Edit: Lol. I love the downvotes. I mean, who are you talking about? Tiger Woods? Jack Nicklaus? Or were you dragging politics into this just to make a cheap shot? If so, what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
That’s not a dig, it just seems like a poor ROI.
The speculation that poor eyesight contributes to his functional illiteracy seems plausible.
https://thegolfnewsnet.com/golfnewsnetteam/2020/12/29/how-ma...
This article supports the numbers for Trump and adds additional information.
https://www.golfchannel.com/article/golf-central-blog/obamas...
The above article gives numbers for Obama.
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-defends-golf-trips-fal...
This article compares them both as of the summer of their 4th year in office. Short summary, Trump played at about 2x the pace of Obama.
The thing is leadership ought to be like you say. Some kind of competence that allows you to help a group of people complete some kind of task.
But let's be honest. The kids want to be student council president because it's prestigious. They grow up and then they want to be CEO because it's prestigious and well paying. They pay lip service to the idea of helping a team, but really, we know they don't care all that much. It's ass backwards, people want to be leaders because {prize} and then they think about how to get there. Sometimes we get lucky and they conclude that they need to climb the ladder by being competent (this fails a lot due to pyramid structures and politics), but often they just figure out that to seem competent, you have to shout a lot about how competent you are.
Those schools maintain their status and position by ensuring their alumni become leaders. Thus it is to their advantage.
Which brings us to the bigger picture... we live in a Darwinian word of evolve-or-die, strongest-will-survive. Thus passing on to our children the skills of leadership are part of this same desire for our children to thrive.
Money. In our society it pays more in average to be a leader.
On the why it pays more, I’d posit leaders are closer to the money source so get more negotiating power as they have more information.
Information is certainly part of it (thus why we have NDAs), but so are relationships/connections, particularly in B2B or the startup world where CEOs have to sell the company to investors.
we can see this with popularity itself, which has changed over the past century in the (american) culture from emphasizing capability to emphasizing confidence (with the concomitant rise of mass media and the concentration of mass attention and esteem).
I've seen this enough that I've come to believe it's hard wired to some extent, though it can be overridden rationally. Confidence and charisma seems to tell our so-called "reptile brain" that this is a big alpha that should be followed, and I strongly suspect that the effect also tends to down-regulate the rational mind in the same way that stress and fear do. I've experienced the "if they're in the room you agree with them" type of charisma more than once, and personally I always found it creepy and disturbing.
Looking past superficial confidence and charisma is something that should be explicitly taught.
Why? That only seems like it would be nice in a world where leadership skills and confidence are rare, and thus it's a "seller's market" for people with those skills, where people might have to settle for just picking a leader because they are good at leadership, regardless of whether they are wise. (Which is, admittedly, the world we live in now.)
However, in a world/cultural zeitgeist where leadership and confidence are commonly-cultivated attributes (like conscientiousness is in today's world: something inculcated by parents, teachers, media, etc.), most people would have that attribute, making most people potential leaders — and thus there would be a "buyer's market" for leaders. Leadership ability could be taken as pure table-stakes, and leaders would be selected first-and-foremost on their wisdom/capability/etc.
It is exactly the focus of the article, taken forward, that would make such a world come to pass.
Better to read some biographies of great leaders so at least you have a good view of the original data. Here is one for starters:
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/05/those-who-hav...
We‘ve been studying leadership since the very first books were written (and probably since the first tribal elders started sharing their experiences around the camp fire).
It is important to keep in mind that effective leadership can be stunningly diverse and depends heavily on personality and context. Stanley McChrystal makes this point quite well. Nonetheless, there are certain characteristics and traits that many effective leaders exhibit in some way or another. (IMO, John Maxwell provides an excellent summary of these.)
But I heartily agree with your sentiment that reading biographies of leaders is one of the best ways of „learning the trade“ (aside from actually, you know, leading).
All to say your comment is spot-on.
A leader cannot have one without the other. If you've spend any time amongst high academic performers, many of these folks have "developing the substance, breadth, and judgement", but not nearly as many have the confidence to apply these skills as leaders.