What Makes a Good Leader? How Strong Leadership Shapes Performance During Change
Many organizations promote high performers into leadership roles and then assume the development will automatically follow. It rarely does. The skills that make someone a strong individual contributor don’t necessarily translate into the ability to lead a team, especially through periods of uncertainty. That leadership gap tends to show up in engagement, retention, and results.
Fortunately, great leadership is learnable. What makes a good leader is a set of behaviors that can be identified, practiced, and developed at every level of an organization. Organizations that do this deliberately outperform those that leave it to chance, particularly because strong leadership makes all the difference between teams that adapt and teams that stall during disruption.
Below, we’ll examine some essential leadership behaviors that we’ve identified as the foundation of high-performing organizations experiencing change. Understanding what makes a good leader gives organizations a practical framework for developing leadership capability that adapts to changing business conditions, inspires employee engagement, and accelerates performance.
Key Takeaways:
- Great leadership isn’t based on innate personality traits; it’s built through consistent, repeatable behaviors.
- Great leaders adapt their approach to fit the situation and hold their teams accountable for results.
- Organizations that define and develop great leadership behaviors consistently build stronger teams and outperform those that don’t.
Great Leaders Actively Build Trust
Trust is the highest form of human motivation.
Leaders build trust through behaviors that create confidence, strengthen relationships, and shape how people respond during uncertainty. Leaders who earn the trust of their teams create environments where people are more willing to engage, contribute, and adapt to change.
What Makes a Leader Trustworthy
Trustworthiness in leadership is reflected through several essential behaviors:
- Integrity. Leaders whose actions consistently match their stated values build credibility that earns genuine followership. Our research reveals that only 42% of employees trust their own leaders. But when team members do trust their leaders, one in two are engaged; when they don’t, only one in 12 are.
- Genuine care. Leaders who demonstrate real concern for their people are more likely to boost productivity, retention, and customer outcomes. FranklinCovey research shows that while only 7% of leaders exhibit both high expectations and genuine care for their teams, the leaders who do both are six times more likely to deliver exceptional results. Their teams are also three times more likely to reach the highest levels of engagement.
- Consistency under pressure. A FranklinCovey Institute global leadership survey found that two-thirds of employees have low trust in today’s leaders overall. Trust accumulates through small, repeated moments of follow-through. Leaders who behave one way when the stakes are high and another when the stakes are low erode the credibility they’ve built. By examining their own beliefs, practicing effective behaviors regularly, and maintaining the cores of credibility, leaders can sustain consistent leadership practices that build trust and inspire teams to do their best work.
How Self-Awareness Shapes Leadership Behavior
Self-aware leaders make better decisions under pressure. They recognize where they default to certainty when they should instead invite input, or when they prioritize harmony over honest feedback. Leaders who don’t recognize how they come across when stressed or unsure tend to add to team anxiety. Under sustained disruption, that pattern accelerates change fatigue. In contrast, leaders who use feedback as fuel, rather than treating it as a threat, create conditions where teams stay honest during the moments that matter most.
Download our guide, Trust & Inspire®: The Leadership Framework Built for Disruption, to learn how trust-building leadership practices transform team performance in periods of uncertainty.
Great Leaders Communicate With Clarity
Strong communication skills are one of the primary ways ordinary leadership becomes great leadership. Great leaders create clarity, listen actively, and provide the consistency teams need to perform through change.
Articulating a Clear Direction
Effective leaders articulate a concrete, credible direction: a clear picture of what success looks like and how the team’s work connects to it.
Beginning with the end in mind shapes prioritization and helps leaders filter decisions through a defined destination rather than react to immediate pressures. Organizations that build this discipline into their mission and strategy are better positioned to maintain alignment when conditions inevitably shift.
Great leaders also use storytelling as a communication tool. Making the organization’s strategy memorable means framing it in terms of real stakes and real people, not abstract targets. When teams understand the story behind the direction and feel it matters, they’re more likely to carry that direction forward independently.
Practicing Active Listening
When we listen with the intent to understand others, rather than with the intent to reply, we begin true communication and relationship building.
Many leaders listen with the intent to respond rather than to understand. They begin forming their next point while someone else is still speaking, and teams notice. Leaders who ask questions before offering solutions, acknowledge concerns before giving advice, and seek to understand others first create environments where people raise issues early instead of waiting until problems become more difficult to address.
