In my experience leaders are seldom judged on being right, and that's the cognitive portion of their job. A leader may be organized, sociable, disciplined, but a leader also has to make choices. A leader in particular must make a choice if there's no consensus, and so there is not an agreement on the right course of action, and presumably there is no identifiable "right" choice. In fact, though, there is usually a right choice, it's just that no one knows for sure what it is. But as events transpire we learn about the effect of decisions (though we still lack the counterfactual), and often it becomes clear if a decision was right or not. I seldom see leaders judged based on the result of their cognitive decisions.

I find there's a strong bias against even attempting to make that judgement. "In hindsight" is used to dismiss criticism: sure, you can say that in hindsight, but I had to make the decision at the time with the information I had. But very few outcomes are actually entirely surprising, we weigh information and risk and probabilities, and these can be improved. An example I remember with particular frustration was Hillary Clinton, repeatedly confirming her decision about the Iraq war given the information she knew at the time. There was lots of information available, she made particular choices about how to weigh the information and risk, and while within her decision framework at the time the choice may have seemed right, clearly her framework was wrong even given her own conclusions. (It's also hard because we expect leaders to always be right, and if they aren't then they shouldn't be leaders, which leaves no room for improvement.)

Yeah if great leaders are plentiful in your organization I would say that's an outlier in my experience. To be clear, there are often many decent managers in any stable organization...however, if we interpret "leader" to be something more, including the ability to drive change and execute, I think those types are few and far between.

Most leaders don't have intelligence. They have political acumen. Or, their intelligence is focused 98% on gaining positions of leadership, not the act itself.

I guess my point is that intelligent leadership is what's really in demand. :)

And yes, I agree. In most white-collar jobs, intelligence is assumed. It's the non-cognitive skills (let's call it emotional intelligence) that are sorely missing.

I'd like to work where you work. My experience with management has been "barely hanging on" to "actively damaging the company" with a few "adequate" and 1 or 2 "inspiring" thrown in the mix.