This is a golden age of sorts for young leaders, especially in the world of technology, where Facebook alone has produced three billionaires younger than 30. But even among creative young technologists who make a bundle with start-ups, “they tend to make a big splash and then sell the company,” said David Bjorklund, a developmental psychologist at Florida Atlantic University and author of a book arguing that immaturity is an essential phase of discovery and not a time when the young should be considered “adults in training.” “With very rare exceptions, people in their 20s are not the managers or chief executives. The skills you want in a chief executive are more those we associate with wisdom — people who can live with contradictions.”
Gifted people in their 20s excel and even dominate in fields such as technology, sports, music and math — “fields where you can take information at face value, where there are absolutes and not a lot of shades of meaning,” Bjorklund said. “But putting Mark Zuckerberg in charge of the State Department would probably not be the best idea.”
A key indicator of the maturity that lends itself to good decision making is what psychologists call “metacognition,” the ability to know what you do and don’t know.
“Most of us who function well probably think we’re a little more competent than we truly are, but we aren’t trying to run a country,” Bjorklund said.
That sensitivity to our own limitations is not something that has been greatly in evidence among North Korea’s ruling family, Post said, but it is a crucial skill for someone trying to solve problems in a country of deep and abiding deprivation. “The lack of empathy for the lower-level citizens among the North Korean leadership is really striking,” Post said.
In the field of leadership training, humility emerges as a strong indicator of the ability to make wise decisions, said Tim Elmore, president of Growing Leaders, an Atlanta nonprofit group that conducts leadership training programs for colleges, businesses and sports teams. “In my 20s, I thought I was the deal,” he said. “Even at 52, emotions can fog my ability to make good decisions. A mature leader of a business and especially of a country can’t be selfish and must seek wise counsel, and that’s not something we’ve seen from North Korea’s leaders, even when they were older and more mature.”
Getting ready to cope
From the earliest days of recorded history, the immaturity of young leaders has led nations to appoint regents, elders who can guide and advise the monarch. But even young leaders who have been prepared since birth for the responsibility they will someday take on often act immaturely during their early years in office.
“It’s a real hazard of coming to power at an early age,” Post said. “Look at Bashar Assad” of Syria, who succeeded his father when he was 34 and is now directing a harsh crackdown against anti-government protests: “Is he feeling impelled to show he has the toughness to do the job? The question for Kim is: Does he have that seasoning, that experience, that sense of knowing how far he can push? The evidence indicates he has been pampered to the extreme. There’s no reason to believe he has the wisdom to understand the magnitude of the problems he faces.”
The few details that have emerged about Kim’s life to date show little indication that he has had to make decisions under pressure, and “being raised with too little stress is bad,” said Wang, the Princeton neuroscientist. In studies of rodents and primates, stress hormone responses go sky-high in those who never experienced stress as youngsters. If Kim wasn’t raised facing “any stress at all,” Wang said, “he hasn’t developed coping mechanisms.”
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