Mental Models of Leaders in Ambidextrous Leadership

To remain competitive, businesses must continuously adapt by exploring new markets and ex-ploiting existing ones, which require different, often paradoxical, cognitive processes from leaders.Ambidextrous leadership has emerged as a framework for managing these competing demands.Effective ambidextrous leaders balance the opposing needs of exploration and exploitation through distinct cognitive patterns, exhibiting either opening or closing behaviors.Understanding the mental models of such leaders can offer insights into how they navigate these paradoxes.This study examines the mental models of ambidextrous leaders using ZMET, through interviews with 17 leaders from German SMEs.The consensus model reveals how leaders' cognition is influenced by their organizational context and by its goals and values.Within this framework, leaders adopt strategies to balance paradoxical demands, with the restriction of the scale of innovation and the individual consideration of employees as main strategies.