Both, actually, but in the case I'm thinking of the devs with the strongest leadership skills in terms of organizing their peers to make things happen were completely invisible to management who were playing a different game. Just like their game was invisible to the devs shipping product, who didn't understand the implications on their careers. Saw a couple of great unofficial leaders get fired and a bunch more leave due to the disconnect. It caught up to the managers later, turned out their people skills weren't good enough after execution ground to a halt.

(Not all managers, this was a special degenerate case, but it's worth considering that different people have different goals/incentives/values. It's not always a straight line to "delivering customer value" that is only held up by a lack of people skills.)