DR. GRINT: The basic assumption is that all leaders are flawed. And by definition we are all flawed to some extent, therefore all leaders must be flawed, therefore, they cannot be perfect leaders. They must be imperfect. They must make mistakes. So the problem is not whether you can get a perfect leader, because you can't.

The problem is how do you stop an imperfect leader from making too many mistakes that threaten the organization?

And that's a big problem for leaders across space and time, is as they get more senior in the organization they tend to assume that they are probably the person most equipped to take the decisions in that organization, and therefore the advice that they get from other people will not be adequate. Therefore they'll take more decisions on their own, or they surround themselves with sycophants, with people who are simply yes people, as we would call them now.

Consequence of all of that is that you tend to get poorer and poorer decision making as you go up organizations unless you take the advice to heart and find somebody or a group of people who are happy to tell you when you're going wrong and you don't threaten them when they do tell you that. You don't shoot the messenger.