Articles / Did the Leadership Change in the Activity? Understanding Rotating Leadership
Development, Training & CoachingLeadership changes during team activities reveal important insights about adaptive leadership, shared responsibility, and team dynamics. Discover what rotating leadership teaches.
Written by Laura Bouttell • Fri 7th November 2025
Yes, leadership often changes during team activities, and this rotation serves important developmental and operational purposes. In well-designed team exercises, leadership shifts occur as different challenges emerge requiring varied capabilities, as participants gain experience leading, or as deliberate rotation mechanisms distribute leadership responsibility across team members. Research demonstrates that shared or rotating leadership models frequently produce superior outcomes compared to fixed leadership, particularly in complex problem-solving activities requiring diverse expertise and sustained engagement from all participants.
This question typically arises in contexts where groups observe leadership naturally emerging, shifting, or being intentionally rotated—team-building exercises, collaborative projects, military training, expeditions, or sports. Understanding why and how leadership changes during activities provides valuable insights for organisational leadership development and team effectiveness.
Several factors drive leadership transitions within group activities, some intentional and others emergent.
Different challenges demand different capabilities. An activity requiring navigation skills naturally elevates individuals with orienteering expertise into leadership. When the challenge shifts to resource management, leadership may flow to those with logistics or planning strengths. This emergent leadership rotation reflects adaptive team intelligence—recognising that fixed leadership rarely optimises performance across diverse challenges.
Many team activities explicitly rotate leadership to develop capabilities across participants. Leadership development programmes, military training, and academic group projects often mandate leadership rotation, ensuring everyone experiences leading, following, and transitioning between these roles. This deliberate rotation builds broader leadership capacity than keeping one individual in charge throughout.
Extended activities demonstrate that sustained leadership proves exhausting. Expeditions, multi-day projects, or intensive exercises benefit from leadership rotation that distributes the cognitive and emotional burdens. Fresh leaders bring renewed energy and perspective whilst allowing previous leaders to recover and contribute from support roles.
Fixed leadership can create passive followership where team members disengage beyond their assigned tasks. Rotating leadership maintains engagement by ensuring everyone anticipates leading, encouraging sustained contribution and shared accountability for outcomes.
Observing how leadership transitions occur provides diagnostic insights about team maturity, individual capabilities, and organisational culture.
Mature teams navigate leadership transitions smoothly—previous leaders support successors, members adapt quickly to new leadership styles, and transitions occur with minimal disruption. Immature teams struggle with leadership changes, experiencing power struggles, resistance, or performance drops during transitions. The smoothness of leadership rotation directly correlates with team development stage.
How individuals step into and release leadership roles reveals their leadership maturity. Capable leaders transition gracefully, neither clinging to authority when their phase ends nor hesitating excessively when their expertise becomes most relevant. Less mature individuals either resist releasing control or avoid accepting leadership responsibility.
Organisations where leadership naturally rotates based on situational demands demonstrate culture valuing expertise and contribution over positional authority. Those where leadership remains fixed regardless of changing requirements reveal cultural assumptions that leadership derives from hierarchy rather than capability.
Different contexts employ distinct approaches to leadership transitions within activities.
In some activities, leadership flows organically to whoever demonstrates relevant capability or initiative at particular moments. This unstructured approach works well in high-trust, experienced teams but can create confusion or conflict in less developed groups where multiple individuals simultaneously attempt to lead or everyone defers leadership responsibility.
Structured activities may predetermine leadership rotation—each person leads for a defined period or stage. Military exercises often employ this model, ensuring everyone experiences command regardless of seniority. Academic projects might rotate weekly leadership, distributing project management responsibility across term length.
Some activities assign leadership based on challenge type—the person with greatest expertise leads during their specialty area. Mountaineering expeditions exemplify this model: the strongest climber may lead technical sections whilst the experienced navigator leads route-finding.
