Leadership

Most literature I've read about leadership generally agree on certain issues: leaders need to be able to manage their time, they need to be able to distribute responsibility, and they need to know the people they are leading.
How far, though, does a leader have to go to really satisfy that last quality? Do they need to know what each member of their team excels at? Do they need to know the work abilities of these people? Does it go farther than that?
I think it goes much farther than that. Being among the lowest on the totem poll in the ranks of the Army, leadership is not an issue that can be avoided- at all. Nothing gets done without the approval of our leaders. We do the work, they tell us what to do. It really is that simple, mostly. However, it pains me to see that many leaders do not see- or purposely look away when they do see- their team members behaving out of the norm, when they fail to live up to the standards they generally hold true to, when these greener folks are suddenly getting in trouble, lashing out, and taking an attitude when they never would have before. How are leaders so willing to console themselves with their own assumed ignorance while those they are responsible for suffer? How do they blatantly ignore these people who ask them for help? How do they expect reprimands to correct action that never stemmed from lack of knowledge between acceptable versus unacceptable behavior? It goes deeper, but when everyone ignores that, it will never get better.