Leadership and authority

One of the most interesting studies that recognizes that leadership
‘incompetence’ is far more likely to derive from emotional rather than
intellectual deficiencies is NF Dixon's classic book On the Psychology of Military Incompetence. Basically, what Dixon
found was that incompetence in military leadership went way beyond notions of
stupidity or incompetence, though both these qualities were real and obvious
enough; what he found was consistent patterns underlying the behaviours of some
of history's most spectacular leadership failures.

 

The relevance of his findings to business and management are evident in his
own account of why he chose the military as the sphere for his investigation:
military mistakes through poor leadership are far more serious in their
consequences than poor leadership in other areas of life. But the kind of
underlying obsessions that produce weak leadership can occur in any field of
endeavour, including business, management, education and health – to name but four!

 

Dixon argued, that what he called 'authoritarianism' was effectively a form of
psychopathology, which hereditary factors may well be part responsible for, but
which he himself explored within the framework of personal and social
development, especially relating to childhood. A number of important and
clarifying points need to be made about what he found.

 

He made a distinction between 'autocratic' and
'authoritarian' behaviour; the former was acceptable and could be effective;
the latter was a disease – a psychopathology, an obsession – that inevitably
led to incompetence. Moreover, the notion of such psychopathology repudiates
the idea that people can be relied upon to act rationally. The concept of
hereditary factors is not developed much within the book, but does have
interesting consequences for both personality and learning: authoritarians, he
found, are produced by parents with anxiety about their status in society.

 

One major implication of all this is, surely:
the idea of mere training producing great leadership qualities is dubious at
best. If we are to develop people we have to go to a deeper level – and enable
them to explore what is within, rather than acquire a checklist of pertinent
skills.