A is for Alpha and A**hole.

I tried to be one and became the other.

In her essential new book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson devotes a chapter to the distortions of the term alpha male. I can’t recommend the book enough, nor can I thank Ms. Wilkerson enough for the insights contained in its thirteenth chapter. Without giving too much away—because I strongly urge that you read the book—it makes clear that true alphas “command authority through their calm oversight of those who depend on them.” They’re not the chest-beating, order-barking, man beasts we’ve conditioned ourselves to believe.

I was that beast more often than I care to admit.

I found myself in positions of authority, positions I wasn’t fully equipped to command, and instinctually raised my voice, slammed my fist and belittled those beneath me when I sensed they didn’t see things my way. Once, I replied to an email with, “Because I’m the fucking ECD that’s why!” I would morph into the classic “ad agency asshole” whenever I felt disrespected, or worse, threatened that I would be outed as an impostor and not the creative machine everyone proclaimed me to be.

In closing the chapter, Ms. Wilkerson writes that the “great tragedy among humans” is our continued practice of elevating people to positions of power not because of “innate leadership traits” but because they possess qualities we wrongly associate with the alpha image. Time and time again, humankind is “deprived of the benefit of natural alphas who might lead the world with the compassion and courage that are the hallmarks of a born leader…”

If you are a hiring manager or have the authority to promote people within your organization, look beyond the usual suspects and find those self-assured souls who earn respect with quiet grace. They are the real alphas among us.

Glen