ESL lesson plan | C1 | Confidence vs competence

Summary

This ESL lesson for C1 English students explores Leadership, gender bias, workplace. Using a real video as the basis for discussion, students develop reading and listening comprehension, vocabulary, and grammar skills across a 90-minute class.

The grammar focus is Comparative Structures for Sophisticated Arguments. Key vocabulary includes incompetent (adjective), assertive (adjective), abrasive (adjective) and more, all drawn directly from the source material. The practical English section gives students useful phrases for real-life situations: You are in a team meeting discussing candidates for a promotion. You disagree with a colleague's assessment of a candidate and want to offer a different perspective without causing conflict..

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Activities

A warm-up discussion to activate prior knowledge and get students thinking about the topic before watching or reading.
Comprehension exercises based on the video to check understanding of the main ideas and key details.
A grammar focus on Comparative Structures for Sophisticated Arguments. At a C1 level, comparatives go beyond simple 'bigger than' statements. They are crucial for building nuanced arguments, comparing abstract concepts, and showing degrees of difference.
Vocabulary expansion with advanced expressions related to Leadership, gender bias, workplace not found in the source material.
Practical English phrases for You are in a team meeting discussing candidates for a promotion. You disagree with a colleague's assessment of a candidate and want to offer a different perspective without causing conflict., with exercises to practise using them naturally.
A speaking task where students role-play a real-world scenario, applying vocabulary and phrases from the lesson.

00:00 I think there's no question that we are still promoting at least as many incompetent men as we were when I wrote the original article, "Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?"

00:12 I am very grateful to incompetent men who keep succeeding, because every time that somebody that is perceived as incompetent or not very competent gets elected or wins an executive position in a company, the article then goes back to number one.

00:32 If you seem aggressive, very assertive, bold, abrasive, overconfident, there is a strong probability that people attribute competence to you, especially if you're a man.

00:45 I think there is clearly a disconnect between the attributes that seduce us in a leader, things like confidence, charisma, even narcissism and greed, and those that are needed to be an effective leader.

01:01 So the data are pretty consistent here. Women outperform men in measures of leadership: self-awareness, humility, emotional intelligence, agreeableness, coach-ability, connecting with others, mentoring others, managing others, and KPIs like revenues and profits.

01:17 That's not to say that there aren't any men who may display more empathy and coach-ability than women. Sure, some women are taller than some men. But on average, men are taller than women.

01:28 And on average, men lead in a more absentee way, are more hands-off and more centered on themselves, and women tend to be more centered on their teams and subordinates. So on average, women display these better leadership traits more often.

01:45 Women ought not to change their behaviors in order to become leaders.

01:50 The world has no shortage of people who lean in when they don't have the talents to back it up. In fact, if you're really busy doing your work, managing your team, and delivering results, you probably don't have time to blow your own trumpet and lean in.

02:04 Having said that, women do face a kind of double-blind dilemma. We complain about them when they don't lean in, because they don't behave like overconfident men, and when they do, we also complain, because they seem pathologically ambitious, and we're scared of them. This is the fundamental paradox in which women are trapped.

02:22 The solution to improving the quality of our leaders is not to make it easier for incompetent women to become leaders but to make it harder for incompetent men, so that we actually reward people for the potential and talent they have as opposed to teaching them to emulate some pseudo-Machiavellian, manipulative strategies that won't elevate the quality of leadership.

02:45 If you're a manager and you want to combat this problem, there are some simple, basic rules that everybody can apply.

02:51 Fundamentally, you need to have the humility to distrust your instincts.

02:57 Develop an individual, direct connection with others. Pay attention to what they're doing. Use others as a validation point to evaluate people's performance, and use data, assessments, evidence to make decisions as opposed to just follow your gut feeling.

03:16 So if anything, I'm proactively asking people to discriminate more against incompetent men who want to be leaders.

Vocabulary focus

The vocabulary section introduces C1-level words and phrases related to Leadership, gender bias, workplace. Key terms include incompetent (adjective), assertive (adjective), abrasive (adjective), disconnect (noun), humility (noun). Students practise using these terms in context through exercises drawn from the source material.

Grammar focus

This lesson focuses on Comparative Structures for Sophisticated Arguments. At a C1 level, comparatives go beyond simple 'bigger than' statements. They are crucial for building nuanced arguments, comparing abstract concepts, and showing degrees of difference.

Leadership stereotypes: evaluating competence and bias

Summary

Activities

Vocabulary focus

Grammar focus

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