From Capability to Leader Recognition: Conditional Transitions and Developmental Opportunity

Abstract

Capable employees can change collective work without being recognized as leaders. Recognition can also determine who receives the experience that develops future capability. This article develops a conditional-transition framework to explain these linked trajectories. Building on research on individual differences, followership, identity construction, and voice, it distinguishes expression, behavioral uptake, leader recognition, and developmental access. Four propositions specify how task demand and contribution access, recipient costs, attributional ambiguity, and allocation policies condition these transitions. The contribution is to connect mechanisms that can produce similar emergence outcomes but predict different responses to intervention. Opening discussion can increase attempts without increasing uptake; clearer attribution can change standing without changing the contribution itself. Recognition can subsequently help create capability differences through unequal access to practice and feedback. The framework directs research toward independent capability assessment, sequential observation, and prospective comparisons of developmental allocation, while distinguishing leader recognition from collective effectiveness.

Keywords: leadership emergence; followership; capability; recognition; leader identity; developmental opportunity; voice; attribution

1. Introduction

A useful contribution can change a team's decision without changing who is regarded as its leader. The person credited with leadership may then receive assignments and feedback that build future capability. Recognition consequently matters in two directions: it can reflect contribution, and it can shape access to the experience that makes later contribution possible. Explaining leadership emergence requires distinguishing these paths.

Consider a hypothetical employee who rarely receives leader nominations. The employee may lack task-relevant skill, have little access to decision forums, encounter resistance because a proposal threatens a recipient's authority, or see useful ideas adopted while credit attaches to an incumbent. The same nomination score is compatible with each explanation. Training, access to discussion, changes in recipients' incentives, and clearer attribution address different mechanisms. A low emergence score alone cannot identify which response would help.

This article develops a framework linking capability, influence attempts, behavioral uptake, leader recognition, and developmental access. The central question is how a trajectory diverges at these transitions and how the resulting recognition shapes later learning. The framework concerns work teams with repeated interaction, identifiable collective tasks, and variation in contribution access or developmental allocation. It treats identity as a condition of willingness and interpretation, with potential feedback from recognition, rather than as a fifth focal transition.[ER1] 

The contribution lies in connecting established mechanisms across interaction episodes and developmental periods. First, separating expression from uptake predicts when expanded contribution access will make capability more visible without changing decisions. Second, separating uptake from standing predicts when better attribution will change recognition without changing the contribution already made. Third, connecting recognition to developmental allocation predicts when later capability differences can partly reflect earlier recognition rather than validate its initial accuracy. Four propositions specify these conditional links. Their joint explanatory value depends on distinguishing trajectories and intervention responses that a nomination score alone cannot identify.

2. Theoretical Foundations and Explanatory Extension

2.1 Empirical foundations for the contribution–recognition distinction

The distinction between contribution and recognition has empirical foundations. In experiments on successful mixed-sex teams, ambiguity about members' contributions affected judgments of women's competence, influence, and leadership role (Heilman & Haynes, 2005). Voice scholarship separately examines whether employees speak, how their input is received, and whose contributions are recognized (Morrison, 2014, 2023; Howell et al., 2015). These findings do not establish a complete leadership-emergence sequence. They show why observed standing should be explained rather than assumed to be an unfiltered record of contribution.

2.2 From attributes to situated contribution

Trait activation theory already distinguishes demands, constraints, and facilitators of expression, and separates expression from valued performance (Tett & Burnett, 2003). Zaccaro et al. (2018) incorporate contextual activation into leadership individual differences research. Task demand and contribution access are therefore not proposed as new situational categories. They distinguish the need for a contribution from the opportunity to make it observable.

Contribution access denotes an available channel for entering the relevant interaction, such as entry to a meeting, an allocated speaking turn, or authority to initiate a coordination action. It is an operational condition, not a general psychological trait. Psychological safety concerns beliefs about interpersonal risk (Edmondson, 1999), while voice research examines whether potentially useful input is expressed or withheld (Morrison, 2014, 2023). Access and safety can diverge: an employee may have a speaking turn but expect retaliation, or feel respected while being excluded from a particular decision. These conditions require separate measures. Where access is never meaningfully restrictive, a distinct access variable adds little explanatory value.[ER2] 

The framework extends this situational reasoning across subsequent transitions. A member may be able and willing to contribute yet fail to influence the decision because the recipient resists. Alternatively, the decision may change while recognition remains unchanged. Expression is therefore an intermediate event whose consequences depend on other participants, rather than evidence that the full emergence process has occurred.

