Leadership skills and the group performance: Situational demands,behavioral requirements,and planning

In recent years, the role of cognitive skills in shaping leader performance has received more attention. In the present study, the role of one key set of skills, planning skills, was examined with respect to leader emergence and group performance in a sample of 55 groups, containing 195 undergraduates, working on a business planning task. Leader planning skills were assessed along with structuring and considerate behavior under conditions where task complexity, group diversity, and turbulence were examined as potential influences on the need for planning and the need for leaders possessing planning skills. It was found that complexity, diversity, and turbulence influenced the quality and originality of group plans, as well as structuring behavior on the part of leaders. Leader structuring behavior interacted with leader planning skills in determining the quality and originality of group plans. The implications of these findings for understanding the role of planning skills in shaping leader emergence and group performance are discussed.     

Bringing the cognitive revolution forward: What can team cognition contribute to our understanding of leadership?

Cognition is a central element of organizational behavior and leaders are seen as key shapers of organizational cognition. Leaders’ influence over organizations often occurs through their influence on the collectives or teams they are leading. Hence, leaders influence organizational outcomes by modeling team cognition. Despite the importance of this relationship for organizational outcomes, there is little integration currently between the leadership and team cognition literatures. To address this gap, we conduct an integrative review. First, we develop a model for leader and team influence based on organizational emergence and leadership complexity theories. Our model makes a distinction between the source of influence over cognition (leader → team, team → leader, reciprocal) and form of cognition emergence (variance reduction, variance enhancement); constraints that shape cognitions that vary in levels (within and between-level, contextual) and focus (individual, interindividual, collective); and leader behaviors (administrative, adaptive, enabling). We apply this model to review and analyze ninety-nine studies in the current literature and then discuss the limitations and future directions drawing on our findings and theoretical model. We contribute a unifying framework of leadership and team emergence that can be expanded and applied to other settings.     

Cognitive skills and leadership performance: The nine critical skills

Over the years, a growing body of evidence indicates that certain cognitive skills are a critical determinant of leader performance. In the present effort we show that application of these skills is typically founded in case-based knowledge. Subsequently, we identify nine key skills people in leadership positions employ when working with case-based knowledge to address leadership problems: 1) problem definition, 2) cause/goal analysis, 3) constraint analysis, 4) planning, 5) forecasting, 6) creative thinking, 7) idea evaluation, 8) wisdom, and 9) sensemaking/visioning. Individual and situational contingencies shaping effective application of these thinking skills is discussed. In addition, the implications of findings bearing on leader thinking skills for leader assessment and leader development are considered.     

Exploring the relationship of leadership skills and knowledge to leader performance

The criterion-related validity of constructed response measures of complex problem-solving skills, social judgment skills, and leader knowledge is examined with respect to two criteria of leader effectiveness: leader achievement and quality of solutions to ill-defined leadership problems. Core aspects of the leader capabilities model are tested using these measures in a series of hierarchical regression analyses. Results indicate that constructed response measures of key leader capabilities account for variance in leader effectiveness and provide initial validation evidence for a central part of the theoretical model. The problem-solving, social judgment and knowledge measures account for significant variance in leadership criteria beyond that accounted for by cognitive abilities, motivations, and personality. Initial evidence also suggests that complex problem-solving skills, social judgment and leader knowledge partially mediate the relationship of cognitive abilities, motivation and personality to leader effectiveness. Implications and generalizability of the results are discussed in light of a related civilian leadership study conducted within the U.S. Department of Defense.     

Leader individual differences,situational parameters,and leadership outcomes: A comprehensive review and integration

In this article, we provide a wide-ranging review of recent research on leader individual differences. The review focuses specifically on the explosion of such research in the last decade. The first purpose of this review is to summarize and integrate various conceptual frameworks describing how leader attributes influence leader emergence and leader effectiveness. The second purpose is to provide a comprehensive review of empirical research on this relationship. Also, most prior reviews primarily examined leader personality traits; this review includes a broader array of leader attributes, including cognitive capacities, personality, motives and values, social skills, and knowledge and expertise. The final broad purpose of this paper is to review and integrate situational and contextual parameters into our conceptual framing of leader individual differences. Few, if any, prior reviews have systematically accounted for the critical role of such parameters in cuing, activating, or delimiting the effects of particular leader attributes. We do so in this article.     

Leader cognition in vision formation: Simplicity and negativity

Models describing how leaders think point to a complex set of cognitive processes. To execute these processes it may be necessary for leaders to simplify the problem at hand with respect to critical contingencies. In the present effort, undergraduates were asked to work on a vision formation task with the resulting vision statements being appraised for quality, originality, elegance, perceived utility, and affective reaction. Manipulations were made to encourage application of more or less complex mental models, a larger, or smaller, number of relevant concepts and cases, and forecasting of positive or negative outcomes. It was found that the strongest visions were produced when people used relatively simple mental models, few schema and cases, and they focused on forecasting negative outcomes. Thus leader performance appears to reflect simplification and an attempt to minimize negative outcomes. The implications of these observations for understanding leader cognition and leader performance are discussed.     

