Daniel Goleman quoted American Psychologist David McClelland 
“McClelland argued that once you were in a given job, specific competencies like self-discipline, empathy, and persuasion were far stronger forces in success than a person’s ranking in academics. He proposed the methodology that has become competence modeling — now common in world-class organizations — for identifying the key abilities that made someone a star performer in a specific organization.” (p.234, Focus – The Hidden Driver of Excellence)