In my experience leaders are seldom judged on being right, and that's the cognitive portion of their job. A leader may be organized, sociable, disciplined, but

In my experience leaders are seldom judged on being right, and that's the cognitive portion of their job. A leader may be organized, sociable, disciplined, but a leader also has to make choices. A leader in particular must make a choice if there's no consensus, and so there is not an agreement on the right course of action, and presumably there is no identifiable "right" choice. In fact, though, there is usually a right choice, it's just that no one knows for sure what it is. But as events transpire we learn about the effect of decisions (though we still lack the counterfactual), and often it becomes clear if a decision was right or not. I seldom see leaders judged based on the result of their cognitive decisions. I find there's a strong bias against even attempting to make that judgement. "In hindsight" is used to dismiss criticism: sure, you can say that in hindsight, but I had to make the decision at the time with the information I had. But very few outcomes are actually entirely surprising, we weigh information and risk and probabilities, and these can be improved. An example I remember with particular frustration was Hillary Clinton, repeatedly confirming her decision about the Iraq war given the information she knew at the time. There was lots of information available, she made particular choices about how to weigh the information and risk, and while within her decision framework at the time the choice may have seemed right, clearly her framework was wrong even given her own conclusions. (It's also hard because we expect leaders to always be right, and if they aren't then they shouldn't be leaders, which leaves no room for improvement.)