Former CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin:

Other qualities [= other than experience in the Intelligence Community] are capacity to make decisions when there are no easy options and to take responsibility for them, situational awareness about the secondary and tertiary consequences of those decisions, good judgment about what is right, true, or advisable when presented with conflicting assessments — a common situation in a field where you are almost always dealing with incomplete information. An instinct for dealing with people — at the core of the job. The capacity to communicate clearly to a work force that needs an understanding of the larger picture in order to fit their discrete jobs into the broader mission.

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