What makes a good Royal Navy Officer? Motivation. Motivation matters more for performance evaluations and advancement to leadership than general intelligence or personality traits. Does this mean intelligence is not so important? Perhaps for this particular job it is so, especially in peacetime and until a high level is reached, more than that I would say it is a liability.
I prefer JFA’s reinterpretation:
Let me reinterpret the findings: among a specific population of high achieving people, differences in motivation explains more than intelligence. I assume you would find the same thing among top.performing students. You have a truncated sample that’s been selected on the outcome of interest (I.e. leadership). That’s interesting as far as it goes, but this study seems plagued by survivorship bias if you actually want to learn about what variables predict what kind of people make it into top leadership.
I prefer JFA’s reinterpretation: