Ever find yourself around someone who talks too loudly in public - and all the more so on the cell phone? Or maybe you know someone who is chronically soft-spoken; you often have to strain to hear them in meetings or against the background noise of a passing car.

Effective speakers know how to modulate their voices so the volume is just right for the moment. Effective leadership requires a similar ability in the current leadership environment. "Sensing” skills are critical to making fast adjustments. It’s a world that demands constant adjustment and does not tolerate leaders who are unable or unwilling to build up their weak muscles--or who stick to their more familiar, well developed strengths even when the latest business challenge calls for something else. 

Note that in most skill areas, we aim for more--more fluent in a language, more capable of an engineering problem, more skilled in our writing. While this works well for skills, it can be quite counterproductive in leadership and management situations. It is actually a source of executive derailment.

We've done a great deal of research on this problem. Download the article on leadership volume: 
http://www.kaplandevries.com/images/uploads/LeadershipVolume_KaplanKaiserL2L2006.pdf