2.3 From emergence outcomes to distinguishable pathways

Dynamic emergence frameworks already emphasize processes and levels (Acton et al., 2019; Gardner et al., 2024). Badura et al. (2022) organize distal and proximal antecedents, while Wolfram Cox et al. (2022) examine assumptions and methodological limitations in emergence research. The present account adopts this process orientation and specifies observations needed to distinguish interruptions within a trajectory.

Galvin et al. (2024) theorize over-emergence, under-emergence, congruent emergence, and congruent non-emergence, including antecedents and intervention tradeoffs. The present framework complements that account by distinguishing attempts, uptake, attributed standing, and learning access. Removing an expression barrier should increase attempts; improving attribution after uptake should change whose standing grows without necessarily changing the initial decision. These proximal predictions can differ even when both interventions eventually increase nominations.

This pathway account also links emergence to development. If recognition governs access to demanding assignments, earlier attribution can influence the later capability-recognition correspondence. A stronger correspondence at a later observation need not show that early recognition accurately identified initial capability: the opportunities following recognition may have helped create the later difference. This possibility makes developmental allocation part of the explanation of emergence rather than merely an organizational consequence.

The additional prediction concerns intervention responses over time. With current contributions held comparable, an attribution intervention can increase standing before any capability change occurs. If assignments subsequently favor recognized members, that initial recognition difference should be followed by differences in practice and feedback; allocating equivalent opportunities independently of standing should weaken this later pathway. The framework thus predicts when a short-term improvement in recognition can become a longer-term difference in capability. It does not assume that attribution or allocation interventions have effects confined to a single transition.

2.4 From following as position to following as response

Followership theory distinguishes subordinate positions from participation in influence processes (Uhl-Bien et al., 2014). Bastardoz and Adriaensen (2023) specifically call for observing following in interaction, including cases in which formally powerful people are influenced by people below them. This perspective directs attention to what a recipient does after a contribution, rather than assigning following from an organizational chart. In the present framework, uptake is the recipient's traceable use or adaptation of a contribution in a decision or action. It can occur upward, downward, or laterally. It need not imply acceptance of a durable follower identity or endorsement of the contributor as a leader. A manager can use an analyst's reasoning while continuing to reserve authority and public credit. Recognition is a further attribution of standing, and self-identity is the actor's own self-definition. These responses are connected but distinguishable.

2.5 Unleadership and contribution without leader identification

Unleadership scholarship questions the necessity of designated leaders for collective action. Kars-Unluoglu et al. (2022) examine spontaneous pandemic initiatives through the concept of unleading, emphasizing collaborative agency beyond conventional leader–follower categories. This perspective intersects with the present framework where consequential contributions do not consolidate leader standing. It does not establish latent individual capability or imply that all collective practice can be reduced to individual attributes. The comparison establishes a boundary: contribution and collective consequences warrant observation even when participants neither seek nor grant enduring leader identities.

3. Constructs and Temporal Architecture

Table 1. Constructs and measurement boundaries

Task-relevant capability refers here to a specified profile of knowledge and skills, such as interpreting interdependencies, integrating information, communicating a proposed direction, and managing disagreement. It is not a reflective latent construct assumed to cause all desirable leader characteristics. General ability, personality, motivation to lead, self-efficacy, and identity have different theoretical roles and should retain separate measures. Motivation concerns willingness to act; self-efficacy concerns expected ability; self-identity concerns self-definition. None by itself establishes task-relevant skill.

This definition permits analysis of potential without introducing an omnibus construct of leadership capacity. The relevant capability must be specified before observing emergence, connected to a task requirement, and assessed separately from focal recognition and outcome measures. For an information-integration task, an independently scored exercise might assess whether a person identifies dependencies and reconciles conflicting evidence. Success supplies a fallible indicator of that capability, not proof of general leadership potential.

Capability also reflects prior social experience. Distinguishing an individual assessment from a current interaction is an analytical choice about measurement and timing, not a claim that capability develops outside relationships. Day (2000) distinguishes individual leader development from the development of collective leadership capacity; the present framework preserves that distinction. An individual profile should not be relabeled a team capability merely by averaging member scores.

