Breaking Through: Leadership Research Offers a Roadmap for Change
What research reveals about effective leadership in an age of disruption.
There’s a well-known saying often described — inaccurately — as an ancient Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times.” Regardless of the phrase’s provenance, it expresses a sentiment that resonates strongly today. The first few months of 2026 have been a reminder to business leaders about how quickly everything from economic conditions to geopolitical alliances and technological capabilities can change.
It can be tempting to think of this extraordinarily eventful start to the year as an aberration, an odd blip of activity between long periods of normalcy. But the truth is that continuous and accelerating transformation is more the norm than anomaly today. The most obvious example is how companies and employees are navigating enormous and fast-moving technological change driven by artificial intelligence (AI), which has the potential to fundamentally reshape the nature of work, the prospects of corporations and startups, and the prosperity of entire economies and societies.
Why Leadership Matters More Than Ever
There is one foundational ingredient companies, governments, and other organizations need to navigate this rapid, constant, and often wrenching change: strong leadership. “Leadership is everything,” says Stephen Courtright, director of the Flippen Leadership Institute and professor of management at Mays Business School, who has spent his career researching leadership dynamics and organizational behavior.
Courtright says AI is an ideal example underscoring the critical role of leadership. While it’s clear AI will be enormously disruptive, whether that disruption will be beneficial will be largely determined by leaders. “It’s not just that AI can’t replace leaders, but it necessitates leaders who can guide and influence the use of AI as both a corporate good and a societal good,” says Courtright.
While the observation that strong leadership is vital during a time of rapid change and uncertainty may seem obvious, it raises a series of deeper questions. What exactly constitutes strong leadership? What qualities and behavior do good leaders embrace to help their organizations and employees navigate turbulent times? Of course, there is no lack of opinions about what leaders need to think, say, and do.
“The world is oversaturated with leadership content. And leadership is one of those topics where anybody anywhere can suddenly call themselves an expert,” says Courtright. Some of the guidance can be helpful to leaders grappling with acute change and uncertainty while other so-called thought leadership can be downright counterproductive. What matters for leaders seeking support and direction is to be aware of the work that goes into producing it.
Though well-intentioned, a significant proportion of leadership advice is based on the unique experiences of individuals. There are obvious limits to those insights, formed as they are by time spent in specific companies and industries with cultures, pressures, challenges, and opportunities very different from those faced by other leaders. Those proffering leadership advice based on their own experience are also limited by their own biases, personal agendas, and faulty or incomplete memories.
Scientifically rigorous leadership research is something entirely different. “We’re not looking at one person; we’re looking at tens of thousands of people. We’re looking at very large samples,” says Courtright. “By looking at large samples and taking an empirical approach, we have a much better grasp of what truth is when it comes to leadership. In the end, that’s what people are looking for. What’s the truth around leadership?”
Here’s the good news: Mays Business School professors produce a large volume of high-quality research that can help leaders identify blind spots that may be harming their organizations, get the most out of their talented workers, and confidently make decisions at a time when genuine confidence about how to lead is understandably in short supply.
The Star Employee Paradox
Matthew Call, an associate professor in Mays’ Department of Management, has devoted much of his recent research to the best ways to manage “star” employees, the handful of workers whose innovation and productivity deliver outsized value to their organizations. Call has specifically examined whether the big bonuses and hefty salaries companies use to lure stars is worth it.
The short answer is yes, but it’s a far more nuanced matter, especially for leaders. When stars first emerge, they are incredibly productive. Early in their careers, they generate breakthrough ideas at a rate far above their peers. Their individual output is both high and influential. But over time, that personal productivity advantage begins to taper off. In fact, compared to non-stars, stars’ individual output declines more sharply as their careers progress.
