Even if the essence of leadership talent is universal, the context a leader is in will shape how they behave, ought to behave, and are evaluated. As a consequence, some leaders may be popular in some cultures but not in others (think Vladimir Putin or Hugo Chávez), and many high-performing managers may struggle when they are moved from one culture to another, for example, from Germany to Indonesia or from a nongovernmental organization to a fintech startup.

Standing out, a desirable goal for both employees and leaders, is generally a disadvantage for group activity. As we would expect, people aspire to leadership more often in individualistic cultures, because leadership in itself is regarded as a way of standing out from the crowd. Conversely, collectivistic cultures focus on team rather than individual accomplishments and have stronger preferences for leaders who are low-key and humble. Leaders in individualistic cultures will be given more leeway to make single-handed decisions and have procedural power, while collectivistic cultures will relish consensual and democratic decision making.

As a consequence, organizations often assume that a leader’s career success reflects his or her performance—the more senior a leader, the more talented the person must be.

More precisely, traits such as confidence, narcissism, psychopathy, and charisma advance individuals’ careers without improving the success of the groups they lead. Clearly, we would be better off if we sifted out individuals with such traits, as opposed to rewarding them. The success of teams and organizations is more important than an individual’s personal success, especially when individual victory harms the rest of the group.

Leadership, the process that enables individuals to work together in the pursuit of a common goal, has been a critical resource throughout the evolution of humankind. Every significant accomplishment in human history—the use of fire, the invention of writing, the mapping of the human genome, and so on—sprang from collective action that could not have occurred without leadership.