Alzahawi:At first, our research findings surprised us. Social scientists have long believed that hierarchies are prevalent in society because they are functional, meaning that groups allocate higher status to members who contribute most to group success. Research led by Cameron Anderson, a professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, reinforces this view: It found that people’s perceptions of their own status in groups tend to be very accurate and that individuals seek out a higher rank only if they believe they can provide more value to a group. We would expect, therefore, that more-competent people would have greater leadership ambition. But when we considered how many incompetent people end up running companies, schools, even countries, we realized, “Yeah, maybe leadership ambition is not a perfectly efficient predictor of competence.”