Managing Leadership^®

The star academic, part of the galaxy of high speed intellectuals at a prominent university, had gotten hold of what was being presented as a “big idea.” He professed, with the peculiarly misplaced condescension that this sort often affect, only to the most profound humility, but he knew he had this right, and that those who disagreed with him had it wrong.

But, then, there was the problem of why they disagreed with him. If his thinking was so unimpeachable, his insight so clear once explained, why were there any such remaining? What could be the reasons for their stubborn resistance to his irresistible arguments?

There are two basic solutions he discovered to this conundrum. In the case of you and me, he found it sufficient to simply ascribe any failure we may exhibit to accept his argument as arising from our incompetence as lay people. This is a common enough expedient used by self-identified intellectuals (and, yes, this person unapologetically celebrated his putative possession of this status). They disperse any rabble gathering before them challenging their reasoning by simply declaring the lay person’s inability either to penetrate that reasoning or to grasp the underlying facts.

The really remarkable thing about this particular luminary, however, was how he assessed resistance to his position by fellow experts. He came to what he determined was the only possible conclusion, given this group’s possession of the ability both to understanding the facts and to follow his reasoning: he could only suppose that they must suffer from some sort of personal psychological problems. Mind you, this fellow found this line of thinking so obviously compelling that he published it without the least reflection or hesitation.

Of course, it must be said that this arrogance blinded him not only to the obtuseness of his evaluations of others’ intellectual abilities or psychological health, but to the veracity of his own arguments. It is almost a rule that ascriptions of fallacious thinking by others are made by this sort of intellectual only in the immediate vicinity of the expression of them by themselves. And this one’s book was riddled with a wide range of obvious errors, mitigated only by a sprinkling of trite truisms to which he inexplicably claimed ownership.

It is yet another condemnation of the use of credentials to certify the validity of a position, buttressed by the undermining of the credentials of others, or by dismissively asserting that in their absence there can be no valid counterargument. You want to see a case established with a persuasive explanation of its premise and quality presentation of a logically following argument. Otherwise unfounded arrogance and aspersions will not close any gaps in that structure.

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Today’s tip: Speaking of arrogance reducing to ridiculousness, please see The Economist‘s Lexington for examples of hubris making court jesters out of jokers, and perspective making roses out of onions.

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