Management

As per the previous post, I have been giving the matter some thought over the past few months. At Steve Sailer's, hbd chick's, West Hunter, Jayman's and other sites I spend time at, the information about the relationship between IQ and life outcomes is well-known.  It is a major factor in predicting college success, for example, but still less than half the picture. Self-discipline, perseverance, and conscientiousness also weigh heavily.  This holds true going forward as well, in some human endeavors more than others. Raw intelligence seems to always help some, and sometimes helps a lot.

By the way, I do not encounter much objection to IQ as a factor because of the racial implications, as is more commonly reported in the press.  Most people I know are not even aware of that controversy.  Their objections are more along the lines of defensively dismissing IQ as a major factor at all.  If one even brings up the topic, folks seem so sure you are going to overvalue it and arrogantly think it is the only factor that they go out of their way to disparage it with anecdotes, or generalisations about smart people not having common sense, and the like.  The psychologists and psychiatrists at my hospital, who have some real working knowledge of IQ, seldom fall into this.  But psych nurses, rehab specialists, OT's, and psych techs get quite declarative in their repeating of something-or-other they read once; and social workers of course bubble over with resentment. (Yeah, go figure.)

What of the other factors in success, also studied and often reported in the popular press.  We all intuitively know that attractiveness is an advantage in a lot of situations, at least in terms of getting your foot in the door. (Some extremes or perhaps types of attractiveness can start to work against one, however. Perhaps credibility is lost.)  It's hard to quantify, so it gets tougher to measure.  Using American college students as one's test subjects - the new acronym WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic) - can lead one astray, as they tend to be an attractive group overall, and it's hard to know what's being measured.

I don't mean the 50 Most Beautiful magazine articles, either. Those are just excuses to run their pictures, nicely run up by Harvard Lampoon decades ago:

Yet we know that attractiveness is an advantage at school, in offices, in entertainment, in sales, and even (gulp) in churches.  We see it, even if we can't quite nail it down.

Connections - the derisive cliche that it's not what you know but who you know - is also one key to success, and one they don't mention as a habit of highly successful people. Nonetheless, it's one of the reasons parents send their children to expensive schools, when they might learn about as much at Geographic Marker Community College, or the library.  It doesn't explain everything, and works better in some fields than others.  But it's there.

There is charm, or social skill, or the irritatingly-phrased Emotional Intelligence.  These work.  They help one get ahead, however one defines "ahead." Creativity, generosity, cooperativeness, risk-taking, spunk, and the negative virtues of ruthlessness, paranoia, and deceit - all are advantages that have little or no relation to candlepower. 

Finally, there are the striving virtues I mentioned above, that whole cluster of hard-work, dedication, attention to detail, and Frank Merriwell At Yale qualities we used to teach.  They aren't infallible either, but they still get you something.

I don't think managing other people, which is what the word "promotion" often means at work, is that deeply related to intelligence.  There is a minimum IQ necessary at each job, and some advantage in having another 15 points or so above that to be a manager, but beyond that, other factors listed above are much more important.