Background: Leadership plays a significant role in the performance of individuals and organizations. This paper investigates the impact of leadership styles on the innovative performance of female leaders in Pakistani Universities using a survey approach.

Objectives: This paper aimed to (a) discover a leadership style practiced by females and (b) discover the relationship between leadership style and the innovative performance of female leaders.

Material and Methods: Several female leaders, including faculty members, heads of departments, deans, coordinators, and directors, from public and private universities of Punjab (a province of Pakistan), were involved in this study. A sample of one hundred female leaders was selected using a multistage sampling method. In the first stage, five public and five private sector universities were selected through a simple random method. In the second stage, ten female leaders (five from each of the social science and basic science departments) were selected from each university through a purposive sampling method. The researchers adopted a reliable instrument to collect the survey data. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS (Version 26). Mean scores and Pearson correlation coefficients were used to discover the relationship between various variables.

Results: The investigation revealed that most female leaders practice the transactional leadership style in their universities. This study also discovered a moderate positive relationship between both leadership styles, namely transactional and transformational, and innovative performance.

Conclusion: The study recommends that various workshops and seminars may be conducted to increase the practices of both leadership styles to enhance innovation in the universities of Punjab.

Key Words: Leadership Styles, Universities, Performance, transactional leadership, transformational leadership