Leadership as Coordination Control: Behavioral Signatures and the Recovery-Advantage Boundary in Multi-Agent LLM Teams

The paper investigates the effectiveness of leadership in multi-agent LLM teams, focusing on process-level coordination control under specific conditions. Using behavioral signatures and operationalizing three leadership styles (transactional, transformational, situational), the study finds that no controller consistently outperforms majority voting across various tasks and models, aligning with contingency theory. This research highlights the importance of context in leadership effectiveness, suggesting that practitioners should measure and adapt coordination strategies rather than striving for a one-size-fits-all solution.