An influence attempt is behavior intended to shape collective direction or coordination. Behavioral uptake is another participant's use or adaptation of that contribution. Leader recognition is a directed attribution of standing to lead. Table 1 specifies candidate evidence and exclusions for these constructs. A proposal that is rejected remains an attempt. A proposal that changes a decision has received uptake. Neither observation by itself establishes effective performance, ethical conduct, or enduring leader standing.

Direction, alignment, and commitment are useful collective criteria (Drath et al., 2008), assessed separately from the actor's behavior. A team can align around an ineffective or harmful plan. Performance, member well-being, and ethical consequences therefore remain distinct outcomes. The framework explains the production and allocation of influence without defining influence as beneficial by construction.

The temporal architecture comprises episodes nested within relationships and teams. Within an episode, an actor attempts influence and one or more recipients respond. Across episodes, recognition may consolidate and influence assignment. Across developmental periods, practice and feedback can alter capability. Formal appointment can enter before any focal episode; earlier recognition can affect subsequent access and uptake. The framework is recursive rather than a mandatory sequence of stages.

Figure 1. Focal transitions and developmental feedback

Capability → Attempt → Uptake → Recognition
Recognition → Developmental access → Later capability

Figure 1 summarizes the focal sequence. Task-relevant capability precedes an influence attempt (expression, P1); the attempt may receive behavioral uptake (P2); uptake may contribute to leader recognition (P3); recognition may alter developmental access and later capability (P4). These links are analytically distinct rather than necessary stages. Earlier recognition and formal appointment can affect access and reception before the next attempt, and identity can affect willingness to initiate. The figure isolates the four propositions without representing every possible reciprocal relationship.

For an actor i, recipient j, and episode t, distinguish an attempt by i from j's subsequent response. Recognition is assessed through repeated directed judgments over a specified period. A team-level recognition structure depends on the distribution of those judgments, rather than a single actor's mean rating. Developmental access concerns the allocation and use of assignments and feedback over a longer interval. These intervals need not coincide: a response may occur within seconds, a reputation consolidate over meetings, and a skill develop over months. Combining them in one retrospective rating obscures their ordering.

4. Conditional Transitions in Leadership Emergence

4.1 Expression under task demand and contribution access

A coordination demand makes a capability relevant. Access determines whether an actor can place a contribution into the interaction where it could matter. When a task requires integration but a skilled member is excluded from discussion, the capability can remain unobserved. When discussion is open but the task requires little integration, the member may have little reason to exercise that skill. The capability-behavior association should therefore depend jointly on relevance and access.

This mechanism is distinct from a claim that all crisis conditions release potential. Urgency may increase coordination demand while reducing deliberation, concentrating authority, or narrowing access. A nominal invitation can also coexist with anticipated sanctions. To isolate contribution access, task information and incentives must be specified, and perceived interpersonal risk measured separately. The prediction concerns relevant attempts rather than general speaking frequency or positive ratings.

Proposition 1. Within a specified task domain, independently assessed capability will be more positively associated with task-relevant influence attempts when both capability-relevant demand and contribution access are high than when either is low, provided actors can identify the demand and are willing to contribute.

The boundary on willingness matters. An actor may choose not to lead despite adequate skill and access; motivation is not inferred from silence. The proposition also permits low-access contributions through alternative channels. Access must be assessed over the channels available to the actor, rather than equated with a single meeting rule. If an actor can reliably bypass a closed forum, that forum does not constitute a binding expression barrier.

4.2 Uptake through recipients' judgments and interests

Once a contribution is expressed, influence depends on recipients' responses. They can use the proposal, request clarification, modify it, defer it, or refuse to act. The recipient evaluates both its task value and the implications of acceptance. A useful proposal may expose an earlier mistake, reallocate resources, or reduce an incumbent's control. Acceptance can therefore be costly even where the proposal is understandable and credible.

Burris (2012) demonstrates that managerial responses depend on whether voice is challenging or supportive, with threat and loyalty perceptions implicated in those responses. This establishes a precedent for treating reception as a distinct process. The present prediction concerns how recipient costs condition the translation of independently assessed task usefulness into uptake, including among peers and in upward influence. It separates the usefulness of a contribution from its attractiveness to the person whose cooperation is required.

