I think the latter. We studied formal models of leadership and management. Knowing those really helped me to put some kind of structure on the things that I was dealing with, but ultimately dealing with them came down to interpersonal skills and "walking the walk".

One of the really useful-but-unexpected things was having some kind of head-canon for "what a manager is and isn't" and (in one case) "what a CEO should actually be doing". It was really helpful having a kind of connect-the-dots picture of what should be happening and therefore what dots needed to be connected to make that picture happen.