I think the question should be "Why have we so many incompetent leaders?" Let's leave out the sexism here. I say this from a country which lost Theresa May as PM last year. Perhaps one of the most incompetent leaders we have ever had and that is tough competition.
The vast majority of govts. are run by men. If we keep choosing idiots? then it stands to reason that they will be mostly guys. Gender has little to do with it. There is no guarantee that women will do any better.

In fact, if you look at the female leaders that have risen to the top? Then their shortcomings are pretty much on a par with male ones, taken as an overall percentage.

I know it's just me, but I think it's the testosterone that makes a lot of
them really stupid.

Nice article it's harder to judge competence than confidence. There is a good chance that a person is confident because he or she is competent. Similarly, one may not be competent and that's why he or she is not confident. People trust these signals and go for confidence to imply competence. As the article says, men judge themselves more competent and hence appear more confident. I would think that this is due to some evolutionary pressure on men "to perform". Just speculation

Competence is not a gender based trait, you will find many degrees of competence in all humans.

There are also a lot of incompetent male followers

When that's all there is...
But let me point out Betsy DeVos...

Interesting point but are female leaders not as incompetent? Just asking?

Some of these points remind me of criticisms of the behavior of the German feminist movement during the 1980s by author Gunter Grass. He stated that they "were trying to use power like men; and we already have more than enough stupid men."

It also means not ruling out men because they are self-confident, charismatic or manly in appearance.

This post brings to mind the best book on management I ever read: The Peter Principle, By Peter, Laurence and Hull, Raymond, 1969

"The Peter principle is a concept in management developed by Laurence J. Peter, which observes that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to their "level of incompetence": an employee is promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent, as skills in one job do not necessarily translate to another" Wikipedia

Still as relevant today as it was over 50 years ago.

I can answer that with a quote from George Carlin. “Think about how stupid the average American is and then realize that half of them are even more stupid than that.” An intelligent person can recognize incompetence and finds narcissism laughable.

The reason why there are so many incompetent male leaders is because there are fewer female leaders to be incompetent.
Over time, ALL leaders are inherently incompetent in assorted aspects - and all voters are inherently incompetent in selecting their leaders in the long term.

The history of female leaders in history ain't that great either. There just haven't been near as many. I just wonder why so few leaders in history have been good leaders, putting the welfare of their people as their main priority. I would certainly like to see us elect a woman. Maybe a woman would help get this health care system headed toward a more affordable and humane system.

This article is spot on to my way of thinking. Whenever I point out that there are not enough women in government, men will point out the crap women like Thatcher or Palin. But most women who claw their way into politics have had to play the men's game. Well we need to change the game. To enter government there should be a job description and criteria to be met like any other job.

I've often thought that portfolios should be given to experts in the field, not career politicians who know nothing of the world. The Minister for Defence should be an expert in the field. Someone with from the social services should nominated for that portfolio. The same with other portfolios like Transport, Environment, the Arts, Education, Industry etc. I am so tired of seeing ignorant people making bumbling incompetent decisions on things they no nothing about and care even less.

Bayesian statistics says stop it. The simple fact that there are more men in leadership alone guarantees that some of them will be incompetent.

No surprises there, just statistics.

On a psychological note, a lot of times it doesn't matter how competent a leader is because the job of a leader is to get everyone on the same page and working toward the same goal. This happened well before the 1960, possibly tracing back millions of years.

I have a feeling this guy, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic doesn't warm up to well to evolutionary psychology.

Meritocracy has very definite advantages. In the US there are practically no requirements for holding public office,and we now can see where that leads.

I think a lot of men suffer from an Alpha complex -- they need to believe themselves to be alphas regardless of whether they are or not. In pursuit of this they aspire to positions of leadership where alphas are expected to be. When they get there it only exposes them for the Betas they truly are. The result: we have "leaders" like Lindsay Graham, Ted Cruz, Donald Trump and so many other dipshit losers who can't admit to what they really are so we have to suffer through their incompetence and stupidity so as not to upset their fragile self image.

And they will never admit to it themselves.

Competent males are blocked from leadership roles, just like most women. It's all about greed.

It's time that women take over most leadership positions. There have been poor women leaders, but usually they were trying to imitate mens styles. Afterall, women could not do any worse than their male counter parts have done throughout all these millennia. The world could stand a little maternal direction.

This isn't stereotypical or sexist at all. It would be if it was aimed at minorities or women. Since it's generalizing about men, it's OK.

The reason there are so many incompetent male leaders is that men have way more practice being incompetent in many roles.

People don’t respond to logic, they respond to ‘charisma and aggression.’ That way, there’s no personal work involved; choose your flavor of aggression and your favorite guy to carry it out.

Woman can certainly be passive-aggressive, but lack the physical stature to appear formidable. So they’re rarely chosen for leadership roles. So, when it’s basically ‘all men,’ with an unhealthy dose of narcissism at that … the world gets what we’ve got.

Ascension to leadership seems to be more correlated with ambition than other qualities that make good leaders, like ability to listen, coordinate, cooperate, inspire, or even general competency. Men are emotionally conditioned for ambition more than women are.

Often someone is judged to be incompetent as a leader by those who don’t have the whole picture, and are basing the judgment on misunderstanding or possibly on envy. Anybody who does anything makes mistakes, but truly incompetent leaders don’t last long.

Different kinds of leaders are needed in different environments. Charisma, bold self-confidence, poise and decisiveness are basic requirements for almost any leader. Also required are knowledge, intelligence and good judgment, specific to the environment.

The leader of a wolf pack will always be the most wolffish of wolves.

Very interesting.