Discover how leadership can be learned, positive or toxic, collective or individual, and everything in between. Comprehensive guide to leadership's many forms and possibilities.
Written by Laura Bouttell • Thu 20th November 2025
Leadership can be understood through exploring what it actually is capable of being—learned or innate, positive or destructive, individual or collective, formal or emergent. This exploration reveals that leadership is far more malleable, multifaceted, and complex than simplistic definitions suggest. Rather than existing as a fixed set of traits or behaviours, leadership manifests in remarkably diverse forms depending on context, intention, and implementation.
The question "what can leadership be?" challenges us to move beyond narrow conceptions and recognise the full spectrum of possibilities. Leadership can be transformational or transactional, servant-oriented or self-serving, distributed across the collective or concentrated in individuals. It can emerge organically from group interactions or be deliberately cultivated through development. Understanding these possibilities equips leaders to make conscious choices about the type of influence they wish to exert.
This article examines the various states, forms, and manifestations leadership can assume, exploring both the aspirational possibilities and potential pitfalls. By understanding what leadership can be, we gain clearer insight into what it should be.
Leadership can be both learned and influenced by innate characteristics—a conclusion that resolves one of the field's oldest debates. Research definitively demonstrates that leadership isn't exclusively determined by genetics nor entirely shaped by environment, but emerges from the interaction between natural predispositions and acquired capabilities.
Twin studies reveal the genetic component of leadership. Research examining female twins found that 32% of variance in leadership role occupancy was associated with heritability. This suggests that roughly one-third of leadership emergence stems from genetic factors, primarily through personality traits like extraversion, openness to experience, and emotional stability.
Certain qualities do appear early in life. Children who naturally demonstrate confidence, social awareness, or emotional resilience show greater propensity for leadership roles as they mature. These innate tendencies create advantages—making it easier to develop certain competencies or more natural to step into leadership situations.
However, innate characteristics alone don't guarantee effective leadership. History is littered with naturally charismatic individuals who led disastrously, whilst many of the most impactful leaders lacked obvious early indicators of leadership potential. Winston Churchill, for instance, struggled academically and socially in his youth, yet became one of the twentieth century's most celebrated leaders.
The skills-based model developed during the 1990s demonstrated that leadership can be taught through behaviour-based approaches. Approximately 70% of variance in leadership effectiveness stems from competencies that can be systematically developed through training, experience, and deliberate practice.
Research across thousands of leadership development programmes shows measurable improvements in critical capabilities:
The evidence is overwhelming: leadership capabilities can be learned, developed, and continuously improved. With proper training, resources, and commitment, virtually anyone can enhance their leadership effectiveness.
Leadership can be understood as natural predispositions amplified or constrained by developmental experiences. Some individuals possess traits that make leadership development easier—they start with advantages. But these advantages matter less than what people do with them.
Consider two individuals: one naturally confident but complacent about development, another initially shy but committed to building capability. Over time, the second individual often becomes the more effective leader because they invest in growth whilst the first coasts on natural advantages.
The most effective approach combines self-awareness about natural tendencies with intentional development of capabilities. Understand your innate strengths and limitations, then deliberately build competencies that complement your natural style whilst addressing weaknesses.
British business leader Richard Branson exemplifies this integration. His dyslexia could have been a barrier, yet he leveraged natural strengths in relationship-building and vision whilst deliberately surrounding himself with detail-oriented partners. By understanding what came naturally and what required support, he built one of Britain's most successful business empires.
Leadership can be manifested in remarkably diverse forms, each with distinct characteristics, strengths, and limitations. Understanding these variations enables leaders to match their approach to situational demands whilst remaining authentic to their values.
Leadership can be powerfully positive when oriented toward developing people, fostering growth, and building commitment and trust. Research identifies four primary positive leadership styles:
Authentic Leadership involves bringing your true self to work, building trust-based relationships with team members, and communicating in open and honest ways. Authentic leaders demonstrate self-awareness, balanced processing of information, relational transparency, and internalised moral perspective. This approach creates psychological safety where people feel comfortable being themselves and taking interpersonal risks.