The way leaders listen influences the long-term health of their teams. Employees who strongly agree that their leaders communicate effectively are 73% less likely to experience burnout. Active listening also affects the quality of information leaders receive. When teams trust their leaders, they are more willing to share honest feedback, giving leaders greater visibility into challenges and opportunities for growth.
Communicating Through Change
FranklinCovey research shows that 87% of leaders approach disruption as something to survive rather than an opportunity for innovation and growth. That mindset often influences both the quality and frequency of communication during periods of change.
When communication becomes infrequent, teams fill the gaps with their own assumptions. This creates conditions for rumor, anxiety, and disengagement. Consistent communication helps leaders maintain trust and keep people aligned, even when answers are still emerging.
Effective change communication should include:
- Regular touchpoints that acknowledge uncertainty and its effects.
- Consistent connection between the change and a larger organizational purpose.
- A clear picture of what’s staying constant to give teams an anchor point.
Leaders who project false certainty during change often erode trust more quickly than leaders who are transparent about what they know (and what they don’t). In periods of disruption, credibility is built through clarity and honesty, not through the appearance of confidence.
Download our guide, From Misunderstood to Magnetic, to build core communication practices for highly effective leadership.
Great Leaders Adapt to Uncertainty and Embrace Disruption
Leadership approaches that succeed in stable conditions don’t always translate to periods of disruption. In today’s world, where our research shows that 70% of employees identify uncertainty as a defining characteristic of their work environment, leaders who adjust their approach to fit the situation and the needs of their teams are more likely to sustain performance when conditions become more complex. However, only 20% of leaders believe their organizations make high-quality decisions quickly.
What makes a good leader in these moments is the ability to adapt their leadership approach and embrace the opportunity of disruption while remaining grounded in consistent values. Their principles stay the same, while their actions and communication reflect the needs of a particular team or situation during uncertainty.
Adaptability also influences how leaders approach decision-making. Effective leaders demonstrate intellectual honesty by bringing a clear perspective and remaining open to new information. They recognize which decisions require immediate action, and which benefit from broader input, all while communicating those distinctions to their teams.
Leaders who delay hard calls to preserve consensus often create more disruption over time than those who act imperfectly and course-correct as needed. Decisive action, paired with transparency about the reasoning behind it, keeps teams moving and maintains trust even when the outcome isn’t certain.
Download our guide, Too Much Disruption, Too Little Leadership, to close the leadership capability gap that drives burnout and disengagement.
Great Leaders Develop Their Teams
Great leaders focus on the growth of each person on their teams alongside the results those individuals deliver. Their attention extends beyond immediate performance to the long-term development of capability.
When leaders invest time in removing obstacles, providing coaching, and creating opportunities for growth, teams become stronger over time. Organizations that prioritize employee development report 11% greater profitability and are twice as likely to retain their people.
In practice, developing individuals and future leaders includes:
- Regular coaching conversations and 1-on-1s that go beyond status updates.
- Stretch assignments that build capability ahead of demand.
- Feedback framed to build confidence and capability.
Perhaps most importantly, great leaders help people recognize the capabilities and potential they have not yet fully seen in themselves. They create opportunities for growth, communicate belief in future and existing capabilities, and provide support as new skills develop. Over time, this long-term investment builds stronger teams and creates the leadership capacity organizations need for the future.
Download our guide, From Burnout to Breakthrough: Turn Inconsistent Leadership Into Sustainable Performance, to reveal six leadership behaviors that drive consistent results in disruptive times.
Great Leadership Requires Intentional Development
In the Industrial Age, leadership was a position. In the Knowledge Age, leadership is a choice.
Amid growing disruption, “good” leadership simply isn’t good enough. Organizations that define leadership expectations at each level and reinforce those expectations through conscious development build stronger leadership pipelines. Leadership capability grows more consistently when organizations make development part of how leaders operate daily.
Leadership development is most effective when it continues beyond promotion. Some organizations invest heavily only when someone steps into a new role, even though leadership demands evolve as businesses grow and priorities shift.
Sustained leadership effectiveness depends on a commitment to growth. Leaders who continue to seek feedback, expand their capabilities, and hold themselves to the same standards they set for others are better equipped to navigate change over time. Organizations that reinforce these behaviors create the leadership capacity needed to sustain performance in challenging conditions.
Understanding what makes a good leader is only the beginning. The next step is to examine whether your current approach to leadership development is producing the capabilities required and preparing for your organization’s future demands so you have a full a pipeline of high potentials and truly great leaders.
The leaders you need tomorrow are developed through the decisions you make today. Explore how we can help your organization develop the leadership capability required for sustained performance in changing environments.