Corporate executives (and managers) are not taught leadership - what it means, what it takes, what the rewards are. Leadership is all about creating that trust, so that you can "lead" your team to do things that are against their better judgment sometimes, because they trust you. It is how you move from herding cats to actually managing.

Leadership skills are not expected of execs, and they are not evaluated on how well they lead.

When an executive does actually have and use leadership skills, in my experience, they are at least tolerable and add value to the process.