The Ripple Effect of Great Leadership

Leadership impacts every part of your business. When it’s bad, it can destroy your team’s morale. But when done well, it creates a chain reaction that strengthens trust, boosts participation, and elevates performance beyond any one individual team.

Based on the latest research in our new report, Winning With Data: The Business Impact of Employee Feedback, we’ve found that leadership is one of the strongest predictors of organization-wide engagement — and its ripple effects can have a huge impact on your business.

What the data shows

For this report, we reviewed feedback patterns across more than a thousand organizations. One thing became clear: leadership creates momentum.  

Leadership has a 0.79 correlation with trust, 0.72 with participation — some of the highest correlations measured in the dataset. This indicates that when leadership scores rise, so do the drivers that shape long-term engagement.  

Leadership builds trust — and trust fuels performance

Trust in leadership grows by 12.7% in organizations that consistently track and act upon employee feedback, alongside a 20.9% rise in employees proactively suggesting ideas: which drives stronger collaboration and more open communication.

Leadership influences job satisfaction across the organization

Leadership sets expectations, communicates priorities, and creates consistency — all of which shapes feelings of stability in an organization.

And this ripple effect is measurable. Leadership has a 0.60 correlation with job satisfaction and a 0.61 correlation with a positive work situation rating, showing just how broad its influence is.

Participation rises when leaders listen and act

In organizations where leaders regularly request, review, and respond to feedback, participation increases across the entire business.  

Collecting employee feedback is linked with a 22.4% increase in employees encouraging their teammates to share ideas, which strengthens collaboration and drives greater engagement.

Real-world examples

The report includes several cases that show how leadership success spreads through a business.

For instance, at HSB Norr, when leadership became a clear focus, leadership scores jumped by +81%, job satisfaction increased by +66%, and staff turnover fell from 30% to 0%.  

Similarly, Fellowmind used Winningtemp to discover that as their leadership capabilities strengthened,  it strengthened the baseline for the entire organization: with eNPS rising from 20 to 73 and turnover dropping from 18% to 11%.

“One key insight we found early on was that leadership scores strongly influence other areas — when leadership scores are low, other areas (like work environment and team spirit) tend to suffer. That’s why we encourage managers to focus on improving leadership first, as it has a ripple effect across the organization,” said Kristian Randel, CHRO at Fellowmind

Three steps to promote stronger leadership

Great leadership isn’t built through a single workshop or a lone manager doing things differently. So what can you do to prioritize building effective leadership in your organization?

1. Create alignment from the top down

When leaders communicate consistently and share information transparently, employees gain clarity and confidence — even during change.

2. Focus on everyday leadership, not just crisis leadership

Small, predictable habits, like follow-ups, wellbeing check-ins, and setting clear expectations, can have the biggest day-to-day cultural impact.

3. Listen, respond, and adapt

Participation naturally increases when leaders treat feedback as a tool, not a formality.

Download the full report for access to our checklist designed to give leaders the tools they need to help their people thrive.

Get the full insights

By clarifying expectations, outlining priorities, and maintaining consistent practices, leadership helps employees feel a greater sense of stability across the organization. On the other hand, if you don’t take action and leadership practices remain unclear or inconsistent, dissatisfaction can spread just as quickly.

To explore the full data, cases, and recommendations from five years of research and thousands of Winningtemp surveys, download the full report here!