5 Leadership Traits That Drive Successful Change

When organizations talk about change management, the conversation often centers on frameworks, road maps, and execution plans. In practice, however, transformation depends less on the plan itself and more on how leaders show up day to day.

Andy Biladeau, SHRM’s chief transformation officer, has seen this dynamic play out across large-scale transformations in consulting, retail, and HR.

“Leadership style is very personal,” Biladeau said. “As I’ve grown in my career, I’ve been fortunate to have incredible leaders to model myself after. Developing a personal leadership perspective and voice takes time — you can’t rush it.”

There are many approaches to leadership style, but certain characteristics consistently show up in successful change leaders. By identifying and practicing this set of skills, leaders can help streamline the transformation process for both the organization and its employees.

Toolkit: Managing Organizational Change

5 Traits of a Successful Change Leader

Rather than prescribing a single leadership style, Biladeau pointed to a set of core characteristics that consistently support effective change, regardless of how leaders naturally show up:

1. Systems thinker. Effective change leaders understand how people, processes, technology, and structure interact. Without that high-level view, leaders risk optimizing one area while creating unintentional consequences elsewhere.
2. Clear communicator. Leaders must be able to articulate where the organization is today, where it is headed, and why the change is important. Employees are a company’s most important resource, one it relies on to accept and adopt change, so they need to understand the process and ideal outcome.
3. Agile in execution. Change happens constantly and rarely follows a straight line. Strong leaders stay focused on the outcome while remaining flexible in their approach, adjusting plans as variables, situations, and the economy shift.
4. Conviction-driven. Especially during large-scale transformation, employees need leaders who genuinely believe in the direction they are setting. Conviction helps teams push through ambiguity and setbacks without losing momentum.
5. Human and self-aware. Leaders who acknowledge their mistakes and failures, learn from them, and show transparency build trust faster. This trust can help accelerate change when people feel safe experimenting and adapting.

Seminar: Managing Change

Developing Your Leadership Style

Throughout Biladeau’s career, he has been influenced by a diverse range of leaders. Learning from them helped him understand that leadership perspective, voice, and conviction take time to develop.

It also reinforced that effective leadership does not follow a single formula. As Biladeau reflected on his own experience, he drew parallels between leadership and teaching, a field he worked in early in his career.

“If you think about all of your favorite teachers, they probably had very different styles,” Biladeau said. “But what they all had in common was that they genuinely cared about their students and wanted them to succeed.”

Leadership style becomes most visible when there’s friction or resistance. Those moments tend to reveal how leaders respond under pressure and how their behavior shapes employee confidence.

Biladeau pointed to SHRM’s recent rollout of an internal artificial intelligence tool as an example. After his team launched the tool and delivered initial training, usage and adoption data showed that while most employees understood the technology, they hadn’t yet integrated it into their day-to-day work.

Rather than viewing the usage gap as a failure, Biladeau and his team treated it as a signal to reassess how they were supporting employees through the change. They returned to the data, listened to employee feedback, and adjusted their approach by introducing additional, in-person training focused on practical, individual use cases.

That kind of response reflects how leadership style directly influences whether change efforts feel imposed or collaborative. When leaders take ownership of outcomes, connect feedback to action, and clearly explain the reasoning behind decisions, employees are far more likely to engage with change — even when it requires extra effort.

Related Article: 8 Keys to Managing Change Effectively

Leading Change Is a Long-Term Effort

Leadership style is not something leaders develop overnight. It evolves through experience, reflection, and repeated practice.

In environments where change is constant, leaders who remain intentional, flexible, and human in their approach to leadership create steadier momentum. By reinforcing the “why” behind decisions and bringing people along through uncertainty, they reduce confusion and increase the likelihood that change will stick.

No single leadership style guarantees success, but leaders who understand how their behavior influences employees’ responses are far better positioned to guide lasting change.