Charismatic, ideological, and pragmatic (CIP) leaders use different mental models to understand and interpret the world. The present study uses this framework to gain a better understanding of how outstanding leaders interact and influence both proximal and distal followers. Participants engaged in a low-fidelity simulation, and their subsequent mental models and performance were analyzed to answer several research questions. First, how does leadership style influence creative outcomes? And second, how does leader-follower congruence of mental models relate to performance? These research questions were tested using a low-fidelity situation calling for creative problem-solving. Results indicate that leadership style does not have differential effects on follower performance but does interact with leader distance such that followers of charismatic leaders perform better with a low leader distance and followers of pragmatic leaders perform better with a higher leader distance. Lastly, mental model congruence may have some effects on the performance of followers. The implications of these findings for theory and practice are discussed.