I came across a term the other day I was not fully familiar with.  Meritocracy refers to the holding of power by people selected on the basis of their ability.

The concept fully resonates with me, however I was unfamiliar with the word itself.  This can apply to government, business or social/public organizations.

Is it possible?

Driven by emotion and fundamental behaviors embedded into our genetic codes I believe there are a multitude of factors involved in the selection of those in power.

Political factors, rewards, race, gender and a whole host of other things (even luck)  drive how  power is granted (and in this I include forms of self selection).

Often those in power are considered to be leaders.  I refer to those holding power (they could be managers, supervisors, head of household, and so on). In these case we are usually referring to a person in power whose leadership abilities earned them the power, or so we hope.  (Unfortunately, these could include both positive or negative leadership behaviors).

While having a meritocratic organization might be an ideal to seek, given the complex myriad of considerations which can be applied to selecting of those in power,  coupled with lack of consistent definition as to what constitutes ability, I would argue a true meritocracy does not and cannot exist anywhere.

Although the ideal is something we should strive for.

Leadership Behaviors

A great metric for selecting and granting power to someone is an analysis of their behavior.

Leadership behavior is well documented, although the list and priority of behaviors is not fully consistent as to which are the most important or applicable in any circumstance. Regardless, there is consensus as to the top ten behaviors.

The methods of measuring how well someone demonstrates leadership includes a subjective component but even so there is even objectivity that on the whole both the frequency, consistency and effectiveness of a persons behavior is measurable with some confidence as to the accuracy.

So here’s an idea, let’s use the measure of leadership behavior as a bar for our determination of ability, when granting power.

Sadly, in my experience this approach is not practiced often enough.