Very nice and illuminating conceptual analysis. Thanks!
These people who don’t like to be in charge, what are they like, according to you and/or Johnstone? Less confident or just less ambitious? More commonly women, perhaps? I don’t have a very clear model of their psychology.
I would expect there to be several different types. Less confident or less ambitious would certainly be one, another type that comes to mind would be people who were ambitious but whose ambition wasn’t furthered by being in control of the group. E.g. someone who wants to be the best in the world at X where X is any task you typically do as part of a larger team with the others doing other tasks and you just want somebody else to be in charge of coordinating the team while you can focus on X. Being a leader requires specialized skills and a lot of people might simply not have time or interest to develop those skills.
One of the things about being the King for a people, is that you get blamed. Even for things that aren’t your fault. Even for things beyond your control. Even for crappy-ass reasons like, “I’m scared and pissed off and you, you’re in charge here, so I’ll vent my feelings against you.”
This is the challenging part of caring. If you demonstrate a concern for the wellbeing of the people in your people, they will start seeing their wellbeing as your concern. Start taking responsibility for how things go in a group, and people will start seeing you as responsible for how things go in a group.
This, right here, is what causes many people to back away from Kingship. Which is their right, of course. It’s totally legitimate to look at that deal and say, “Oh, hell no.”
Our society tells us that being King is awesome and everyone – well, everyone normal – wants to be one. “Every body wants to rule the world.” No, actually, they don’t. My experience tells me that most people are very reluctant to step into the job of King, and this consequence of the role is a primary reason why. People who, even knowing this consequence, are still willing to have authority rest on their shoulders are not at all that common.
For me, the enjoyment of getting to do things my way and having other people look up to me is outweighed by the stress of being responsible for getting it right, for all but the very smallest groups
I don’t like to be in charge. Some relevant times when I particularly didn’t like it:
When I was president of my university airsoft society, one of my exec team wasn’t doing his job. That sucked for everyone in the society, and it was stressful for me, and I had to tell him off and he apologized; I don’t remember if he started doing his job after that.
When I organized the HPMOR wrap party, for at least a week beforehand I was under pretty much constant low-level stress. I felt like I wasn’t doing enough, but I wasn’t sure what else I could be doing, and/or anything I could think of felt really ugh-y. At the end, a group of us went for a meal, and someone else was pretty clearly in charge for that part, which was great.
There’s probably more I could say about this. Feel free to ask questions.
edit—I should note that although I didn’t enjoy being in charge of the wrap party before it happened, it was rewarding afterwards, when it had turned out to be a really good evening. I definitely got something out of being in charge in that case, that I wouldn’t have got from just participating. So it’s probably oversimplistic of me to say that I don’t like being in charge, but there is much that I dislike about it.
Interesting. I’m starting to believe some people might think that they want to be in charge but actually really don’t. They have, so to speak, internalized society’s expectations that people should want to be in charge. Because it is true that being in charge has serious drawbacks.
Very nice and illuminating conceptual analysis. Thanks!
These people who don’t like to be in charge, what are they like, according to you and/or Johnstone? Less confident or just less ambitious? More commonly women, perhaps? I don’t have a very clear model of their psychology.
I would expect there to be several different types. Less confident or less ambitious would certainly be one, another type that comes to mind would be people who were ambitious but whose ambition wasn’t furthered by being in control of the group. E.g. someone who wants to be the best in the world at X where X is any task you typically do as part of a larger team with the others doing other tasks and you just want somebody else to be in charge of coordinating the team while you can focus on X. Being a leader requires specialized skills and a lot of people might simply not have time or interest to develop those skills.
Thanks. Those are good points.
Another relevant excerpt, from siderea’s analysis of Watership Down:
For me, the enjoyment of getting to do things my way and having other people look up to me is outweighed by the stress of being responsible for getting it right, for all but the very smallest groups
I don’t like to be in charge. Some relevant times when I particularly didn’t like it:
When I was president of my university airsoft society, one of my exec team wasn’t doing his job. That sucked for everyone in the society, and it was stressful for me, and I had to tell him off and he apologized; I don’t remember if he started doing his job after that.
When I organized the HPMOR wrap party, for at least a week beforehand I was under pretty much constant low-level stress. I felt like I wasn’t doing enough, but I wasn’t sure what else I could be doing, and/or anything I could think of felt really ugh-y. At the end, a group of us went for a meal, and someone else was pretty clearly in charge for that part, which was great.
There’s probably more I could say about this. Feel free to ask questions.
edit—I should note that although I didn’t enjoy being in charge of the wrap party before it happened, it was rewarding afterwards, when it had turned out to be a really good evening. I definitely got something out of being in charge in that case, that I wouldn’t have got from just participating. So it’s probably oversimplistic of me to say that I don’t like being in charge, but there is much that I dislike about it.
Interesting. I’m starting to believe some people might think that they want to be in charge but actually really don’t. They have, so to speak, internalized society’s expectations that people should want to be in charge. Because it is true that being in charge has serious drawbacks.