When a coaching client was offered a much bigger role, I confidently predicted she would do very well. To me, her success was assured because she embodies traits I’ve seen in the very best leaders I’ve known.

You might assume this person is very smart. She is, but that’s not enough. Research has repeatedly shown that intelligence is a poor predictor of real-world success. IQ gets you into the race. It doesn’t make you a good driver. We’ve all seen highly intelligent people make spectacularly poor decisions.

We were several weeks into a leadership development programme, and participants were sharing changes they had observed. One man said, "My wife stopped shouting at me."

We wanted to know more.

"Oh," and then he smiled, "And my daughter's speaking with me again!"

He told us that for many years, his wife had been shouting at him. It had never even occurred to him that he was to blame for the shouting.

Over the course of a long career, I’ve had the privilege of working with some remarkable leaders. I’ve also worked with a few lousy ones, and learnt from them too. Not many, just a few. With only one exception, all the lousy leaders were men.

Am I saying men are more likely to be lousy leaders than women? Yeah, I am. But maybe not for the reason you might think. There are two reasons for that.