Leadership Behaviour: Why Good Intentions Don’t Create Good Leadership

Most leaders want to do a good job.

They want to motivate their teams, create a healthy culture, deliver results, and be respected. They want to lead with integrity. They want to be seen as competent, capable, and fair.

And yet, in many organisations, people experience leadership as inconsistent, unclear, or emotionally unpredictable.

Not always dramatically so — but in the small ways that matter:

• expectations shift without explanation

• decisions change direction overnight

• accountability is applied unevenly

• feedback feels ambiguous or avoidant

• communication creates more questions than answers

• teams feel “managed”, not led

When this happens, we often fall into a simplistic narrative:

“We need better leaders.”

But the problem is rarely as straightforward as capability alone.

Because leadership is not defined by intention.
Leadership is defined by behaviour.

And behaviour is shaped by context.

The intention–impact gap

In leadership development, one of the most important concepts is the intention–impact gap.

A leader might intend to:

• empower their team

• give autonomy

• avoid micromanaging

• be approachable

• protect wellbeing

…but their impact might be:

• the team feels unsure what’s expected

• people stop taking initiative

• decisions drag

• performance slips

• confidence erodes

This gap is where leadership trust is won or lost.

And it’s why organisations often struggle: not because leaders don’t care, but because they haven’t been supported to understand what’s driving their behaviour — especially under pressure.

Leadership behaviour is a system outcome

When leaders behave in a way that seems “irrational” from the outside — avoidant, defensive, overly controlling, reactive — it’s usually not because they’ve suddenly become bad people.

It’s because they are responding to the environment they’re in.

Organisations shape leadership behaviour in more ways than they realise.

For example:

• Leaders who are punished for mistakes will become risk-averse

• Leaders who are rewarded for speed will stop reflecting

• Leaders who are overloaded will become reactive

• Leaders who have no decision authority will become controlling in smaller areas

• Leaders with unclear expectations will default to self-protection

• Leaders in political cultures will prioritise optics over truth

In other words:

Leadership behaviour is often an adaptation — not a personality flaw.

This is where organisational psychology becomes helpful. It makes behaviour comprehensible, and therefore changeable.

What effective leadership really looks like (behaviourally)

Many organisations describe leadership in abstract terms:

• be inspiring

• be confident

• be authentic

• be strategic

• be resilient

But those are traits. They’re not behaviours.

From a behavioural perspective, effective leadership tends to be much simpler (and much harder):

1) Clarity

People don’t need constant communication — they need clear communication.

Clarity looks like:

• clear priorities

• clear definitions of success

• clear standards

• clear decision-making

A lack of clarity creates anxiety, and anxiety degrades performance quickly.

2) Consistency

Teams don’t need perfect leaders — they need predictable leadership.

Consistency builds psychological safety without needing a big initiative.

Consistency looks like:

• the same expectations applied across people

• the same values applied under pressure

• follow-through

• stable emotional tone

3) Coherence

Coherence is when what leaders say and what they reinforce match.

Coherence looks like:

• rewarding the behaviour you claim to value

• addressing issues early

• ensuring accountability is fair

• aligning systems with expectations

Where coherence is low, cynicism rises.

What often derails leadership behaviour

Even strong leaders can derail under certain conditions. Three patterns show up repeatedly:

1) Pressure creates narrowing

Under stress, thinking narrows.

Leaders become:

• more reactive

• more controlling

• less curious

• less reflective

This isn’t weakness — it’s physiology.

But organisations often mistake it for attitude:

“They’re not resilient enough.”

A more useful lens is:

“Their decision-making environment is degrading their thinking quality.”

2) Ambiguity creates avoidance

If leaders aren’t sure what success looks like, many will avoid decisions until certainty appears.

But certainty rarely appears.

So organisations end up with:

• delayed decisions

• repeated rework

• unclear ownership

• frustrated teams

This is often labelled as “lack of accountability” — when in reality it’s a lack of clarity.

3) Politics creates performance theatre

In low-trust environments, leadership becomes performative.

Leaders protect status rather than pursue truth.

This leads to:

• sugar-coating

• avoidance of conflict

• vague language

• superficial “alignment”

And most importantly: slow learning.

The key leadership question

Here’s one of the most useful leadership reframes I know:

Leaders don’t create culture through what they say.
They create culture through what they tolerate and reinforce.

This is where leadership becomes behavioural.

A leader may say:

• “We value psychological safety.”
  But if someone speaks up and is dismissed… safety disappears.

A leader may say:

• “We value accountability.”
  But if poor behaviour is tolerated… accountability becomes performative.

A leader may say:

• “We want innovation.”
  But if mistakes are punished… innovation dies.

Teams learn very quickly what leadership truly is, based on what happens in the moments that matter.

So how do organisations improve leadership?

Not with generic training.

Not with “lead like this” content.

Leadership improves when organisations get serious about:

1) Making behavioural expectations explicit

Not “be strategic”.

But:

• what does strategic leadership look like here?

• what are the observable behaviours?

• what does good decision-making sound like?

2) Improving the conditions leaders operate in

It’s difficult to lead well when:

• priorities conflict

• workload is impossible

• decision rights are unclear

• leaders are constantly judged rather than supported

• systems reward urgency not insight

If you want better leadership behaviour, you must improve the system that shapes it.

3) Supporting reflective leadership practice

This is where coaching (done well) becomes powerful.

Because better leadership comes from leaders learning to notice:

• what triggers them

• what patterns they repeat

• what they avoid

• what they overcontrol

• what they are reinforcing unintentionally

That is the work of self-awareness — not as self-help, but as behavioural precision.

A final thought

Many organisations try to solve leadership problems by “fixing leaders”.

But more often, the opportunity is to improve:

• clarity

• coherence

• psychological safety

• decision environments

• reinforcement systems

So leaders can think well enough to behave well.

Because leadership is not a personality trait.

It is a set of behaviours shaped by context.

And if you can make that context more coherent, you make leadership more effective — and performance follows.