Perceived task value and recipient cost should not be collapsed. An incumbent may discount a proposal's value because acceptance is threatening; that is one possible interpretive mechanism. Another is to acknowledge its value yet refuse implementation. Measuring both judgments and subsequent action can distinguish these pathways. Immediate assent is insufficient evidence of uptake where a proposal never enters the decision or changes behavior.

Proposition 2. Among expressed contributions that recipients can understand and evaluate, independently assessed task usefulness will be more positively associated with behavioral uptake when acceptance imposes low rather than high perceived costs on recipients' authority, resources, or standing. This moderation will be weaker where recipients are accountable to transparent, task-based decision criteria.

The accountability condition supplies a comparative boundary. Visible reasons and task-based review can make it harder to reject a useful proposal solely to protect standing. The prediction assumes that review is consequential and that criteria capture task value. Accountability can instead reinforce conformity if the recipient controls the evidence or reviewers reward deference. Recipients may also accept a threatening contribution when its task value is sufficiently large. The proposition predicts a difference in the usefulness–uptake association, not universal refusal under threat.

This mechanism makes followership active without assuming that all following is deliberate calculation. Habit, trust, emotion, and organizational routines can shape perceived costs and responses. In coercive settings, apparent uptake may instead reflect sanctions. Researchers must distinguish acknowledgment, voluntary cooperation, and compelled compliance when their theoretical meanings differ.

4.3 Recognition through attribution and leader expectations

Uptake changes work; recognition attributes standing to a person. The two can diverge when contributions are collective, ownership is ambiguous, or a senior member presents another's reasoning. Categorization and social identity accounts explain how expectations affect judgments of leadership (Lord et al., 1984; Hogg, 2001). These expectations can operate alongside actual competence and cannot be inferred solely from group membership. The empirical distinction is sharper than a general demographic difference. Badura et al. (2018) document gender differences in emergence and multiple explanatory pathways. Heilman and Haynes (2005) experimentally examine attribution under ambiguous joint performance. Howell et al. (2015) study demographic and structural cues in supervisors' voice recognition. These literatures support examining evaluation separately from expression, while leaving the precise uptake-to-standing mechanism to be tested directly.

When authorship and task value are unclear, an evaluator has more scope to rely on expectations about who normally leads. Clear contribution records should reduce that dependence if evaluators use them and if their criteria capture relevant task value. Clear evidence will not necessarily overcome deliberate exclusion or a rule reserving leader standing for incumbents. The framework therefore treats ambiguity as a condition of attributional filtering, not the sole source of unequal recognition.

Proposition 3. Conditional on comparable influence attempts and behavioral uptake, perceived fit with a group's leader prototype will be more positively associated with subsequent leader recognition when contribution authorship and task value are ambiguous than when both are clearly documented and evaluated against task-relevant criteria.

This proposition distinguishes leader standing from credit for a single idea. An evaluator can correctly identify a proposal's source yet decline to generalize that event into a leadership relationship. Recognition should therefore be measured after repeated opportunities to contribute and by specified recipients. Divergent judgments across recipients are theoretically informative: the actor may gain standing within one relationship while remaining unrecognized elsewhere in the team.[ER3] 

The conditional wording is a theoretical comparison, not an instruction to control statistically for all prior behavior. Prototype fit can affect access and uptake as well as recognition. Selecting only successful contributors may therefore compare different kinds of actors across prototype conditions. Standardized contribution records can isolate attribution more directly; naturalistic studies should distinguish the total association of prototype fit with standing from the narrower comparison at comparable contribution and uptake.

4.4 Development through the allocation of experience

Recognition can change who receives responsibility, challenging assignments, coaching, and access to consequential decisions. These allocations can alter the capability that later observers use to justify recognized standing. The mechanism is access to task-relevant practice and informative feedback, not recognition or appointment by themselves. A visible role filled with routine administration may provide less relevant learning than an unrecognized technical assignment.

Leader development scholarship distinguishes individual development from collective leadership development and emphasizes experience and time (Day, 2000; Day et al., 2014). Training evidence establishes that learning and transfer are possible (Lacerenza et al., 2017). The framework connects these foundations to attribution: where recognized standing controls entry to developmental assignments, earlier differences in recognition can become later differences in capability.