Servant Leadership prioritises fulfilling the needs of followers—employees, customers, and stakeholders—rather than satisfying personal needs. Coined by Robert Greenleaf, servant leadership inverts traditional hierarchies by positioning leaders as servants first. Greenleaf's "best test" suggests that followers of servant leaders become more autonomous, healthier, wiser, and more likely to serve themselves.
Servant leaders demonstrate listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualisation, foresight, stewardship, commitment to people's growth, and community building. This approach proves particularly effective in knowledge-intensive environments where engagement and intrinsic motivation drive performance.
Transformational Leadership can be described as inspiring followers to achieve more than they thought possible by tapping into their potential. Rather than exchanging rewards for performance (transactional leadership), transformational leaders fundamentally change how people think about their work and themselves. They articulate compelling visions, demonstrate idealised influence through role modelling, provide intellectual stimulation that challenges assumptions, and offer individualised consideration tailored to each person's needs.
Charismatic Leadership relies on a leader's compelling personal characteristics to inspire extraordinary devotion and effort. Charismatic leaders possess exceptional communication skills, confidence, and conviction that energises followers. Whilst potentially powerful, charismatic leadership carries risks—it can create excessive dependence on the leader and prove difficult to sustain when the charismatic individual departs.
Leadership can also be destructive, causing significant harm to individuals, teams, and organisations. Toxic leadership emerges when leaders prioritise power, prestige, and personal image over doing what's right for others or the organisation.
Toxic leaders engage in behaviours that damage followers: abusive supervision, narcissism, manipulation, creation of fear-based cultures, and undermining of employee autonomy. The consequences prove severe—high turnover, stress, absenteeism, burnout, retaliatory behaviours, and toxic work environments that poison organisational culture.
Research distinguishes several forms of destructive leadership:
The British example of Robert Maxwell illustrates toxic leadership's catastrophic potential. His autocratic, bullying style and fraudulent practices not only destroyed his media empire but devastated employees' pension funds, demonstrating how leadership can be profoundly destructive when unconstrained by ethics or accountability.
Organisations must remain vigilant for toxic leadership indicators and create systems that prevent, detect, and address destructive behaviours before they cause irreparable harm.
Leadership can be primarily transactional, based on exchanges between leaders and followers, or transformational, fundamentally changing followers' beliefs and behaviours.
Transactional leadership operates through contingent reward and management by exception. Leaders clarify expectations, provide resources, and offer rewards for achievement whilst monitoring for deviations from standards. This approach proves effective for routine tasks with clear metrics but fails to inspire extraordinary effort or innovation.
Transformational leadership transcends simple exchanges by connecting work to higher purposes, developing capabilities, and inspiring people to exceed expectations. Meta-analyses consistently demonstrate transformational leadership's superior outcomes—higher follower satisfaction, organisational commitment, and performance.
Yet both approaches have merit. Effective leaders often blend transactional and transformational elements, using each appropriately. Clear performance expectations and fair rewards (transactional) provide necessary structure, whilst compelling vision and developmental focus (transformational) inspire discretionary effort.
Leadership can be distributed across collectives rather than concentrated in individuals—a profound reconceptualisation with significant implications. Collective leadership approaches challenge traditional assumptions that leadership resides in designated positions, recognising instead that leadership can emerge from interactions amongst multiple people.
Collective leadership can be described as a complex, dynamic process in which behavioural roles may be taken up by multiple individuals, with leadership elements distributed to those best suited to take them on. This approach recognises that in complex, knowledge-intensive environments, no single individual possesses all the expertise needed for optimal decisions.
