Why Google's Best Leaders Aren't Stanford Grads With Perfect SATs | Inc.com: Crunching the numbers on the question of what makes a successful leader, Google found out that leaders must be predictable and consistent. When managers are predictable, they eliminate an obstacle from employees' progress--themselves. Managers have their own tendency to interfere, dictate, second-guess, and be a backseat driver. Without this obstacle, employees don't have to worry about whether their manager will try to jump in or suddenly veer in a different direction. Instead, they have the mental space to do great work.
On the flip side, as Laszlo Bock, senior vice president of people operations at Google, puts it, "If your manager is all over the place, you're never going to know what you can do, and you're going to experience it as very restrictive." But "[i]f a leader is consistent, people on their teams experience tremendous freedom."