The Goal Should Be to Let Young Stars Shine
This doesn’t mean stars “burn out” or lose their talent. Instead, what changes is how they create value. Early on, stars focus heavily on producing their own standout work. Later in their careers, they increasingly shift toward elevating others — mentoring collaborators, shaping how work gets done, and transferring the deeper know-how that allows teams to innovate on their own. In other words, stars move from being the primary engine of innovation to becoming force multipliers.
So the story isn’t that stars fade. It’s that they evolve. Their peak individual productivity tends to come early — but their broader impact on others can grow even as their own output slows.
The leadership implications of these findings are wide-ranging. During the early years of a star’s career, for example, leaders should do all they can to remove the busy work and distractions that could prevent them from fully maximizing their individual production. The goal should be to let young stars shine. As stars age and become less individually productive, leaders should proactively connect them to younger workers to turbocharge their performance and identify other formal ways to benefit from their experience and insights, such as appointing them to advisory councils and documenting their knowledge to develop company best practices.
AI Meets Star Power
More recently, Call has investigated what the emergence of AI in the workplace means for stars, non-stars, and leaders. The short answer: AI is likely to widen the performance gulf between stars and non-stars and raise numerous nettlesome issues for leaders to navigate. “I think AI is a force multiplier for stars,” says Call.
The reason is that star employees generally have the knowledge and expertise to extract the most value out of AI. They can recognize when AI is making mistakes and hallucinating and can prompt it in more effective ways than non-stars. Stars are also more likely to be credited more for their good work produced using AI than other workers. “We are living in a world where everyone is using AI, but no one really says when they are using it,” says Call. “I think there is going to be an attribution bias where a star producing good work enhanced by AI is going to get credit because they’re already smart while the work of non-stars will be dismissed because it was produced using AI.”
Preferencing stars who use AI is just one of the challenges facing leaders. Call gives the example of a principal at a consulting company. In the past, the principal would have relied on early career staff to do research, interviews, and pull together slides for client presentations. Today, AI can do much of that work quicker and cheaper than people can. “Is that sustainable? If you are going to scale the use of AI and don’t hire those entry-level positions, what happens to your talent pipeline?” says Call. “More generally, I just don’t think leaders have figured out how to govern AI and what transparent and responsible AI usage looks like.”
When Good Intentions Go Awry
AI raises plenty of other challenges leaders have never had to consider before. But even as leaders seek to find responsible ways to use the new technology to support employees, it’s also important to remain mindful of age-old, very human blind spots that can distort their decisions.
Courtright has devoted time to researching counterproductive attitudes and perceptions in the belief that identifying them can help leaders be more effective. He has spoken to and worked with countless numbers of leaders and concluded that their intentions are almost universally good. The problem for leaders, employees, and organizations arise when leaders can’t translate those good intentions into productive behaviors and decisions.
For example, he collaborated with several academics on a research paper whose title succinctly summarizes the question they sought to answer: “Why do bootlickers get empowered more than boat-rockers?” It’s a question that has been especially troubling to employees with disruptive but beneficial ideas who find themselves sidelined in favor of colleagues who support status quo company strategies and tactics by default. The topic is particularly important today because organizations need employees and leaders who are empowered to think differently and adapt quickly to a complex and continuously changing business environment.
Empowering those who only agree with existing products, services, and strategies is problematic, and leaders grasp the need for innovation. So why do they shut down employees who raise novel ideas and actively deny them resources and support they would need to successfully develop something new? It’s not because leaders want to be bad bosses, says Courtright. “The good intention there is that I value loyalty and so therefore anybody who challenges the status quo I view as a threat because I value loyalty over everything else,” he explains. “As a result, I’m going to disempower that person when in reality it’s in my best interest to empower the boat-rocker because that is who gets stuff done and is innovative.”
Recognizing the value that disruptors can deliver is a way leaders can benefit their employees and themselves. So, too, is recognizing other biases that prompt executives and managers to elevate people into important leadership positions. While most people in positions of authority assume these choices are guided by employee performance, Courtright’s research concludes that physical appearance often trumps merit. Published in 2025, the study “The beauty bias and leader emergence” demonstrates how physical appearance has a strong and measurable impact on who gets promoted within organizations.
