This article evaluates the Covid-19 crisis response of top leaders of 20 selected countries from January to May 2020 using anecdotal evidence from media sources and insights from the available crisis management and leadership literature. The main objective of the article is to examine whether the Covid-19 crisis experience and outcome of sample countries are related to their leaders’ behaviour and actions. Based on leaders’ orientation towards certain action motives and action and leadership styles, the article classifies the leaders’ action and leadership styles. The article finds that the leaders with a ‘missionary’ action style displayed positive leadership styles and generally had the best Covid-19 outcomes, while those with a ‘gamer’ action style were associated with negative leadership styles and poorer outcomes, with those with ‘political’ and ‘strategist’ action styles falling in between. To validate the impact of evolving leader behaviour on Covid-19 outcomes, the article evaluates the average daily growth of Covid-19 cases in the subsequent (post-analysis) seven weeks and tests the mean differences between different style groups. The tests indicate a significant difference in the outcomes between different style groups except between ‘gamers’ and ‘strategists’. The difference is more pronounced when the BRI[.]S countries (i.e., BRICS minus China) in various combinations are excluded from the test. A similar conclusion arises for the negatively and positively oriented leadership styles. Thus, while finding a relationship of leadership behaviour with Covid-19 outcomes, the article also provides a reason to suspect the role of socio-economic and institutional factors in clouding or confounding the leadership effect in view of the distinctive behaviour of OECD and the large emerging countries.

本文使用媒体来源的轶事证据以及现有危机管理和领导力文献的见解，评估了2020年1月至2020年5月20个选定国家的最高领导人对Covid-19危机的应对措施。本文的主要目的是研究Covid-19危机的经历和样本国家的结果是否与其领导人的行为和行动有关。基于领导者对某些行动动机，行为和领导风格的取向，本文对领导者的行为和领导风格进行了分类。文章发现，具有“传教士”行动风格的领导者表现出积极的领导风格，并且通常具有最佳的Covid-19结果，而具有“游戏玩家”的领导者行动风格与否定的领导风格和较差的结果相关，介于“政治”和“战略家”的行动风格之间。为了验证不断发展的领导者行为对Covid-19结局的影响，本文评估了在接下来的（分析后）七周中Covid-19案例的平均日增长，并测试了不同风格组之间的平均差异。测试表明，除了“游戏者”和“战略家”之间，不同风格组之间的结果差异显着。当“一带一路”国家（即金砖四国减去测试中不包括各种组合）。对于消极和积极的领导风格也得出了类似的结论。因此，在发现领导行为与Covid-19结果之间的关系时，鉴于经合组织的独特行为和巨大的影响，本文还提供了一个理由来怀疑社会经济和制度因素在模糊或混淆领导效果中的作用。新兴国家。