Proposition 4. Among members with comparable initial capability, the positive association between recognition and subsequent task-relevant capability growth will be stronger when developmental allocation favors recognized standing than when equivalent opportunities are allocated independently of standing. This difference will be mediated by access to relevant practice and informative feedback.

The independent-allocation condition is central. Rotation, a lottery among qualified members, or guaranteed access can weaken the recognition-learning connection without changing initial recognition. If such allocation reduces later capability divergence, the result would support an opportunity mechanism. If differences persist because of practice engagement or learning quality, those factors need separate explanation. Equivalent offers also need not produce equivalent experiences: actual participation, task challenge, feedback, and time to reflect must be observed.

The allocation pathway requires that recognized standing be observable to those assigning work and enter their decisions. This can occur through managerial discretion or an explicit rule favoring recognized leaders. What matters is whether standing produces differences in relevant practice and feedback, not whether the allocation procedure is informal. Scarcity can intensify those differences, but it is not necessary: abundant assignments can differ in challenge, responsibility, feedback, and opportunity to revise performance. The subsequent learning pathway depends on the quality of those experiences. Timely, informative feedback can support learning; repeated exposure without usable feedback may produce little growth. These conditions distinguish recognition-based allocation from the learning that allocation makes possible.

This developmental loop creates path dependence without requiring permanent advantage. Skills can plateau, tasks can change, and members can acquire experience elsewhere. It also leaves appointment distinct from recognition. Formal authority can allocate learning opportunities directly, while peer recognition may have little effect on assignment in a centralized system. These routes must be distinguished before attributing growth to recognition.

4.5 Identity as a supporting condition and feedback process

Identity supports the framework by shaping willingness to initiate and the meaning assigned to others' responses. Seeing oneself as a leader may sustain relevant attempts when current recognition is low; interpreting rejection as temporary task disagreement may have different consequences from interpreting it as exclusion. These are conditioning influences on expression and its persistence, not additional propositions about a fifth transition. Identity construction and adaptive leadership accounts provide foundations for reciprocal relationships between self-definition and interaction (DeRue & Ashford, 2010; DeRue, 2011).

Immediate dyadic endorsement, broader validation, and accumulated experience should be distinguished. Epitropaki et al. (2017) separate individual, relational, and collective levels of self and identity work, while Hammond et al. (2025) distinguish dimensions of leader identity. Güntner and Nieberle (2026) report no significant relationship between reciprocated claiming and granting and identity salience in formal dyads. This finding limits an immediate salience prediction; it does not establish that identity is independent of recognition. Accumulated endorsement and an actor's interpretation of an episode are possible explanations to investigate, not results established by the null association.

Recognition can therefore feed back through two distinguishable routes. It may change self-definition and willingness to initiate again, and it may change access to practice and feedback. Proposition 4 concerns the latter route. Identity change is not evidence of capability growth, and sustained initiative is not evidence that learning opportunities are available. Research should measure identity, attempts, assignment, and skill change separately. The four focal propositions can be tested without assuming that each grant changes identity or that a strong identity overcomes restricted access.

5. Implications for Explanation, Intervention, and Evaluation

5.1 Similar emergence outcomes can require different interventions

An intervention at one transition can leave another constraint intact. Opening discussion may increase attempts without changing uptake; clearer attribution may change standing without improving capability; practice may improve capability without opening a decision forum. Interventions can also affect several transitions: a formal rotation can supply expression opportunities, legitimate contributions, and create learning access. The relevant question is which mechanism changes first and whether that change alters subsequent responses. Intervention design should specify these paths rather than attribute effects to a generic leadership program.

Table 2 identifies proposed organizational responses at each transition. These are mechanism-based options for evaluation, not interventions whose effectiveness is established by the framework. Their implementation should preserve legitimate task judgment and measure effects at the transition each response is intended to change.

Table 2. Proposed organizational responses at each transition

Recognition can also affect performance differently across tasks. When implementation requires others to change priorities, standing may help a useful proposal gain cooperation. When the contributor can execute independently, the same standing may have less immediate effect on output while still influencing opportunity and retention. This is a conditional implication of the framework rather than an additional proposition claiming a new emergence-effectiveness relationship. More recognition is not inherently beneficial when it amplifies an ineffective or harmful contribution.

