Re:The Rising Return to Non-Cognitive Skill [pdf]
by tboyd47 on Wednesday August 16, 2017 @08:50AM
(#15027034)
Culturally, we don't seem to consider information gathering and filtering to be a leadership skill. Leaders are just assumed to be the best informed people at any given moment and we don't look how much work they are doing to get that information.
If a ruler of a country never steps down off the throne and walks through the marketplace to ask the people what they need, how else will he know? Information gathering is connected to humility and manners in my mind. In order to be well-informed you have to be able to interact with different kinds of people and that requires a lot of social maturity, which according to the researchers, is apparently a "non-cognitive" skill.
Re:The Rising Return to Non-Cognitive Skill [pdf]
by exelius on Wednesday August 16, 2017 @10:53AM
(#15027903)
Information filtering is absolutely a leadership skill. It's the core component of managing, honestly. You don't want your boss to know all of the mistakes that people make, because it's your job as a manager to fix those. If there are structural or systemic problems, yes. But if one of your team members screwed up, you shouldn't be pointing fingers at your subordinates. As an engineering manager, it's your main job to be the crap filter between your executives and your engineers.
I find there's a strong bias against even attempting to make that judgement. "In hindsight" is used to dismiss criticism: sure, you can say that in hindsight, but I had to make the decision at the time with the information I had. But very few outcomes are actually entirely surprising, we weigh information and risk and probabilities, and these can be improved. An example I remember with particular frustration was Hillary Clinton, repeatedly confirming her decision about the Iraq war given the information she knew at the time. There was lots of information available, she made particular choices about how to weigh the information and risk, and while within her decision framework at the time the choice may have seemed right, clearly her framework was wrong even given her own conclusions. (It's also hard because we expect leaders to always be right, and if they aren't then they shouldn't be leaders, which leaves no room for improvement.)