Flexing Your Leadership Style

One of the most powerful traits in effective leaders isn’t just decisiveness or vision—it’s the ability to adapt. In my own leadership journey, I’ve realized that different situations, teams, and even individuals need different things from a leader. You don’t become a better leader by always taking charge. Sometimes, you do it by stepping back.
- Tanya Rehman

The Tannenbaum and Schmidt Leadership Continuum models leadership not as a fixed trait, but as a sliding scale of authority and freedom. It illustrates seven leadership styles ranging from manager-centered to team-centered.

This model is especially helpful for engineers and tech leads transitioning into Staff-plus roles, where leadership is increasingly about influence and adaptability, not command-and-control.

The full continuum

Below is a breakdown of the seven styles from the Tannenbaum-Schmidt model:

This continuum shows that leadership is not binary instead, it’s a matter of how much control you retain versus how much freedom you grant.

Why leadership flexibility matters

Rigid leadership (always using one style) can stifle innovation or create friction. Conversely, flexing your approach based on urgency, team experience, and risk level leads to better outcomes and healthier team dynamics.

For example:

• Use Tells during incidents or high-risk decisions.
• Use Joins or Delegates during long-term planning or innovation projects.
• Use Consults or Suggests when trust is being built or expertise is uneven.

In Staff-plus roles, your ability to pick the right style at the right time is as critical as technical execution.

Internal leadership visibility

Being a flexible leader only matters if people can see and understand it. To create internal visibility:

• Explain your decision-making style choices in project kickoffs or retros.
• Share leadership shifts in internal documentation or postmortems.
• Use team rituals (like demos or syncs) to showcase inclusive decision-making.
• Show how you’ve helped team members grow into decision-makers by gradually shifting toward Delegates or Abdicates.

Documenting how and when you apply the continuum demonstrates self-awareness and emotional intelligence key traits for Staff-plus leaders.

Executive visibility

Executives value scalable leadership. That means:

• Empowering others to make good decisions.
• Creating clarity without micromanaging.
• Knowing when not to lead directly.

Use your promotion packet to showcase times you’ve moved along the continuum—especially toward Joins, Delegates, and Abdicates to develop leadership in others.

You can also:

• Include reasoning behind your style in planning docs.
• Share how shifting leadership led to improved outcomes.
• Reflect on leadership balance during strategy reviews with your manager’s manager.

External visibility

You can strengthen your external credibility by teaching this framework through:

• Blog posts analyzing how you led differently across projects.
• Conference talks about leading distributed or high-autonomy teams.
• Podcasts on decision-making and psychological safety.
• Case studies or internal playbooks demonstrating leadership transitions.

Sharing how you’ve moved across the continuum not only elevates your voice it helps others grow into thoughtful leaders.

Should you focus on leadership style flexibility?

If you’re always leading from the same position on the continuum, you’re missing opportunities to empower your team and grow yourself.

Ask yourself:

• Have I ever fully delegated or abdicated a decision?
• Do I involve the team more now than I did a year ago?
• Am I stuck in “Tells” mode because it feels safer?

Flexing along the continuum builds trust, resilience, and scale exactly what organizations look for in Staff-plus engineers.

🧠 “Leadership is about reading the room and then choosing the tone.”
The Tannenbaum-Schmidt Continuum gives you the vocabulary and structure to do that intentionally.