5.2 Roles and collective leadership remain distinct

Formal appointment supplies authority and resources, but role history records both capability and access to opportunity. It should be supplemented with task-relevant assessment and evidence of what the person actually contributed. This does not justify assuming that overlooked members possess unobserved skill. It requires identifying who had a credible opportunity to demonstrate it and acknowledging uncertainty where evidence is absent.

The framework accommodates leading and following by multiple members across episodes. Shared leadership concerns the configuration of these relations, not the average of individual skill scores (Zhu et al., 2018). Multiple capable members can still generate incompatible initiatives. Relational and practice perspectives locate leadership in interaction and organizing (Uhl-Bien, 2006; Crevani et al., 2010). The present account contributes actor-specific capability and opportunity predictions while retaining other participants as constitutive of uptake and recognition; it does not reduce collective organizing to an individual possession.

5.3 What would challenge the framework

The propositions require independent observations of the transitions. Pre-episode capability measures should be separated from attempts; sequential responses from retrospective endorsements; recognition from self-identity; and assignment offers from actual learning. Behavioral coding requires evidence of validity and agreement (Güntner et al., 2023). Temporal ordering helps distinguish mechanisms but cannot by itself eliminate selection and endogeneity (Antonakis et al., 2010). The appendix specifies experimental and prospective comparisons for each proposition.

Evidence against the framework would include precise estimates showing that verified changes in demand and access do not alter capability-related expression; recipient costs do not condition uptake under valid manipulations; clear contribution evidence does not reduce prototype-dependent recognition in the conditions specified; or recognition-based allocation does not connect to learning access and growth. Such findings would challenge the relevant mechanism rather than justify relabeling every unfavorable result as hidden capacity or unobserved influence.

A test must also distinguish an absent mechanism from a failed intervention. For example, documentation that evaluators never consult does not create the clear-evidence condition in Proposition 3. Manipulation checks, measurement precision, and intervals around the focal interaction effects are therefore necessary before treating a null result as informative. A reliable effect in the opposite direction under the specified conditions would require revising the relevant proposition.

Compare the framework with simpler accounts based on expertise, stable reputation, and access alone. Its explanatory value lies in distinguishing pathways that predict different responses to intervention and different developmental trajectories. A more detailed vocabulary without those differences would add description rather than explanation.

5.4 Scope and boundary conditions

Repeated interaction and variation in opportunity are central. In one-off encounters, recognition may have no route to later developmental access. In tightly scripted work, little discretion may remain for capability-related expression. In strongly centralized assignment systems, peer standing may not determine practice. The propositions should be tested where their specified mechanisms can operate, with comparison settings that deliberately weaken those mechanisms.

Local expectations about authority can shape access, recipient cost, and recognition. Broad national labels should not substitute for measuring those expectations. Greater acceptance of hierarchy could increase appointment-based recognition while leaving capability-based selection weak. Cross-context comparisons therefore require evidence of comparable measurement and attention to variation within settings. The framework predicts effects of specified social conditions rather than a universal ranking of cultures.

Capability measures are task-specific, fallible, and sensitive to development. Behavioral-genetic evidence about leadership role occupancy concerns variation in a different phenotype (Arvey et al., 2006). It does not assign an inherited fraction to an individual's skill or establish a ceiling on learning. Direct evidence of practice and capability change is required for developmental claims. The framework therefore makes no inference about a person's fixed potential from either early nominations or a single assessment.

6. Conclusion

Capability, contribution, and leader recognition can follow different trajectories. Relevant capability may remain unexpressed, an expressed contribution may be rejected, and an adopted contribution may fail to produce standing. Recognition can then shape who receives the practice and feedback that develop future capability. Four propositions identify conditions governing these transitions. Their joint implication is that later correspondence between capability and recognition can reflect the allocation of developmental opportunity as well as the accuracy of initial judgments. Explaining emergence therefore requires observing how contributions enter collective work, whose standing changes, and who subsequently gains opportunities to learn.

Appendix: Research Design Considerations

The following designs distinguish the proposed mechanisms and their principal alternatives. They are prospective research proposals, not completed studies. Each design should prespecify its unit of analysis, observation window, primary comparison, and smallest effect of theoretical interest.