Thinking outside the box by looking inside the box: Extending the cognitive revolution in leadership research

Follower and leader cognitions play critical roles in many organizational phenomena. In this review, we report and reflect on a decade of cognitive leadership research. Following a brief introduction, the review is divided into two sections—one devoted to individual and dyadic cognition, and the other to collective cognition. We identified three central themes for each section. For individual and dyadic cognition, we identified metacognitive processes and leadership, implicit leadership theories (ILTs), and network based models of ILTs as central themes. For collective cognition, we identified charisma, organizational performance and sensemaking, and transformation and change as central themes. Our goal in this review was to uncover important underlying assumptions of selected studies to illuminate more clearly the path of cognitive leadership research over the past 10 years and its potential paths over the next ten years.     

The weakness of strong ties: Sampling bias,social ties,and nepotism in family business succession

Decision-making is a complex cognitive activity filled with bias. Leader decision-making is unique because it occurs in a social context. We examine how biases resulting from social network dynamics complicate leaders' decision-making. In particular, we focus on a specific case of leader cognition: nepotism in the succession decisions in the context of family businesses. Succession often leads to a decline in performance because leaders frequently choose family members as their successor, a form of nepotism. We show that even when a leader can overcome individual decision biases, a bias in sampling resulting from families' strong ties can still allow a leader to wrongly conclude that family members are better qualified than external candidates when the opposite is true. We demonstrate this phenomenon using simulation modeling and explore solutions to family business succession planning.     

How leader role identity influences the process of leader emergence: A social network analysis

Contemporary theories on leadership development emphasize the importance of having a leader identity in building leadership skills and functioning effectively as leaders. We build on this approach by unpacking the role leader identity plays in the leader emergence process. Taking the perspective that leadership is a dynamic social process between group members, we propose a social network-based process model whereby leader role identity predicts network centrality (i.e., betweenness and indegree), which then contributes to leader emergence. We test our model using a sample of 88 cadets participating in a leadership development training course. In support of our model, cadets who possess a stronger leader role identity at the beginning of the course were more likely to emerge as leaders. However this relationship was only mediated by one form of network centrality, indegree centrality, reflecting one's ability to build relationships within one's group. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Facing the situation: Testing a biosocial contingency model of leadership in intergroup relations using masculine and feminine faces

Using an evolutionary psychology framework we propose that leadership and followership are evolved traits to solve recurrent group coordination problems. We argue that adaptive problems such as those concerning intergroup conflict or cooperation activate different cognitive leadership prototypes, and the face conveys diagnostic information about the suitability and emergence of intergroup leadership. Consistent with hypotheses we find that followers expect masculine-faced leaders to behave competitively and feminine-faced leaders cooperatively in intergroup relations. Furthermore, individuals prefer leaders whose facial cues match the adaptive problem. For example, a masculine-looking leader is preferred in a competitive intergroup setting. Also, this match between face and situation is reinforced with a consistent leadership message such as a masculine-looking leader expressing the need for competition. An evolutionary perspective provides a deeper understanding of the biological aspects of leadership and generates many novel hypotheses about how markers such as the human face affect leadership emergence and effectiveness.     

Forecasting and leader performance: Objective cognition in a socio-organizational context

Traditionally, it has been assumed that leaders, like other people, are typically poor at forecasting. In the present effort, we argue that people can sometimes prove effective at forecasting and that effective forecasting is particularly important to performance in leadership roles. Subsequently, evidence bearing on how four key variables, mental models, objectivity, time frame, and case content, influence the effectiveness of leader forecasting is examined along with interventions that might contribute to effective forecasting on the part of leaders. The implications of these observations for understanding leader cognition are discussed.     

Mind the gap: The role of leadership in multiteam system collective cognition

The increasing prevalence of team-based organizations places a premium on leadership that will “mind the gap” and enable smooth synchronization of activities across multiple distinct teams. Prior work shows that leaders can be trained to directly facilitate between-team coordination processes. Yet, relatively little is known about the intervening psychological mechanisms that enable between-team coordination. Here, we advance multiteam-interaction mental models—cognitive structures containing knowledge of appropriate between-team activities—as one mechanism that facilitates coordination among multiple teams. We use leader and team cognition data gathered in DeChurch and Marks' (2006) MTS study to test these ideas. Results reveal leaders' multiteam-interaction mental model accuracy “transfers” to teams through strategic communication, and leader strategic communication enables between-team coordination by promoting accuracy in followers' mental models. This study highlights the importance of leadership for developing collective cognition that allows teams to “scale up” from small stand-alone teams to larger and more complex systems.     

