Various leaders often ask me that I’m working with if there are very specific characteristics that make leaders great. It’s a very complex question, and as with most things in life, it’s never just a single thing that empowers the best leaders to achieve the highest performance levels. I’m still a very firm believer that a strong organizational culture is the most important condition necessary for high performance. That said, the leadership team’s strength and collective leadership characteristics are extremely important.

Many of the individual leaders I’m coaching and consulting with are looking for “the magic bullet” of leadership. They want to find that one thing they can incorporate into the leadership style that gives them the best opportunity for success with the least amount of turmoil to achieve it. They usually expect to hear one of the more common leadership characteristics, such as self-awareness, credibility, relationship skills, authenticity, or the ability to empower others. These are very important characteristics, and many of the most successful leaders I work with are strong in each area. But if I’m pressed to identify one thing, surprisingly, it’s something that’s usually not present rather than something present.

When I look at the most successful senior leaders in the organizations I work with, I see one characteristic that sets the best apart from the rest. In general, they make better decisions than most. I’ve long been fascinated by this and spent a lot of time trying to identify what gives them this valuable skill. Undoubtedly, most of these individuals have achieved the high levels of responsibility that they hold by being extraordinary critical thinkers. But there’s more to it than that. Far more. These individuals routinely avoid the serious cognitive pitfalls that we see far more often in the leadership that one tier below these senior executives.

Whether it’s an innate natural ability or a highly refined skill, great leaders don’t fall prey to team cognitive biases same rate as their less successful counterparts. So what can we do to capitalize on this insight? The answer to that complex question is right at your fingertips. For years, psychologists and researchers have identified systematic failures in how we cognitively process and react to new information. If you go to a source as readily available as Wikipedia, you will find that more than 100 cognitive biases are identified, detailed, and explained. Each of these is a scientifically documented human failure to process information in a way that produces the best result. A very concise explanation of the challenge, why it occurs, and how we can overcome it is available for each. If you want to be a better leader, learn to avoid making weak decisions with the information you have. Start by familiarizing yourself with these highly valuable cognitive tools. We will explore some of the more critical cognitive pitfalls in more detail in my future videos