy or overnight job.

It would mean real change to ensure the new breed of servant leaders are empowered with the tools to generate real success, rather than loaded up with seventeen tons of load like the Little Donkey until said donkey has collapsed and needs to be put to sleep.

It would be difficult, messy, and uncertain – much like actual leadership itself.

The Uncomfortable Conclusion

The power paradox has no simple resolution. The very nature of power attracts those who desire it for its own sake rather than for what it enables them to accomplish for others. Our selection mechanisms systematically mistake confidence for competence, certainty for clarity, and self-promotion for achievement.

Yet perhaps acknowledging this paradox is the first step towards mitigating its worst effects. Perhaps by recognising the inverse relationship between power-seeking and suitability for leadership, we can begin to design systems that select for the qualities we actually need rather than those that shout loudest for attention. These plans will take time, but that’s surely an area where we should invest our thinking if we want a better world over time.

In the meantime, perhaps the most practical heuristic remains a profound skepticism toward those most eager to lead. The person telling you they were born for leadership is precisely the one you should escort gently but firmly to the nearest supplies cupboard, where they can organise the paper clips into a splendid hierarchy of their own design while composing a 15-page manifesto on ‘The Future of Office Supply Optimisation: A Leadership Journey’.

By contrast, the truly qualified leader is probably hiding under their desk right now, hoping that this particular chalice of responsibility passes them by, ideally to land on the desk of someone with enough confidence to be utterly untroubled by their complete lack of qualifications.

The original copy of this article was published via my personal LinkedIn on April 17th, 2025. You can find the original link here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/power-paradox-why-those-most-eager-lead-should-locked-turvey-frsa-ydrde/?trackingId=7afVev12RM2JcryLdCRZuA%3D%3D