The theoretical foundation draws on complexity science and distributed cognition. Complex adaptive systems theory explains how system-level order emerges through interactions of interdependent components. Rather than leadership being "in" someone, it can be enacted within every interaction between members, with emergent outcomes arising from these dynamic exchanges.
Collective leadership creates more efficient use of expertise and increases effectiveness. When facing technical challenges, those with relevant expertise lead problem-solving. During change initiatives, those skilled in stakeholder engagement take the lead on communication. Leadership becomes fluid, shifting based on context and needs rather than fixed by hierarchy.
Leadership can be emergent—arising spontaneously from group interactions rather than being formally designated. Emergent leadership manifests when groups self-organise around challenges, with influence naturally accruing to those demonstrating competence, commitment, and credibility.
Research on emergent leadership identifies several factors that predict who becomes an informal leader:
Emergent leaders aren't appointed; they're recognised. This organic process often identifies different leaders than formal selection would choose, particularly surfacing expertise that hierarchical structures miss.
The challenge with emergent leadership is managing the tension between formal authority and informal influence. Organisations benefit when formal leaders acknowledge and work constructively with emergent leaders rather than viewing them as threats.
Leadership can be shared amongst team members rather than vested in a single designated leader. In shared leadership arrangements, multiple people collectively influence team direction, decision-making, and outcomes.
Academic research defines shared leadership as "an emergent team property that results from the distribution of leadership influence across multiple team members." Studies published in the Academy of Management Journal found that teams with higher shared leadership demonstrated superior performance, particularly on complex tasks requiring innovation.
Shared leadership proves most effective when:
However, shared leadership isn't universally appropriate. It requires substantial investment in trust-building and communication. Teams facing urgent deadlines or working in highly regulated environments may find shared approaches cumbersome. The key is matching leadership approach to situational demands.
Leadership can be distributed, yet implementation faces significant challenges. Coordination difficulties arise when multiple people share influence—maintaining coherent direction becomes complex without explicit alignment mechanisms. Accountability can blur when multiple people share responsibility, leading to diffusion where everyone assumes someone else is handling critical tasks.
Political dynamics may intensify as leadership distributes. Without clear formal authority delineating who leads what, informal competition for influence can become consuming. Some individuals struggle to relinquish control, particularly those who advanced under traditional hierarchical models.
Successfully implementing collective leadership requires explicit frameworks for decision rights, communication protocols that ensure coordination, and culture work that reinforces collaboration over competition.
Leadership can be highly situational, varying its expression based on context, follower readiness, and environmental demands. This recognition has spawned entire theories about how effective leaders adapt their approach to match circumstances.
The Situational Leadership Model, developed by Paul Hersey in 1969, provides a framework for matching leadership behaviours to performance needs. The model recognises that there is no one-size-fits-all approach; rather, effectiveness stems from diagnosing situations accurately and adapting accordingly.
Hersey identified four primary development levels that denote varying stages of competence and commitment:
Effective leaders adjust their style based on follower development level. D1 individuals need directive leadership with clear instruction. D2 requires coaching that provides both direction and support. D3 benefits from supportive leadership that bolsters confidence. D4 demands delegating leadership that provides autonomy.
The situational approach democratises leadership by suggesting anyone can be effective if they accurately diagnose situations and possess versatility to adapt their style.
Leadership can be adaptive—mobilising people to tackle complex challenges that resist technical solutions. Developed by Ronald Heifetz and colleagues at Harvard, adaptive leadership distinguishes between technical problems (known solutions exist) and adaptive challenges (solutions require learning, changing values, or shifting behaviours).
Technical problems can be solved by experts applying existing knowledge. Adaptive challenges—organisational culture change, digital transformation, sustainability—require collective learning and experimentation. Leaders cannot simply provide answers; they must create conditions for adaptive work.
Adaptive leaders:
Adaptive leadership proves crucial in volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environments where yesterday's solutions create tomorrow's problems. It emphasises adaptation to rapidly changing circumstances whilst focusing on creating conditions for collective problem-solving rather than providing all answers.
