I’ve known some geniuses who were such a pain to work with that we had to let them go; then again, some of our most brilliant, delightful, and effective people were let go by previous employers for being none of those things. It would be nice if there were some magic bullet that turned difficult people into success stories, but there isn’t. There are just too many unknowns and immeasurable personal characteristics involved for us to pretend that we have figured out how to do that. Everyone says they want to hire excellent people, but in truth we don’t really know, at first, who will rise up to make a difference. I believe in putting in place a framework for finding potential, then nurturing talent and excellence, believing that many will rise, while knowing that not all will.

As this book will show, traits like overconfidence and self-absorption should be seen as red flags. But instead, they prompt us to say, ‘Ah, there’s a charismatic fellow! He’s probably leadership material.’ The result in both business and politics is a surplus of incompetent men in charge, and this surplus reduces opportunities for competent people—women and men—while keeping the standards of leadership depressingly low.

Finally, good leadership requires psychological capital, that is, how individuals will lead and whether they will make use of their capabilities.

Summing up, if someone has the right intellectual capital, social capital, and psychological capital, they will have more potential to be a good leader. But it’s not guaranteed.

In sum, bad leaders are unlikely to turn into talented, inspirational, or high-performing leaders. Yes, they can change, but most leaders won’t improve much beyond what you have seen them do in the past, especially if they are left to their own devices. Human inertia makes professional development interventions, such as executive coaching, indispensable, though a much more effective strategy for improving the quality of leaders would be to focus more time, effort, and resources on selecting talented people into leadership roles. As in any other area, prevention is a much better option than treatment, and while there’s no need to choose between one and the other—both should be pursued—leaders will be much more likely to improve when they have been correctly selected.