Again, the bias is not intentional. “But in the face of limited information, I’m going to look for things that somehow tell me, at least in my mind, that this person is caring and this person is competent, and so therefore they’re going to be a good leader,” says Courtright. “In reality, good looks have nothing to do with being caring, competent, or a good leader at all and not recognizing that results in me making poor selection decisions.”
Leaders’ Self-Reflection
Identifying and selecting the right leaders to manage in the current environment of change and disruption has never been more important. Shilaan Alzahawi, an assistant professor of management at Mays, has focused a critical eye on the typical leader selection process. Frequently, leaders are self-selected, meaning that organizations simply wait for people who view themselves as leadership material to step forward, figuring that those with potential will apply for positions.
Alzahawi’s research, “A legend in one’s own mind: The link between ambition and leadership evaluations,” demonstrates the deficiencies in this passive approach. Alzahawi and her fellow researchers examined 472 executives and found that ambitious individuals consistently overestimate their own leadership effectiveness, even when colleagues, subordinates, and managers disagree with those self-assessments. In fact, while ambitious employees gave themselves high marks across 10 leadership competencies, third-party evaluations found no correlation between ambition and leadership effectiveness.
Recently published research by Joel Koopman, a management professor at Mays, examines the leadership benefits of a behavior often lacking in ambitious employees: self-reflection. Koopman and co-researchers studied a group of professional employees and found that the daily practice of reflecting on their “best possible leader self” increased positive leadership behaviors, like helping colleagues and communicating vision, throughout the rest of their day.
Daily reflection about the type of leader people want to be helps reinforce the types of behaviors good leaders display. Importantly, Koopman and his fellow researchers also found that self-reflection helped both aspiring leaders and current leaders.
Effective leadership is also about knowing what behaviors to avoid. Mays’ Department of Management professor Huiwen Lian examined what motivates abusive leaders. The study, “Leaders’ impulsive versus strategic abuse, goal realization, and subsequent supportive behaviors: A self-regulation perspective,” found that leaders are abusive to their employees and colleagues for two reasons: hostility-
driven impulsive reactions and as a strategy to achieve goals.
The distinction is important because it sheds light on how they can improve their behavior towards others and effectiveness as leaders. Leaders whose abusive behavior is driven by an inability to control their actions can benefit from training designed to strengthen their self-regulation and control. For leaders who are abusive to achieve their goals, training that raises their awareness of the real damage their behavior causes can help develop more effective and less corrosive ways to achieve the same goals.
The research also punctures a common belief among leaders who use abuse to achieve their goals — that they can maintain good relationships with employees by being supportive after getting what they want. Lian and her colleagues found that alternating between abusive and supportive behavior produces some of the worst outcomes for employees and organizations, including low job commitment and higher rates of counterproductive behavior.
Daily Self-Reflection Increased Positive Leadership Behaviors
The main takeaway from Lian’s research: organizations and leaders should strive to eliminate abusive leadership behavior, no matter its cause.
In all his work with leaders, Courtright says virtually every aspiring or current leader wants to be effective and do the right thing. The reality of human beings is that this is always messy and complex — especially in a confusing and fast-moving business environment. But research about leadership dos and don’ts can provide helpful guidance and balance to weather this time of uncertainty.
“The biggest implication of my research is for all of us, me included, to look in the mirror a little bit closer and say, How are my good intentions going awry? What are the biases that make it so I’m not optimizing my leadership?” says Courtright. “And how can I use that research to work on myself to become a better leader?”
Featured Researchers
Stephen Courtright
Professor Department of Management
Matthew Call
Associate Professor Department of Management
Shilaan Alzahawi
Assistant Professor Department of Management
Joel Koopman
Professor Department of Management
Huiwen Lian
Professor Department of Management