Rather than sequential rotation, some teams distribute leadership functions simultaneously—one person manages logistics whilst another coordinates communication and a third maintains morale and cohesion. This parallel model maintains continuity whilst distributing leadership burden.
The most valuable aspect of rotating leadership lies in the insights participants gain about leadership dynamics.
Experiencing leadership rotation teaches that following represents active contribution requiring different but equally important skills—supporting leaders constructively, executing assignments excellently, providing helpful feedback, and maintaining team cohesion. Many discover that effective followership demands more skill than they recognised.
Rotating through leadership whilst observing others' approaches reveals that multiple leadership styles can prove effective depending on context and individual strengths. Participants expand their leadership repertoires by experiencing diverse approaches rather than assuming one "correct" leadership method.
Observing leadership change based on evolving challenges demonstrates that optimal leadership varies by situation. This experiential learning proves more impactful than theoretical instruction about situational leadership models.
When everyone leads at some point, team members develop appreciation for different capabilities and perspectives. The technical expert whose rigour initially frustrated others gains respect when their precision prevents costly errors during their leadership phase.
Whilst rotating leadership offers benefits, it presents predictable challenges requiring thoughtful management.
Frequent leadership changes risk fragmented strategies and inconsistent approaches. Without mechanisms maintaining strategic continuity, teams may zigzag between conflicting directions as each new leader implements their preferred approach.
Each leadership change temporarily disrupts team rhythm as members adapt to new leadership styles and priorities. Poorly managed transitions can consume significant time re-establishing working patterns.
Not all participants possess equal leadership readiness. Mandatory rotation may place unprepared individuals in leadership during critical moments, risking activity failure. Balancing developmental goals with performance requirements proves perpetually challenging.
Rotating leadership can create uncertainty about decision-making authority, particularly during transition periods. Clear protocols regarding when leadership shifts and how decisions get made during transitions prevent confusion.
Thoughtful design and facilitation maximise learning whilst maintaining activity effectiveness.
Establishing explicit criteria for when and how leadership changes prevents confusion. This might include predefined schedules, challenge-triggered transitions, or signals indicating readiness for leadership transfer.
Requiring outgoing leaders to brief successors ensures continuity. The brief might cover current status, pending decisions, team dynamics observations, and relevant context—similar to executive transition practices.
Building reflection into leadership rotations—having leaders and teams discuss what worked, what proved challenging, and what they learned—transforms experience into development. Without reflection, participants may experience leadership rotation without extracting transferable insights.
Structuring activities so early leadership phases present simpler challenges allows less experienced participants to develop confidence before facing complex demands. This scaffolded approach balances development with effectiveness.
Whilst leadership rotation features prominently in developmental activities, the underlying principles apply to ongoing organisational work.
Long-term projects might rotate project leadership at logical transition points—from planning to execution, from development to launch—leveraging different individuals' strengths whilst developing broader capabilities.
Rotating meeting facilitation distributes the burden whilst developing everyone's process management skills. This simple practice demonstrates leadership rotation's benefits without high stakes.
Organisations managing ongoing crises benefit from rotating incident commanders, preventing burnout whilst ensuring fresh perspectives. This demands sophisticated coordination but proves sustainable for extended operations.
Rather than rotating sequential leadership, some teams distribute leadership functions permanently—different individuals consistently handle strategic planning, operations coordination, external relationships, and team development based on strengths.
Leadership frequently changes during team activities, and these transitions provide valuable developmental experiences and operational benefits. Whether through emergent shifts as situations change, scheduled rotations ensuring everyone leads, or distributed models sharing leadership functions, rotation challenges assumptions that effective teams require singular, unchanging leadership.
Observing and participating in leadership rotation reveals that leadership effectiveness depends more on matching capabilities to situational demands than maintaining constant control. It demonstrates that following well requires skill and engagement. It proves that diverse leadership approaches can succeed. And it builds appreciation for different contributions team members provide.
