Why are Leaders Paid higher?
Ever wonder why a person sitting on the top of the pyramid is the highest paid, I am sure, all of us at some point in life would have cribbed about having a boss who does nothing and gets paid the most.
Leaders require a plethora of skills to help them maneuver throughout their leadership journey enabling them to take several actions at a time. However, some skills are quite draining such as “decision-making” which causes decision fatigue. According to psychiatrist Dr. MacLean “The more decision you have to make, the more fatigue you develop and the more difficult it can become”. (to take decisions). This is one of the reasons why leaders such as Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg are known to wear clothing of the same color every day: To reduce the number of decisions they must take. Most leaders have a very rigid routine and work in an extremely planned manner, again the purpose is to reduce the number of decisions.
Roy Baumeister in his book Willpower says, “If your work requires you to make tough decisions all day long, at some point you’re going to be depleted and start looking for ways to conserve energy. You’ll look for excuses to avoid or postpone decisions. You’ll look for the easiest and safest option, which often is to stick with the status quo”
Leadership is a decision-heavy profession, it requires nerves of steel, and not everyone can wake up early in the morning and face a desk filled with a cornucopia of decisions to be taken from a very minute to a mammoth, and this can be very mentally and emotionally draining.
What would be the situation in an organization led by a leader who finds decisions a gargantuan task? If a leader becomes reckless and acts impulsively or is never able to make up his mind because of too many choices, or is stuck with analysis paralysis, or chooses the status quo and does nothing, definitely this organization is waiting for an impending disaster.
The good news is that building decision-making skills is possible, it is not simple, however achievable, the pre-frontal cortex, which is the largest lobe located in front of our head is involved in decision-making and can be trained to take more and better decisions; It is a muscle that can be developed by exercise.
Another part of our brain that can help us take better decisions is the limbic system or the emotional brain, by developing emotional intelligence leaders can take decisions that is well informed meaning they have full awareness of what they are feeling when assessing choices, how other will be impacted with the decision, it also means asking oneself: Are the emotions guiding me or distracting me?
As said by Daniel Goleman in his book Daniel Goleman, Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence “The sweet spot for smart decisions, then, comes not just from being a domain expert, but also from having high self-awareness.” The more self-aware the leaders are the better decisions they will be able to make.
The ability to take quick and more decisions are rare and unique skill. Skills that are rare and unique get paid more than skills that are available in abundance, it is a typical demand and supply problem. Since finding leaders with extraordinary decision-making skills is difficult to find, obviously there are paid higher.
So next time, when you think that your boss is a highly paid, nincompoop, please stop and think about why he is paid more, what skill the boss demonstrates, and how you can develop the skills