In leadership development terms, organizations are rediscovering the distinctions between management and leadership. In short, traditional management development offers a seductive and easy short-term success but it is not achieving leadership development. Leadership skills development requires real investments into more difficult areas like people skills, personal development and an unending mental flexibility to tolerate extra-rational and emotional human complexity. These are often evident in chronically poor social skills, relationship skills and the habitual blaming of others for team and organizational ills. This list is by no means exhaustive and, even in this brutally brief form, shows the common theme of extra-rational obstacles.
Candidates often satisfy perfectly rational leadership competencies and still fail to lead.
In my experience, this is why traditional information-based and cognitive training often don't deliver behavioral change with regard to leadership. Reach out in front of your face with one hand, close your eyes and gently touch your nose. Now think about how you learned to complete this simple task. The action is simple and you probably learned it from many repeated events over time. The micro muscle movements and spacial awareness are, however, very complex and you now unconsciously process vast amounts of information to complete this simple task.