Competency Imbalances
Recent research conducted with senior leadership has found that this group typically lack introspective skills and often lack critical self-awareness of key leadership behavioral competency trait imbalances.
This can derail effectiveness with regards to interpersonal communications and subsequent key leadership accountabilities.
In fact, it has been shown that as much as 80% of the variance in job competencies of senior leaders is due to interpersonal and emotional competence (self-awareness being a dimension), not technical skill.
Examples of leadership competency trait imbalances may be: being overly frank while lacking in diplomacy (communication), under analyzing potential pitfalls of a decision while being too overly optimistic about the potential "up-side" (strategic acumen), consistently enforcing policies but at the expense of demonstrating warmth and empathy (driving ability), and exhibiting a willingness to experiment and try new avenues of thought while lacking in persistent follow through to complete a project(innovation execution).
Increasing self-awareness of these behavioral trait imbalances starts to unravel the mystery of why leaders seemingly "doing" what they consider to be the "right leadership activities" are not getting the results they desire from their direct reports.
What these leaders come to find is that there is a big difference between "doing" learned leadership activities and "being" a leader.