Leadership can be profoundly context-dependent—what proves effective in one setting fails in another. The leadership approach that succeeds in a start-up differs markedly from what works in a mature, regulated industry. Leadership during crises demands different behaviours than leadership during stable growth.
Key contextual factors that shape appropriate leadership include:
Organisational life cycle: Start-ups need entrepreneurial, visionary leadership. Mature organisations often require operational excellence and incremental innovation. Declining organisations facing turnaround need courageous change leadership.
Industry characteristics: Fast-moving technology sectors value adaptive, experimental leadership. Highly regulated industries like pharmaceuticals or finance demand careful, risk-conscious leadership that balances innovation with compliance.
Cultural context: Leadership norms vary significantly across cultures. Hierarchical distance accepted in some Asian cultures would be rejected in Scandinavian contexts that value egalitarianism. Effective global leaders develop cultural intelligence that enables appropriate adaptation.
Crisis vs. stability: Crises demand decisive, authoritative leadership that provides clarity amidst chaos. Stable periods allow for more participative, developmental approaches that build capability for future challenges.
The most effective leaders develop versatility—the capacity to authentically employ different approaches depending on situational demands whilst remaining grounded in core values.
Leadership can be many things, yet it also has inherent limitations and boundaries that must be acknowledged. Understanding what leadership cannot be proves as important as recognising its possibilities.
Leadership can inspire and direct, but it cannot substitute for well-designed systems, clear processes, and appropriate structures. Organisations that rely exclusively on heroic leadership whilst neglecting operational fundamentals inevitably struggle.
Effective management—planning, organising, controlling resources, solving problems—remains essential regardless of leadership quality. The mistake is treating leadership and management as opposing forces rather than complementary capabilities. Organisations need both: management provides stability and efficiency, whilst leadership drives adaptation and innovation.
Attempts to lead without managing create chaos. Visionary leaders who cannot execute, inspiring communicators who cannot organise resources, charismatic executives who cannot build sustainable systems—all eventually fail because leadership alone proves insufficient.
Leadership can be directive, but it cannot compel authentic engagement or discretionary effort. Compliance can be mandated through authority, but commitment must be earned through trust, meaning, and reciprocity.
This reality proves particularly significant in knowledge-intensive environments where value creation depends on cognitive and creative work that cannot be coerced. You can force someone to show up, but not to innovate. You can demand outputs, but not genuine passion for the mission.
The most effective leaders recognise this boundary and focus on creating conditions that foster intrinsic motivation: autonomy, mastery, purpose, fairness, and psychological safety. They understand that their role is enabling and catalysing rather than controlling.
Leadership can provide direction and reduce anxiety, but it cannot eliminate the fundamental ambiguity and uncertainty inherent in complex environments. Leaders who promise complete certainty either deceive themselves or others.
In VUCA contexts, pretending to have all answers damages credibility. Followers recognise when confidence crosses into delusion. More effective is authentic leadership that acknowledges uncertainty whilst maintaining resolve to navigate through it.
The British explorer Ernest Shackleton exemplified this during his Antarctic expedition. When his ship Endurance became trapped in ice, he couldn't promise certain rescue. Instead, he maintained crew morale through honest communication about challenges whilst demonstrating unwavering commitment to their survival. This combination of realism and resolve proved more effective than false assurances would have been.
Leadership can be individual in expression, but it cannot succeed in isolation. The "great man" mythology of lone heroes transforming organisations through force of will distorts reality. Leadership fundamentally involves relationships—it exists only in connection with followers who choose to accept influence.
This reality has profound implications. Leaders depend on followers for information, implementation, and innovation. Hubris that dismisses this interdependence leads to catastrophic blind spots. The most effective leaders cultivate diverse advisory networks, actively seek dissenting views, and recognise that their success depends entirely on others' contributions.
