Entrepreneurs: Informed Choice
by Miki SaxonWally Bock recently compared high flying CEOs to Icarus and provided three classic examples.
In case you’ve forgotten, Icarus’ wings melted when he flew too near the sun.
Icarus’s father warns him first of complacency and then of hubris, asking that he fly neither too low nor too high, so the sea’s dampness would not clog his wings or the sun’s heat melt them.
Unfortunately, both traits often find a home in founder MAP.
Hubris: extreme pride or self-confidence… Hubris often indicates a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one’s own competence, accomplishments or capabilities, especially when the person exhibiting it is in a position of power.
Sound like anyone you know or have read about lately?
Complacency seems more unlikely in a hard charging founder.
While Wikipedia considers it synonymous with contentment, Merriam-Webster provides a more accurate and commonly accepted definition.
Complacency: self-satisfaction especially when accompanied by unawareness of actual dangers or deficiencies; an instance of usually unaware or uninformed self-satisfaction
That probably brings a number of people to mind.
The synonyms listed will surely clarify any questions you have, but what’s most interesting are the antonyms: humbleness, humility, modesty.
But here’s the real kicker. A new study finds that the most effective leaders by several different measures are those exhibiting the antonyms.
As you might expect, leaders who overestimated their own competence were the least effective. But the surprising finding was that leaders who underestimated their own competence were the most effective. Likewise, leaders who underestimated themselves had the most engaged employees.
Now you not only have a choice, you have enough information for it to be an informed choice.
Flickr image credit: Dan Moyle