Leaders like to think adoption is a matter of will. Decide to embrace AI, push it through, done. The research tells a more specific story. The way you lead shapes how fast your organization adopts, and some styles move much faster than others. This is not about effort. It is about posture, and one posture beats the rest.
What the research looked at
My 2014 doctoral work was a qualitative descriptive multiple-case study built on in-depth interviews with 19 people across adopting and resisting Fortune 500 organizations. Leadership style was one of the five areas I examined, and it turned out to be one of the strongest signals in the data. When I asked leaders how they led and what styles they deployed, distinct patterns separated the adopting case from the resisting one. The words that came up most across all the leadership questions were clear communication, empowerment, and leading by example, and which of those a leader emphasized tracked closely with whether their organization adopted.
To make the pattern usable for a business audience, it helps to frame leadership in three broad styles that show up again and again in the wider literature: transactional, transformational, and situational. They do not adopt at the same speed.
Three styles, three speeds
Transactional leaders run on clear exchanges: do the work, get the reward. They are effective at execution, but new technology often stalls under them, because adoption is not a clean transaction. It is messy and uncertain, and it asks people to be bad at something before they are good at it, which a pure exchange model does not reward.
Transformational leaders sell a vision and pull people toward it. They are good at generating enthusiasm for change, which helps, but vision alone does not survive contact with the daily friction of actually using a new tool. Enthusiasm gets the initiative announced. It does not get it through week three.
Situational leaders read what the moment needs and adjust. In my research, the adopting leaders consistently described exactly this posture. They implemented clear communication, they empowered their people to do the work without stressful micromanagement, and they adjusted their approach to the situation in front of them. The study found that situational adopting leaders evaluate human emotion and human capital, provide flexibility, and find an answer for every situation. That was the posture most associated with adoption. Not because situational leaders are smarter, but because adoption is a moving target, and they lead like it is one.
Why situational wins with AI
AI adoption is not a single decision. It is a hundred small ones: which task to try first, when to push and when to wait, who needs support, what to do when a tool disappoints. A leader who can only transact or only inspire runs out of road. A leader who adjusts to the moment keeps the thing moving through the inevitable rough patches.
The current data reinforces why this matters. McKinsey found that the organizations capturing real value from AI are three times more likely to have senior leaders who actively own and adapt the work rather than setting it and walking away (McKinsey, 2025). BCG sharpens the contrast: in lagging companies only 8 percent of C-suite leaders are deeply engaged with AI, and a defining laggard failure is delegating it down rather than actively steering it (BCG, 2025). Active, adjusting engagement is exactly the situational posture, and it is the one the research connected to adoption a decade ago. Leadership is one of the five forces in the 5 drivers of AI adoption, and the deeper case that the leader sets the ceiling is in AI is a leadership problem, not an IT problem.
The good news is that situational leadership is a practice, not a personality. You can build it.
The move
Watch how you respond the next time an AI effort hits friction. If your instinct is to demand results or to give another inspiring speech, you may be reaching for the wrong tool. The situational move is to ask what this specific moment needs, support, patience, or a course correction, and provide that.
To see where you stand, the Omnine AI Readiness Assessment takes about three minutes and gives you a read on how your leadership is shaping your organization’s adoption.
References
Goodwin, M. R. (2014). A qualitative descriptive multiple-case study: Fortune 500 leaders’ social business platform adoption (Doctoral dissertation, University of Phoenix). ProQuest Dissertations Publishing (UMI No. 3648813).
McKinsey & Company. (2025). The state of AI in 2025: Agents, innovation, and transformation. McKinsey Global Survey on the state of AI.
Boston Consulting Group. (2025). Are you generating value from AI? The widening gap.