Leadership is a quality that is hard to define. Everyone can think of inspiring leaders from history but managers who think they can base their style on Nelson Mandela or Elizabeth I are suffering from misunderstandings of greatness.
The biggest mistake is to consider leadership entirely equal to charisma（魅力）. Billy McFarland was just 25 when he set up the Fyre festival which promised attendees a luxury experience on a deserted island in the Bahamas. As shown by the Netflix documentary, "Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened", Mr McFarland was an unusual salesman. He convinced investors that he was a visionary businessman and persuaded talented young people to work for him.
But he lacked the skills to put his vision into practice. Festival guests arrived to find their food consisted of cheese sandwiches, rather than first-class cuisine. They were housed not in luxury villas, but in tents left over from a hurricane-relief program. The whole event ended with Mr McFarland being sentenced to six years in prison.
His example could have been a case study for the book by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic— "Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?（and how to fix it）". As an organisational psychologist, he points out that people tend to assume that confident individuals are competent, when there is no actual relationship between the two qualities. Those confident people are promoted and then their abilities turn out to be over-estimated.
Mr Chamorro-Premuzic argues that competence is more important than charisma or confidence. Managers need enough presence to persuade their teams to follow the business plan, but they should think in terms of coaching rather than inspiration. Employees are more likely to be engaged with their work if they get frequent feedback from their bosses, and if they are involved in setting their own goals. Another key factor in leadership is the ability to set a good example. Subordinates（下属）notice what behaviour gets rewarded and which standards are set by the person at the top.