The influence of higher order cognitive capacities on leader organizational continuance and retention: The mediating role of developmental experiences

The relationship between cognitive capacities and retention or turnover has received scant attention in the extant literature. The few findings that have been reported show mixed to no linear effects of general mental ability on organizational continuance. In this study, we examined the association of more specific higher order cognitive capacities including complex problem solving skills and divergent thinking with officer continuance in the U.S. Army. We also tested the role of developmental experiences as a partial mediator of this relationship. Our sample included 640 officers who completed measures of these skills and of their career experiences in 1992–1993. To this sample, we added years of service from date of commissioning to 2008, as well as data on whether officers experienced particular assignments considered to be challenging and developmental. Our findings support the association of complex problem solving and divergent thinking skills with leader continuance. We also found that this effect is partially mediated by challenging developmental experiences. Thus, we provide stronger evidence than in prior studies for a linear relationship between cognitive abilities and continuance in an organization.     

Limitations of working memory capacity: The cognitive and social consequences

This paper aimed to explore, from the perspective of cognitive psychology, the natural limitations of human cognition that determine our capabilities to deal with information overflow. These limitations are related mainly to the working memory system. This system is conceived to be composed of the storage components, which are responsible for active maintenance, and executive control that supervises the storage units. People differ in their working memory capacities, and because virtually every complex cognitive activity requires the temporal availability of a certain amount of cognitive representations, these differences are predictive of many outcomes. In the area of ‘cold’ cognition, these outcomes include intelligence and verbal reasoning, multitasking, language comprehension and verbal fluency, whereas in the area of ‘hot’ cognition, they include mentalising, stereotyping and self-control. Natural limitations in working memory capacity may be overcome (to some extent) through the training of working memory skills or the application of processing strategies (e.g. task simplification, using external environment as in situated or distributed cognition, changing a code of mental representation).     

Nurturing overconfidence: The relationship between leader power,overconfidence and firm performance

This paper analyzes the relationship between leader power and overconfidence in the corporate context. Building on psychology research, we postulate that by activating self-serving cognition and illusion of control, the amount of power allocated to the leader of an organization positively influences the probability that he/she will exhibit overconfident beliefs. Using various measures of both formal and symbolic leader power we provide corroborating evidence for such endogeneous - power-based - origin of leader overconfidence. Then, we develop an empirical framework that allows to test the endogeneity-free effects of leader overconfidence on firm performance. Namely, we use a propensity score matching technique to construct a sample of reasonable counterfactuals (i.e., leaders in similar power-allocation conditions who do not exhibit overconfidence). As a result, we provide dissenting evidence about the effects of overconfidence, showing an economically and statistically significant positive influence of overconfidence on firm performance.     

Propensity for self-development of leadership attributes: Understanding,predicting, and supporting performance of leader self-development

Little systematic research has been reported to advance understanding of the characteristics associated with individuals who initiate self-development activities to grow leadership skills. The purpose of the present research was to examine cognitive, dispositional, and motivational precursors to the propensity to engage in leadership self-development. A second purpose was to examine the role of organizational support on the relationships between self-development propensity and reported self-development activities. Over 400 junior-military leaders participated in a three-stage survey administration designed to test a structural model of leader self-development. Results indicate that a person having individual characteristics related to mastery, work, and career-growth orientations displayed more motivation to perform leader self-development and more skilled at performing instructional and self-regulatory processes. Higher self-development motivation and skill resulted in greater reported self-development activities. Surprisingly, organizational support reduced the magnitude of this relationship. This study concludes with implications for future research on and practice of leader self-development activities.     

Testing the babble hypothesis: Speaking time predicts leader emergence in small groups

The large, positive correlation between speaking time and leader emergence is well-established. As such, some authors have argued for a “babble hypothesis” of leadership, suggesting that only the quantity of speaking, not its quality, determines leader emergence. However, previous tests of this notion may have been problematic. Some studies have asserted a causal effect of speaking time on leader emergence based on experimental studies, but have limited participant communication, access to reliable information, or both. Other studies have used more ecologically valid designs, but have not always controlled for relevant participant traits or roles, suggesting potential endogeneity effects. Testing the babble hypothesis thus requires a study that is both ecologically valid and supports strong inference. The current study fills that gap and finds that speaking time retains its direct effect on leader emergence when accounting for intelligence, personality, gender, and the endogeneity of speaking time.     

新创企业高管团队的团队过程与战略决策绩效 ——认知的调节作用

新创企业的成败很大程度上取决于战略决策绩效,具有决策权力的高管团队在创业情境下的认知和行为过程对战略决策绩效具有重要影响。本文结合创业研究和高管团队研究的现有成果,以122家新创企业为研究对象,从内部团队过程和外部团队过程两个维度考察高管团队的团队过程对战略决策绩效的影响,并从认知的视角分析新创企业高管团队认知需要和认知能力对团队过程与决策绩效关系的调节作用。研究结果表明,新创企业高管团队的内部团队过程和外部团队过程与决策的质量和满意度均有显著的正相关关系,且认知需要和认知能力对这种关系具有调节作用,在认知需要和认知能力较高的情况下,内、外部团队过程对决策质量和满意度的正向影响更强。