The leader’s role in team performance
Enhancing team performance requires leaders to set the tone. The way you show up influences whether your team feels connected, empowered, and supported to succeed. By flexing your leadership style, clarifying purpose, and delegating with intention, you can create the conditions for high performance.
Leadership styles
The way a leader shows up has a direct impact on team performance. Different situations call for different approaches, and effective leaders are able to flex their style to suit the needs of their team.
Developed by Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard, the Situational Leadership model is a practical framework that helps you assess where your team member is at, and what style can best support their growth and performance.
The model outlines four key leadership styles:
- Directing – giving clear instructions and close supervision when competence is low.
- Coaching – providing guidance and encouragement while building skills and confidence.
- Supporting – sharing decision-making and providing reassurance as competence grows.
- Delegating – stepping back and empowering capable, motivated team members to act independently.
Another useful lens is the distinction between the transactional and transformational leadership style:
- Transactional leadership – focuses on structure, tasks, and rewards. This is effective for maintaining stability, managing routine work, and ensuring accountability through clear expectations and incentives.
- Transformational leadership – inspires through vision, values, and personal growth. This is effective for driving change, and engaging people at a deeper level.
Both models remind us there is no single ’best’ way to lead — it’s about adapting your approach to fit the context.
Reflect
- Which leadership style do you naturally gravitate towards, and how does this affect your team?
- How do you decide when to shift your style to meet the needs of your team?
- What feedback have you received about your leadership style, and how could you use it to improve team performance?
- Which leadership styles do you use least often, and what might change in your team’s performance if you leaned into them more?
Connecting teams to purpose
Teams perform better when they are united by a clear and compelling purpose. When leaders help their teams define and connect with their purpose, they can unlock higher motivation, stronger collaboration, and resilience in the face of challenges.
Ruth Wageman, a scholar and author developed the ‘Why We exist’ model as part of a broader framework known as the ‘6 conditions of Team Effectiveness’. The model is used to help teams articulate a purpose that is not only clear, but also meaningful and motivating.
Wageman’s ‘Why we exist’ model highlights that a strong purpose should be:
- Challenging – stretching the team beyond business as usual.
- Clear – focused enough that members know what success looks like.
- Consequential – connected to something that truly matters for the organisation or wider society.
If you’d like to help your team reconnect to purpose, download this ‘why we exist’ activity. It can help your team connect their day-to-day behaviours with a bigger impact, ensuring their purpose is clear, meaningful, and actionable.
Learn more
You can learn more about Wageman’s model and team effectiveness in the below podcast.
Reflect
- How clear is your team’s shared ‘why’?
- In what ways does your team’s purpose connect to the broader outcomes of your agency and the Public Service?
- What could you do to make your team’s purpose more visible and meaningful in everyday work?
Delegation and empowerment
A key part of enhancing performance is knowing when to step back. Leaders who delegate effectively build trust, create ownership, and give people space to grow. Delegation isn’t about handing over tasks and walking away — it’s about providing clarity, support, and accountability.
You can learn more about delegation and the skills you need to adopt a delegated leadership style in LDC’s Delegated Leadership toolkit.
Skill–Will Matrix
One well-known framework that supports effective delegation is the Skill–Will Matrix, originally developed by leadership experts Max Landsberg and Paul Hersey. It provides a simple way for leaders to assess a team member’s readiness for delegation. It maps people across two dimensions: skill (ability) and will (motivation).
How to respond using the Skill-Will Matrix:
- High skill / high will → empower and give autonomy.
- High skill / low will → motivate and reconnect to purpose.
- Low skill / high will → provide training and coaching.
- Low skill / low will → give direction and build confidence.
The value of this matrix is that it can help you avoid a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to delegation. It highlights that different people need different kinds of support. For instance, a high-will but low-skill team member benefits from coaching, while a low-will but high-skill colleague may need motivation and reconnection to purpose. Using this framework ensures delegation both builds capability and maintains accountability.
It can also encourage you to pause and consider your own assumptions. Are you making an objective assessment, or could unconscious bias be shaping how you view someone’s skill or motivation?
Reflect
- Where would your team members sit on the Skill–Will Matrix?
- How do you currently decide what to delegate and what to hold onto?
- What changes could you make to better balance empowerment with accountability?
- Where might your own assumptions or preferences be influencing how you judge someone’s skill or motivation?
Leader as coach
Beyond delegating tasks, leaders also play a coaching role in enhancing performance. Acting as a coach means asking powerful questions, listening actively, and supporting team members to generate their own solutions. This approach helps people build confidence, grow their capability, and take greater ownership of their development.
If you want to sharpen your coaching skills, go to LDC’s Coaching Fundamentals toolkit.
Reflect
- When was the last time you acted as a coach rather than a problem-solver for your team?
- What questions could you ask to help team members find their own answers?
- How might adopting more of a coaching mindset strengthen your team’s long-term performance?
Challenges to watch for
Even with the best intentions, leaders can run into challenges when trying to enhance team performance. Being aware of these common barriers can help you avoid them:
- Overusing one leadership style – relying too heavily on directing or supporting, rather than flexing your approach.
- Purpose drift – assuming the team’s purpose is clear, when in fact people may hold different interpretations.
- Micromanaging – holding too tightly to tasks instead of delegating effectively.
- Delegating without support – handing over work without providing the clarity, coaching, or feedback needed.
- Confusing coaching with problem-solving – offering solutions rather than helping team members generate their own.
Recognising these challenges early allows you to adjust your approach and create the conditions for genuine team growth.
Other leadership levers
Other factors also play a key role in supporting team performance and are explored in different parts of this toolkit.
For instance, psychological safety – creating an environment where people feel able to take risks and speak up – is addressed in the Building Team Culture section of this toolkit.
While not the focus here, leaders should be aware that these levers also significantly influence team performance.
Pause and reflect on your role as a leader
As a leader, you set the tone for team performance. By flexing your style, helping your team connect to purpose, empowering them through effective delegation, acting as a coach, and staying alert to common challenges, you create the conditions for success. Remember too that your role is not only within the team, it’s also about connecting your team’s work to the wider organisational and system outcomes that matter for the Public Service.