I argued that the underrepresentation of women in leadership was not due to their lack of ability or motivation, but to our inability to detect incompetence in men. When men are considered for leadership positions, the same traits that predict their downfall are commonly mistaken—even celebrated—as a sign of leadership potential or talent.

As this book will show, traits like overconfidence and self-absorption should be seen as red flags. But instead, they prompt us to say, ‘Ah, there’s a charismatic fellow! He’s probably leadership material.’ The result in both business and politics is a surplus of incompetent men in charge, and this surplus reduces opportunities for competent people—women and men—while keeping the standards of leadership depressingly low.

Most notably, in a review of forty-five studies on leadership and gender, Alice Eagly, a professor at Northwestern University, and her colleagues found that women were more able to drive positive change in their teams and organizations than men were, not least because of women’s more effective leadership strategies.

Meta-analytic studies suggest that the gender differences in narcissism have indeed been declining over the past few decades, largely because women have become more narcissistic, rather than men becoming less so. This change reaffirms the danger of encouraging women to lean in or act more like men to climb the corporate ladder. We are only inviting them to strengthen a problematic leadership model and augment rather than reduce current incompetence rates.

Putting more women in leadership roles does not necessarily improve the quality of leadership, whereas putting more talented leaders into leadership roles will increase the representation of women.