Stop Arguing About Leadership Style: What 11,640 People Tell Us About Adaptability
A meta-analysis found leadership matters for adaptability. The style label did not.
Transformational. Servant. Empowering. Authentic. Inclusive. Shared. Organisations spend a great deal of time and money deciding which leadership label to build their programmes around.
A 2024 meta-analysis suggests much of that debate may be beside the point, at least when it comes to helping people adapt to change.
What the Research Found
Bonini and colleagues reviewed 34 studies and statistically combined 31 of them, covering 11,640 people, to examine the relationship between leadership and adaptive performance. Adaptive performance is how well people handle change at work: dealing with uncertainty, managing pressure, learning new tasks and adjusting how they work with others.
Two findings stand out.
Leadership matters. There was a moderate positive relationship between leadership and adaptive performance. In plain terms, it is a meaningful relationship, not a magic bullet.
The style made no measurable difference. Transformational, servant, empowering, inclusive, humble, shared and self-leadership approaches all landed in a similar place. The researchers had expected involvement-based styles to outperform more directive ones. They did not.
“The research found that leadership matters for adaptability. It did not find that the badge on the leadership programme mattered.”
It’s less about style and more about relationships. Photo Getty Images Unsplash
Why Style Made No Difference
The qualitative part of the review offers an explanation. Across the different styles, leadership influenced adaptability through the same two routes: motivation and relationships. Leaders helped people adapt by strengthening engagement, confidence and intrinsic motivation, and by building trust and a safe space to work through change together.
Those routes are available to any leader, whatever label their organisation uses. A "transformational" leader who never builds trust will not help people adapt. A leader who has never heard the word "servant" but genuinely puts their team's growth first probably will.
Context Decides
The other major finding is how much results varied from one setting to another. Almost all of the variation between studies reflected genuine differences in context rather than statistical noise. Some examples from the review:
In emergency situations requiring speed and coordination, a more directive approach supported adaptability rather than undermining it.
Among firefighters working within strongly hierarchical structures, empowerment practices still improved adaptability.
Servant leadership was prominent in hospitality and sales, where performance depends on relationships with customers.
Coaching by guidance, essentially telling people what to do, was linked to lower adaptability, while coaching by facilitation, which encourages exploration and self-directed learning, was linked to higher adaptability.
That last point is worth pausing on. The same leader activity, coaching, produced opposite effects depending on how it was done.
This echoes a 2026 meta-analysis by Ferede and Getahun covering 5,651 leaders, which I have written about previously. It reached the same practical conclusion about change leadership: there is no one-size-fits-all model.
A Note of Caution
Most of the studies in the review measured leadership and adaptability at the same time, often through self-report. That means the evidence shows a reliable association, not definitive proof that leadership causes adaptability. Interestingly, leaders' ratings of their own leadership were slightly more strongly linked to adaptive performance than their teams' ratings, which is a reminder that self-assessment flatters. Even so, the overall pattern is consistent and useful.
What Adaptive Performance Actually Involves
The research draws on Pulakos's well-established definition of adaptive performance, which includes handling emergencies and crises, handling work stress, solving problems creatively, dealing with uncertain situations, learning new tasks and procedures, and adapting interpersonally and culturally.
Read that list again, and it is almost a description of resilience in action. Handling stress and managing frustration sits with Energy and Attitude. Dealing with uncertainty is Adaptability. Learning new tasks draws on Confidence. Interpersonal adaptability depends on Support Network. The capabilities organisations want during change are the capabilities The Resilience Wheel is built to develop.
Develop Behaviours, Not Badges
If the label matters less than the behaviour, leadership development can be simplified. Rather than asking "which style should our leaders adopt?", it is more useful to ask:
Do our leaders genuinely motivate people, or just direct them?
Do they build enough trust for people to admit they are struggling with a change?
Can they read the context and shift between directive and facilitative approaches when the situation needs it?
Are they coaching by facilitation, or simply telling people what to do in a gentler voice?
These are observable behaviours. They can be coached, practised and measured. They also travel across contexts far better than a branded leadership model does.
A practical example makes the point. Two managers lead teams through the same system change. One describes herself as a servant leader, the other has never thought about style at all. The first spends her energy protecting the team from the change and absorbing their frustration herself. The second explains why the change matters, involves the team in deciding how to implement it, and checks in weekly on who is struggling. The second team adapts faster, and the label on the first manager's approach made no difference to that outcome.
Building Range Rather Than Style
If the goal is range rather than a single style, development looks different. Leaders build range by reflecting on real situations: what did that moment need, what did I actually do, and what would I do differently next time? Feedback from the team shows whether the shift was noticed. Coaching helps leaders spot the default they fall back on under pressure, which is usually where range narrows.
Pulakos's dimensions of adaptive performance also make a useful team audit. Ask: how well are we handling stress at the moment, dealing with uncertainty, learning new ways of working, and adapting to each other? The answers point straight at which leadership behaviours the team most needs right now, whatever the style is called.
The Hidden Cost of the Style Debate
The obsession with style has practical costs. Programmes are rebranded every few years as a new model becomes fashionable. Leaders who completed the last framework are told it has been replaced. Competing models sit side by side across different parts of the same organisation, and people learn to repeat the language without changing what they do.
Meanwhile, the behaviours that actually help people adapt, motivating, building trust and reading the context, get less attention than the vocabulary used to describe them.
What Good Looks Like in Three Situations
Because context decides, it is more useful to describe good leadership behaviour situation by situation:
In a crisis: clear, direct instructions, delivered calmly, with honest updates as the picture changes. Directive is appropriate here, provided it is temporary and explained.
During routine change: a clear goal and genuine involvement in how to get there. Facilitative coaching rather than instruction, and space for people to raise concerns.
Through long transformation: sustained attention to motivation and relationships, regular reconnection to purpose, and visible recognition of effort over months rather than weeks.
A resilient leader moves between these modes deliberately. The skill is not choosing one style and sticking to it. It is knowing which behaviour the moment needs, and having the range to provide it.
The leaders I see helping their teams adapt well rarely talk about their leadership style. They talk about their people, what those people need right now, and how to give it to them.
For L&D Professionals
Before investing in a branded leadership model, ask which observable behaviours it will change and how those changes will be measured. This meta-analysis suggests the label matters far less than whether leaders motivate, build trust and adapt their approach to context. Programmes built around those behaviours, rather than around a style, are easier to evaluate and more likely to transfer back to the workplace.
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