Unshowy competence brings drawbacks as well as benefits

Dullness and its discontents

THE CHARISMATIC corporate climber is a common target for resentment in office life. He—and research suggests men are particularly given to such narcissism—hogs the spotlight in meetings, is adept at grabbing undeserved glory, and is a pro at self-promotion. More often than not, he is the boss’s pet. But he rises on the back of another, unsung, corporate archetype: the competent, diligent but unexciting achiever.

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Studies find that plenty of confident egomaniacs, unsuited to the subtleties of management, get a leg-up for being, well, confident egomaniacs. Companies disproportionately promote narcissists. Perhaps a fifth of chief executives fit the description, researchers have found, a far higher proportion than within the wider population. Self-absorbed CEOs can sap morale and, evidence suggests, produce poor financial results.

A strong case for the dull striver was made by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, a psychologist at University College London, in an article for the Harvard Business Review in 2015 entitled “The best managers are boring managers”. Understated competence does not intuitively scream leadership. Many totemic bosses of the age, from bankers to tech founders, come with big egos, showy antics and volatile tempers. Elon Musk may be accused of many things. Dullness is not one of them. Even so, Mr Chamorro-Premuzic argued, conscientious but unprepossessing characters tend to have little-noticed but precious advantages. They can be depended on to make decisions calmly, manage teams deftly and be emotionally mature. They deserve promotion ahead of co-workers with “flash and vision, and bold displays of confidence”.

A seminal meta-analysis of research on leadership characteristics, published in 2002 by Timothy Judge, then at the University of Florida, and colleagues, indeed found a link between managerial effectiveness and personality traits such as being stable, agreeable and dependable. One explanation is that level-headedness makes it easier to deal coolly with the many subtle problems thrown up by human beings (who may all too easily infuriate a more volatile manager). Emotional maturity is also an indicator of trustworthiness. Studies have found that managers with dysfunctional traits such as narcissism are likelier to get up to no good. Conscientious bosses, by contrast, score highly for integrity.

The dull but diligent could be especially valuable now. As companies claim increasingly to prize soft skills, such as being able to communicate well with all sorts of people, emotionally intelligent workers ought to be in demand. A volatile business environment in which firms face problems from recession to climate change, pandemics and war, favours the steady leader.

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Chief executives face tricky decisions about how much risk to take in pursuit of growth, as shareholders look on nervously. Startup bosses who proudly moved fast and broke things are now falling over themselves to look demure. “We are a very boring company,” Oliver Merkel, head of Flink, a grocery-delivery startup, bragged to the Financial Times recently. The trend is visible in politics, too. Joe Biden in America and Rishi Sunak in Britain rose to their countries’ top jobs partly because their boring dependability promised relief from their predecessors’ noisy incompetence. Testing times call for cool heads.

For all that, quietly competent types hoping for greater appreciation (and remuneration) should not sit still. To rise up the ranks, the boring would do well to raise their profiles, whether by speaking up in meetings or talking up their accomplishments. If they bag bigger jobs they will anyway need to master show-offy things like glad-handing clients, chairing meetings and holding forth on strategy. Though Mr Judge’s analysis revealed emotional stability and general diligence were crucial to managerial effectiveness, extrovert qualities such as sociability were also telling factors.

Companies’ penchant for promoting the wrong people is deeply ingrained, despite management theorists’ admonitions. By default, many of those dishing out promotions are themselves narcissists who advanced by wowing their superiors. And showy sorts’ shameless self-aggrandisement fulfils a convenient function for bosses, giving them a shortcut—no matter how misleading—to finding candidates for elevation. Many managers are too busy to patiently unearth genuine talent. After all, they have other important things on their plates—like impressing their own bosses.