Leadership can be exercised toward various ends, but it cannot be ethically neutral. All leadership embodies values, whether explicitly acknowledged or not. The question isn't whether leaders impose values but which values they champion and whether they do so consciously or unconsciously.
Attempts to treat leadership as purely technical—focused solely on effectiveness regardless of direction—prove dangerous. Effective leadership toward destructive ends (Hitler, Stalin) inflicts immense harm. Leadership must be grounded in ethical foundations that prioritise human dignity, fairness, and social responsibility.
Leadership can be systematically developed through intentional, multifaceted approaches that address both individual capabilities and organisational conditions. Whilst some natural variation in leadership potential exists, the evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that effective development dramatically improves leadership outcomes.
Leadership can be most powerfully developed through challenging experiences that stretch capabilities and provide opportunities for learning. The Centre for Creative Leadership's research found that developmental experiences typically involve three elements: assessment, challenge, and support.
Assessment provides feedback about strengths and weaknesses through 360-degree reviews, personality assessments, or structured reflection. This self-awareness forms the foundation for targeted development.
Challenge comes from assignments that push beyond current capability—stretch roles, crisis management, building something from nothing, fixing troubled operations, or managing significant change. These experiences surface gaps in capability whilst providing practice in closing them.
Support involves guidance and encouragement during difficulty—coaching, mentoring, peer networks, or sponsorship from senior leaders who provide both protection and accountability.
Organisations that excel at leadership development create systematic progression of challenging assignments rather than leaving development to chance. They identify high-potential individuals early, then deliberately expose them to diverse roles that build breadth and depth of capability.
Leadership can be accelerated through formal development that exposes leaders to frameworks, research, and perspectives they wouldn't encounter through experience alone. Effective programmes combine several elements:
Conceptual frameworks help make sense of complex situations by providing mental models for understanding leadership challenges, organisational dynamics, and change processes.
Peer learning creates opportunities for leaders facing similar challenges to share experiences, challenge assumptions, and provide mutual support. This collaborative learning often proves more valuable than expert instruction.
Action learning projects apply concepts to real organisational problems, ensuring development produces tangible business value whilst building capabilities.
Coaching and feedback promotes self-awareness and supports behaviour change through structured one-on-one conversations.
British business schools like London Business School and Oxford Saïd have built world-class programmes by balancing academic rigour with practical relevance. The most effective programmes don't just transfer knowledge; they challenge participants' assumptions and expand capacity to handle complexity.
Leadership can be developed through deliberate practice—systematic rehearsal of specific skills with immediate feedback. Unlike mere repetition, deliberate practice involves conscious focus on improving particular capabilities.
This might involve:
Equally important is structured reflection—examining experiences to extract lessons applicable to future situations. Leaders who regularly reflect on what worked, what didn't, and why develop far more rapidly than those who simply accumulate experiences without learning from them.
Leadership can be developed most sustainably when embedded in organisational culture rather than treated as discrete programmes. This requires:
Clear expectations defining what effective leadership means in your specific context, articulated through competency models, values statements, and behavioural examples.
Developmental assignments creating opportunities for people to lead before they have formal authority through project leadership, cross-functional initiatives, or task force participation.
Feedback-rich environment normalising conversations about leadership effectiveness through regular check-ins, 360-degree reviews, and after-action reviews.
Succession planning ensuring leadership pipeline reflects future organisational needs by identifying high-potential individuals early and systematically developing them.
Leadership can be both learned and influenced by innate characteristics. Research shows approximately 30% of leadership emergence stems from genetic factors, primarily through personality traits like confidence and social awareness. However, the remaining 70% of leadership effectiveness derives from competencies developed through training, experience, and deliberate practice. The skills-based model demonstrates that critical capabilities—strategic thinking, emotional intelligence, communication, and decision-making—can be systematically taught and improved. Whilst some individuals possess natural advantages, anyone committed to development can significantly enhance their leadership effectiveness through proper training, challenging experiences, structured feedback, and consistent practice.