Capability assessment. Assess focal knowledge and skills before interaction using independent work samples scored by raters blind to subsequent roles and nominations. Use parallel forms for repeated assessments and assess reliability and task transfer. Treat a capability profile as specified predictors unless a defensible measurement model supports aggregation. Avoid choosing indicators because they retrospectively correlate with leader nominations.

Interaction coding. Distinguish proposals, information integration, coordination attempts, recipient responses, and decision changes. Define the episode and response window before analysis. Validate codes against recordings and task records, assess coder agreement, and test sensitivity to alternative windows. Behavioral data require judgment about intent, uptake, and usefulness (Güntner et al., 2023). Record who could contribute, including eligible members who remain silent, and retain disagreements about partial or delayed uptake.

Recognition measurement. Obtain directed judgments from identified participants after a specified set of episodes. Measure proposal credit separately from standing to lead future collective work. Assess self-identity independently, retaining distinctions among strength, salience, and integration (Hammond et al., 2025). Model repeated observations within actors, recipients, and teams as the design requires; report disagreement across recipients rather than treating it automatically as measurement error.

Expression test (Proposition 1). In a repeated team simulation, cross capability-relevant demand with procedural contribution access. Independently assess capability beforehand, balance task order, and keep information availability and incentives comparable across access conditions. Test whether the capability–attempt association is strongest when demand and access are both high. Measure whether members notice the demand, their willingness to contribute, and perceived interpersonal risk. These measures help distinguish the proposed access mechanism from changes in knowledge, motivation, or safety; post-treatment measures should not automatically be entered as statistical controls.

Uptake test (Proposition 2). Present recipients with contributions whose task usefulness is independently rated or experimentally varied, while manipulating the implications of acceptance for recipients' authority, resources, or standing. Cross these conditions with consequential review against transparent task criteria. Keep contributor cues and comprehensibility comparable. Measure cost perceptions and implementation decisions separately from immediate assent. The focal comparison is the usefulness–uptake association across cost and accountability conditions. Simulations that link decisions to subsequent task action provide stronger evidence of uptake than evaluations of hypothetical acceptance alone.[ER4] 

Recognition test (Proposition 3). Use standardized interaction records in which the contribution and recipient uptake are identical. Independently vary prototype-relevant cues and whether contribution authorship and task value are explicit. Pretest the cues in the relevant group rather than assuming that a demographic category universally signals prototype fit. Assess credit for the contribution and standing to lead subsequent work as distinct outcomes. The focal interaction concerns whether clear, task-relevant evidence weakens the prototype-fit association with standing; it is not a test of usefulness-dependent implementation.

Development test (Proposition 4). Follow all eligible members from baseline capability assessment through recognition, appointments, assignment offers, participation, feedback, and repeated skill assessments. Where feasible, randomize qualified members or teams to a standing-sensitive allocation policy versus a policy that allocates equivalent developmental opportunities independently of standing. Record whether policies change actual practice and feedback, and assess whether these differences precede skill growth. Account for baseline appointments and prior experience. Randomized allocation identifies effects of opportunity policies; it does not by itself identify a causal effect of recognition or establish mediation without additional assumptions about confounding and interference.[ER5] 

Selection and competing explanations. Studying only expressed proposals excludes members whose contributions never become observable; studying only adopted proposals selects again on recipients' responses. Recruit all eligible members and document these selection processes. Separate experiments can identify transition-specific responses, while a longitudinal panel evaluates whether those responses connect across episodes. Compare the integrated account with models based on initial expertise, prior reputation, formal appointment, or access alone. Better fit by itself is insufficient if added mechanisms do not improve prospective predictions of intervention responses or developmental trajectories.

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 [ER1]The contribution now specifies linked predictions rather than claiming that earlier scholarship does not explain transitions. The four-proposition structure is preserved.

 [ER2]Contribution access replaces permission consistently to keep procedural opportunity distinct from psychological safety and willingness.

 [ER3]Added the selection issue because comparable behavior is a theoretical contrast, not necessarily a valid statistical adjustment in observational data.

 [ER4]Corrected the reversed proposition tests. Uptake is tested here; prototype fit and attribution are tested separately under Proposition 3.

 [ER5]Separated the causal effect of an allocation policy from the stronger claims that recognition causes growth and that mediation has been identified.