Why so many mediocre men?

A few years ago I read an article in The Guardian entitled “Why do so many mediocre men rise to the top?” Seeing as how I had spent the previous week at a job wondering the same thing myself, my interest was piqued. I read on and discovered the piece was actually a review for Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic's book, Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?

There is a section in this book entitled, "Women, men and the two sides of confidence”, which follows a case study. Harvard Business School's Robin Ely and Catherine Tinsley observed that female research scientists at a biotech company were less likely to speak up in meetings. But it wasn’t due to lack of confidence.

"What these leaders had failed to see was that when women speak in meetings, their ideas tended to be either ignored until a man restated them or shot down quickly if they contained even the slightest flaw." (p.32)

In contrast, men's flawed ideas were used. This meant that because these women had learned that they would likely be shot down, they were less likely to speak up unless they were absolutely sure of their ideas. Which meant they were often less likely to speak up at all.

The problem was not the confidence of these women. It was how confident they appeared to others.

This resonated with me. Having worked in a male dominated sector for most of my life, I can't tell you the number of times I have presented a plan, often in a documented form, only to have it ignored completely or later quietly handed over to a man.

And the man who takes on that idea often has far less experience, creativity and knowledge than I do. That is not me being arrogant. I’m talking about men who have never held a camera or edited a video or had training in any of it, taking my job off me and doing it themselves. It almost always ends badly for them. But no one stands up and says “Oi! You took it off the woman who actually had the training!” These are the same men often make huge sweeping statements, without any data to back them up, yet speaking with such certainty that almost no one ever bothers to question them.

And so after years of watching this pattern, I too have noticed myself becoming quieter, offering up fewer and fewer opinions and suggestions, unless I know they will definitely be received and even then, I remain hesitant.

Confidence is valued in leaders but judged differently depending on gender. Men are more likely to be seen as confident, women’s confidence is less likely to even be recognised. In the time it takes a competent, experienced woman to research whether she can actually deliver a task when asked, a less competent man will have promised he can and got the promotion. Whether he can or not is irrelevant. He is now one step higher up the corporate ladder and she is not.

I wrote the song ‘Mediocre Men’ after a series of bad days working with men who repeatedly felt the need to question my competence, skill and experience, while they themselves were woefully lacking in all three.

The music video we made for the single was made part of the official selection for Sunderland Film Festival.