Positive leadership prioritises developing people, fostering growth, and building commitment through approaches like servant, authentic, or transformational leadership. These styles emphasise emotional intelligence, compassion, and putting followers' needs first. Toxic leadership, conversely, prioritises power, prestige, and personal image over doing what's right for others or the organisation. Toxic leaders engage in abusive supervision, manipulation, and creation of fear-based cultures, resulting in high turnover, burnout, and damaged organisational health. Research shows servant leadership represents the opposite of toxic leadership—consistently considering both results and relationships whilst striving to improve followers' lives and make them more autonomous, healthier, and wiser.
Yes, leadership can be shared amongst multiple team members rather than vested in a single designated leader. Shared leadership is defined as an emergent team property where leadership influence distributes across team members, with different individuals stepping forward based on their expertise and situational demands. Research published in the Academy of Management Journal found teams with higher shared leadership demonstrated superior performance, particularly on complex tasks requiring innovation. This approach proves most effective when tasks involve high interdependence, team expertise is distributed, psychological safety is high, and team members demonstrate maturity. However, shared leadership demands significant investment in trust-building, communication, and alignment mechanisms.
Situational leadership matches leadership behaviours to follower readiness and situational demands rather than applying one consistent style. The model, developed by Paul Hersey, identifies four development levels based on competence and commitment: D1 (low competence, high commitment), D2 (some competence, low commitment), D3 (high competence, variable commitment), and D4 (high competence, high commitment). Effective leaders diagnose which level followers occupy, then adapt their approach accordingly—providing directive leadership for D1, coaching for D2, support for D3, and delegation for D4. This framework recognises that different situations and different people require different leadership responses, with effectiveness stemming from accurate diagnosis and behavioural versatility.
Leadership can be manifested through numerous styles, including transformational (inspiring followers to exceed expectations by tapping into potential), transactional (exchanging rewards for performance), servant (prioritising follower needs first), authentic (bringing true self to work with relational transparency), charismatic (inspiring through compelling personal characteristics), democratic (emphasising collaboration and collective decision-making), authoritative (providing clear direction and vision), and laissez-faire (delegating decisions and responsibility). Additionally, distributed and emergent leadership patterns challenge traditional individual-focused models. No single style proves universally superior; effectiveness depends on matching approach to context, follower readiness, task demands, and organisational culture whilst maintaining ethical grounding and authentic expression of values.
Toxic leadership can potentially be reformed if the individual demonstrates genuine recognition of their destructive impact and commits to behaviour change, though success rates prove modest. Meaningful reform requires honest assessment (often through 360-degree feedback), acknowledgement of harm caused, intensive coaching or therapy addressing underlying issues, accountability structures that monitor behaviour, and sustained effort over extended periods. However, organisations shouldn't gamble on reformation when evidence of toxicity is clear. The damage toxic leaders inflict—to individuals, teams, and culture—typically outweighs potential benefits of attempting rehabilitation. More prudent approaches involve prevention through careful selection, early intervention when warning signs appear, and swift action when toxic patterns become evident, prioritising protection of employees over leader redemption.
Organisations can develop widespread leadership capability by creating enabling conditions beyond formal programmes. Critical elements include establishing psychological safety where people can take interpersonal risks without punishment; providing challenging assignments that stretch capabilities across all levels; implementing clear competency frameworks defining effective leadership; creating feedback-rich environments through 360-degree reviews and regular developmental conversations; offering formal development combining conceptual frameworks, peer learning, action projects, and coaching; recognising and celebrating informal leadership regardless of source; designing structures that empower distributed decision-making; ensuring senior leaders model collaborative approaches; and building succession planning that identifies high-potential individuals early. Culture proves more important than programmes—leadership flourishes when organisational values, norms, and systems consistently reinforce distributed influence and development.