I have written extensively in my new book (Executive Courage - Sometimes You Have to Walk Point) about my distain for senior leaders who seek cover through conforming, consensus-building, compromise, and focus groups.  These leaders strike me mostly as careerists who often avoid risk and lack the courage to be accountable.  Conformists suck the juices out of initiative, creativity, and excitement while ensuring that the status quo is alive and well.  Only in a democratic government is compromise and consensus-building semi-respectable.  In all organizations, these undesirables achieve the sub-optimal and nothing more. 

However, in my almost 50 years of experience in the military, business, and education,  conforming, popularity-seeking, risk averse, and stasis-loving careerists seem to move up the ladder of position and wealth.  But they must be selective (and they usually are) in their choice of senior positions, because they are a disaster in a struggling company that requires the executive courage to break paradigms, remove the average and mediocre performers, and do the unthinkable.