Have you ever wondered how certain individuals land leadership positions? I certainly have. McKinsey, in a conversation with Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, explored this question, examining the factors that propel people to the top while controlling for abilities, competencies, interests, personalities, age, gender and socioeconomic status.

Surprisingly, characteristics like overconfidence and narcissism often outweigh qualities that make for better leaders, such as empathy, self-awareness, integrity and humility. The research suggests that leadership selection is not always based on talent, merit or potential. This bias can disadvantage those who excel in emotional intelligence (EQ) and empathy, regardless of gender (though they did find that men were overrepresented).

It turns out that the qualities that make for better leaders in the long run — empathy, self-awareness, integrity and humility — are not as highly rated by selectors as overconfidence and narcissism. Competence doesn’t come into it. And narcissism and overconfidence seldom delivers outstanding company performance.

This bias not only counts against women, who typically have higher levels of EQ and empathy than men, but also men with those characteristics.

And diversity programs which skew toward appointing more women may actually make the problem worse if they elevate women who lack empathy, self-awareness, integrity and humility.

There’s a twist here: Those qualities don’t really make empathetic people stand out as leaders at the outset; it’s what makes them better leaders as they grow in the role. The real problem is that selectors put more value on the confidence they can see in front of them than on potential for growth. Of course, they have to be confident that candidates have the technical skills needed to do the job, but very often the “selectors” are either people who are themselves endowed with that overconfidence or who have bought into the strong leadership myth. Things won’t change until leadership selectors subscribe to the value of people-centred leadership.

The solution is not to put more women in leadership training programs. In the conversation with McKinsey leaders, Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic says, “If you focus on gender, you may or may not increase the quality of your leaders. But if you focus on talent, you will probably increase the competence and quality of your leaders, as well as increase gender representation.”

How Leadership Training Can Help

The solution is to train all your leaders on self-awareness and empathy. Integrity and humility are matters of character that can be amplified by self-awareness and EQ; they’re not teachable skills.

The interesting thing is that when you underpin your leadership training with self-awareness, the best learners develop an authentic confidence along with an awareness of their limitations. It’s still the case that selectors have to be encouraged to look for potential and talent as well as confidence, but people who go through this development process are going to be good leaders by any definition.

Training programs that teach self-awareness are going to create learning that lasts, because self-awareness is the first step to the behavior changes that improve performance.

Keep in mind: While you can teach self-awareness, it’s something that has to be learned rather than taught. And it has to be learned in the context of daily life, not a classroom.

Building Self-Aware Leaders

Here are some tips for helping leaders become more self-aware:

• A structured leadership development program is the best way to create self-awareness, but it has to be done with care and subtlety.
• Avoid the term “mindfulness”. For many, it conjures up images of meditation and associated practices. Use a term like “active mindset” to distinguish the idea of building an open, growth-oriented mindset from meditation practices.
• Leaders participating in the training need to be encouraged, coached and supported by their own managers if they are to develop self-awareness and empathy.
• People develop self-awareness through practice. The material for that practice is all around them. Delegation, for example, is a wonderful opportunity for building self-awareness. Encourage leaders to stop and consider whether a task is something only they can do. If not, they can choose to delegate it to a team member.

Every day contains hundreds of such learning opportunities, and a structured leadership training program is the ideal way to have those opportunities revealed. A good training program will teach skills like communication and navigating difficult conversations, but what people really learn is self-awareness and empathy.

It will take time to change the selection bias we referenced earlier in this article. However, that’s not a reason to avoid ensuring that your leadership training programs are vehicles for developing self-aware — and more effective — leaders.