I note it's all the self-proclaimed ENTJs who are complaining about my posts in this thread. ...That seems rather predictable.
That seems to be etching a tad close to an ad hominem attack. Either way, the previous poster who disagreed with you was an INTJ so I can’t see how this even holds water.
I've already qualified this elsewhere, what you are describing is not what I meant.
Could you please explain what you meant?
Cut off the dragon's head and the body collapses as well. We can both throw out generalizations, what's your point?.
I never claimed that people with a temperament to follow were the root of all evil as you seem to be doing in regard to those who possess a leadership temperament.
Deviants? That's really a shallow word for you to use.
In Sociology, a “
deviant†is an individual who violates the status quo in some way, not necessarily someone who possesses some form of moral inferiority. Einstein was very much a deviant by going against 300 years of Newtonian physics. So was Al Capone.
If you want to change the world, change the people.
This is best done on a one-to-one basis.
That seems slightly idealistic. Yes, you can give a few dollars to a homeless man on the street and actually manage to change his life in some way but you won’t be doing nearly as much good as you would if you had started up a large, charitable organization such as the Red Cross or found the cure for small pox to deliver it to billions of people. You still haven’t refuted what I said with a logical means. It certainly doesn’t seem possible to bring peace to the Middle East simply through simply being a tolerant Jew or Muslim on an individual basis.
If you change the people, you change the culture.
If you try to change the culture, you're imposing rules on people without changing the people. That's my biggest issue with the style of leadership that the Original Post suggested, and my comments should be read in light of that, thank you.
You never stated that before. If you had deferred from making large, sweeping statements such as, “I also find that the people who want to lead and be in charge are usually the last people who should be allowed to be in power,†I would be more apt to believe as such. Now, I can’t help but question whether it’s a retcon.
When you look back over your life as you're finally about to pass on, you're not going to be thinking about mass global leaders... you're going to be recalling the specific individuals in your personal life who made a difference and became part of who you are. You know how different this country might be if parents invested better in their children, and people invested more in their neighbors?
Simply because I have more of an emotional response to the individual changes that people produced in my life, doesn’t necessarily mean that they had more of an effect. On an intellectual basis, I know that my life has probably been effected more by individuals in positions of power that I’ve never met or known of, whether I realize it or not. If my country had been dragged into a war because of an ego-match between two individuals, it would affect the lives of billions rather blatantly.
(1) are not your typical "power wielders" because they have natural sensitivity and restraint
One can have “natural sensitivity and restraint†without being unambitious and to believe that they are “not worthy†to do the job that they must do.
(2) they have gone through some horrific oppression/crap in their lives, have learned the limits of power, and no longer see it as the end-all, be-all of their existence.
Or it could simply create some form of psychological pathology as it does with hundreds of child molestation victims every year. The lives of Winston Churchill and Warren Buffet hardly strike me as full of “horrific oppression/crapâ€.
Some. Although nowadays, we've had far more people "rocketing to fame," so I don't think your comment is as true today as it was in, let's say, the 1950's USA.
True, though I think that we can both agree that these people aren’t exactly leaders in the traditional sense of the word.
(e.g., let's not even get started on CEO's who fail at their job walking off with billions in stock options while a quarter of their staff gets laid off.)
Whether they’re incompetent when they actually obtain the position doesn’t change whether they worked hard or not to obtain it.
That sense of being able to wield power over people as if they were numbers, coupled with a sense of entitlement, is again exactly the scenario that leads to these abuses -- a scenario you seem to support.
Again, this etches a tad close to being an ad hominem attack. I truly don’t believe that it’s necessary to make moral judgments about anyone.
No, see above. And what is this "back-breaking" work? More likely, it involved equal amounts of self-promotion and schmoozing and getting hooked in with the right people.
I can never understand why people who lead with their intellect are so quick to shrug off the benefit of social skills. “Networkingâ€, as it’s referred to within its professional context, is no less valid than anything you can bring from academics. It’s the exact same reason why going to an interview, looking as if you don’t have a home, is such a poorly placed professional decision. First impressions and the impressions after that are just as important as any other skills that you can bring to the table and whether people like it or not, most people are, for better or worse, more interested in working with someone likable than with someone who is necessarily competent.
Frankly, back-breaking work occurs as much or far more on the base level, with all the little people who actually make a corporation run, people who will never reap the same rewards as the guy who wants to be at the top of the pyramid
Does this backbreaking work involve 7 hour workdays and weekends off? Many entrepreneurs and CEOs have to work far more than that, which is why so many professionals have such trouble developing their personal lives.
I'm not talking about fry cooks, thank you.
I brought it up because I suspected that you would bring up the obnoxious office managers who obtain power through luck, if I didn’t bring it up.
In any case, my point is that Asch and Milgram don't seem related to this topic. They describe the power of conformity... but the reason people complied in Milgram had a lot of variables that were not mentioned by Lit, he conveniently just generalized the experiment to support the point he wanted to make.
There certainly doesn’t seem to be a large amount of debate within the Psychological field against the conclusions that Milgram reached. Also, botched research is a quick and wonderful way to murder your reputation as a scientist, even in regard to start ups and amateurs less eminent than Milgram. It’s a pretty big deal, and if anyone were to find out about a sloppy set of variables that an experimenter failed to mention then he or she can look forward to never seeing publication again. Generally, that’s what peer review is for.
... and Asch deals with conformity of answer in groups. If the group is giving the wrong answer, individuals within the group are more likely to agree with it even if it goes against their own perceptions.
That’s generally what occurs in leadership. An individual with more sway than the others generally forms an assertion and everyone typically follows along after it, whether the assertion is actually logical or not. Any group endeavor
is a form of conformity, especially leadership.
Can you now please explain what that has to do with, in regards to the vague claims of the Original Poster? It certainly can't be the point that people who wield authority with ease and have no issues trying to make the crowd comply are somehow more accurate or better in their perceptions. I'm waiting for one of you to make a connection.
Meanwhile, I'm still gonna stick with the premise that a lot of the people who want to wield power... and especially those who haven't done "jack" with their lives and yet sit around and "dream of power" (as per the title given this thread by the Original Poster)... are probably not the best people to put in charge.
I actually wasn’t responding to the claims of the original poster; I was responding to your claims. Hence why I quoted every statement that I disagreed with and responded to it on an individual basis.