For organisations, incorporating leadership rotation into development activities, team meetings, and appropriate projects develops broader leadership capacity whilst improving team effectiveness. The key lies in thoughtful design—clear transition protocols, structured handovers, reflective practice, and graduated responsibility—that maximises learning whilst maintaining performance.
The question "Did the leadership change?" shouldn't merely seek factual confirmation but should prompt reflection: Why did leadership change? How smoothly did transitions occur? What did we learn about effective leadership and followership? What does this reveal about our team's maturity and culture? These questions transform leadership rotation from mere activity feature into profound learning experience.
Leadership rotates in team activities for several reasons: developing leadership capabilities across participants by ensuring everyone experiences leading, matching leadership to evolving situational demands requiring different expertise, preventing leader fatigue during extended activities, maintaining engagement by ensuring all members anticipate leading, and revealing how teams handle transitions. Intentional rotation serves developmental purposes whilst emergent rotation responds to changing challenges. Both approaches teach valuable lessons about adaptive leadership and effective followership that fixed leadership cannot provide.
Rotating leadership proves superior for developmental activities and situations requiring diverse expertise, whilst fixed leadership works better when clear authority and strategic continuity matter most. Research shows rotating leadership improves engagement, develops broader capabilities, and often produces better outcomes in complex problem-solving. However, fixed leadership provides clearer accountability, maintains strategic consistency, and works better when time constraints or critical decisions demand efficiency. The optimal approach depends on whether development or performance takes priority and whether situations demand varied expertise or sustained strategic direction.
Optimal rotation frequency depends on activity duration, complexity, and developmental objectives. Short activities (hours) might rotate leadership every 20-30 minutes or at natural challenge transitions. Day-long activities might change leadership 2-4 times at logical phases. Multi-day projects could rotate daily or at major milestones. The key is balancing sufficient time for leaders to establish credibility and make impact against ensuring everyone experiences leading. Too-frequent rotation disrupts continuity; too-infrequent rotation limits developmental benefit. Structured handovers and reflection become increasingly important as rotation frequency increases.
Poor leadership transitions create several problems: strategic confusion as new leaders change direction without understanding previous decisions, performance drops during adjustment periods, relationship tensions between outgoing and incoming leaders, team uncertainty about decision-making authority, and wasted time re-establishing working patterns. These problems intensify when transitions lack clear protocols, outgoing leaders fail to brief successors, teams possess low maturity, or organisational culture views leadership transitions as weakness rather than strength. Preventing poor transitions requires explicit handover processes, team development, and cultural valuing of smooth leadership succession.
Leadership rotation works in specific organisational contexts when thoughtfully implemented. Project-based rotation at logical transition points, distributed leadership models assigning different functions to different individuals, meeting facilitation rotation, and crisis response team rotation all demonstrate practical applications. However, pure rotation proves less viable for ongoing operations requiring strategic continuity and clear accountability. Successful organisational rotation requires mature teams, clear protocols, strong communication, and cultural acceptance. The approach works best in knowledge-intensive environments where diverse expertise matters, team capability is high, and development holds importance alongside performance.
Leadership readiness manifests through several indicators: voluntarily supporting current leaders effectively, demonstrating relevant expertise for upcoming challenges, showing initiative in anticipating needs, communicating clearly with team members, accepting feedback constructively, and displaying confidence without arrogance. In structured rotation, readiness matters less since development constitutes the goal—less-ready individuals learn through experience with appropriate support. In performance-critical situations, assessing readiness becomes essential. Graduated responsibility approaches build readiness systematically by starting with simpler leadership challenges before progressing to complex demands.
Effective leaders transitioning out of leadership provide comprehensive handovers briefing successors on current status, pending decisions, and team dynamics; offer support without undermining new leaders' authority; model excellent followership by executing assignments fully and supporting team success; provide constructive feedback when requested whilst avoiding constant advice-giving; reflect on their leadership experience identifying lessons learned; and maintain engagement rather than disengaging after leadership responsibility ends. The quality of leadership transitions depends as much on how gracefully leaders step down as how confidently they step up.