Context changes the return on behavior
High threat raises the price of error. Low stability reduces the value of yesterday’s pattern. Together they change what the role rewards. Fast action can preserve initiative in chaos and create needless disruption in a cultivated operation.
The reversal is easy to miss because the behavior still looks familiar. Leaders often intensify the habit that built their reputation just as its return begins to fall.
Adaptation begins with a narrower claim
Do not ask whether the leader is decisive or collaborative. Ask when that tendency helps, what cues activate it, and where the current role punishes it.
That diagnosis creates room for a bounded correction. The leader does not need a new personality. The leader needs a different response to a specific demand.