Leadership and Team Effectiveness: Insights from an Ambidextrous Perspective

This thesis examines ambidextrous leadership, which refers to leaders’ ability to shift between behaviors that encourage flexibility and behaviors that provide structure. Modern teams often face competing demands: they must explore new ideas while also maintaining focus, efficiency, and coordination. This thesis argues that ambidextrous leadership is effective not simply because leaders use different behaviors, but because they regulate when and how these behaviors are enacted over time. By making behavioral shifts clear, timely, and meaningful, leaders help teams interpret changing demands, adapt to uncertainty, and coordinate their actions. The thesis therefore explains leadership as a temporal process of managing tension.