Leadership is about behavioral flexibility, a concept that means adapting your style to the circumstance. Research shows that executives are more effective when they can play a variety of roles when leading people and making decisions. In fact, as suggested by the famous sociologist George Herbert Mead, the essence of social skill is being able to see things from another’s perspective, and then using this information to adjust one’s approach to match the situation.

Think about globalization. Today we are living in a world that is beautifully diverse; we are no longer isolated from other cultures. To be sure, most leaders are in charge of multicultural teams and, if they aren’t, they have direct reports with different values, personalities, and expectations of them. In psychology this is called Implicit Leadership Theory (ILT), and the main idea is that followers have preconceived notions of what makes for an effective leader.