Summary 

Leadership research has become increasingly precise—but at a cost. This blog explores how zooming out from narrow constructs to embrace leadership’s full complexity can make research more relevant and actionable for practitioners. Using a framework of breadth, depth, and height, our editorial published in the Journal of Management Studies show how leadership unfolds across styles, psychological layers, and organizational levels—and why embracing this complexity is essential for navigating today’s challenges. 

The Precision Trap: When Clarity Clouds Relevance 

Science should inform practice. Making sure practice gets the best possible intelligence leads academics to set up very precise studies (with laser- or scalpel-sharp focus)!  
This is good: We want that engineer or heart surgeon to have the most precise knowledge. But in our quest, we often forget that the scalpel is used by a doctor in an operating room situated in a larger hospital and a healthcare system with potentially competing demands. Similarly, the laser might be operated within a bigger construction project that aims to have a bigger societal impact with conflicting stakeholders. In all these cases, professionals and managers must make decisions in an organization that are influenced by multiple factors simultaneously – not just the ones that researchers have isolated in very precise conditions. 

Enter complexity 

In this paper we encourage researchers and practitioners to complement their zooming in with zooming out. To look at how precise new findings can be contextualized so that they become more useful. Specifically, we suggest leadership challenges can be better understood when considering breadth, depth, and height. 

How it plays out in practice: 

Let’s consider an example. Mary, a middle manager in a large hospital, is struggling – she has repeatedly asked nurses to focus on safety (i.e., handwashing) and it is just not happening! She read in a study on the importance of leaders emphasizing safety rules and regulations (Leroy et  al., 2012) that it is all about leaders consistently emphasizing the same safety message to enact the right culture.  But despite her best efforts to do exactly that (she felt like a broken record) – nothing changes. An analysis through the breadth/depth/height model offers perspective. 

Consider the breadth of approaches to leadership: Mary focused on one specific behavior of “protecting people from harm” – and while protecting is important it also happens in the context of other, potentially competing, values. For instance, performance demands ask nurses to complete as many beds as they can per hour. Progress demands ask nurses to use new technology that aren’t fully integrated with old-school protocols. People’s demands suggest that handwashing is a social, inclusive activity. Actual nurse behavior is determined by all these drivers. 

Realize leadership has different levels of depth: Mary spoke a lot about safety concerns, but her behavior didn’t always match it: in performance evaluations she was often more concerned about the number of beds than following safety protocols. She also had a hard time setting the right example herself – her heart was not fully in it, she had been struggling with her own mental well-being. Not just that: the broader culture didn’t align with washing hands – the vision statement on the website, the hyper-efficient lay-out of corridors, even the paintings on the wall suggested a “get things do asap” atmosphere, not a take time and do it right. 

Understand how different levels of leadership interact (height): Mary also realized that the broader climate wasn’t conducive to her messages – the healthcare system had gotten increasingly focused on cost-efficiency at the expense of care. The entry of a new senior executive team made matters worse – the subtle messaging from them suggested that focusing on safety should not be the priority. And her well-being issues were shared by colleagues – how can you focus on the safety of others if you can’t protect yourself? 

Conclusion 

By embracing complexity, researchers can offer more integrative guidance, and practitioners can make better-informed decisions. Leadership development becomes more effective when it addresses identity, values, and context—not just skills. Organizational change succeeds when leaders understand how their actions ripple across levels and systems. Crisis leadership improves when it’s seen as a collective, networked effort—not just heroic individual action. 

References 

Leroy, H., Dierynck, B., Anseel, F., Simons, T., Halbesleben, J., R., B. McCaughey, D., Savage, G., & Sels, L. (2012). Behavioral Integrity for Safety, Priority of Safety, Psychological Safety, and Patient Safety: A Team-Level Study. Journal of Applied Psychology, 97(6),1273-1281. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0030076