Leader development across the lifespan: A dynamic experiences-grounded approach

Previous research has established leader development as an ongoing process across the entire lifespan. Experience, especially on-the-job experience, has been increasingly acknowledged as a needed condition for leader development. From a life span developmental perspective, however, individuals are exposed to a variety of critical experiences across their life course—from preschool, childhood, through adolescence, emerging adulthood, adulthood and well into late adulthood. These time periods, characterized by specific developmental experiences, serve as potential windows of opportunity for one's leader development. However, the extant research primarily focuses on the development of leadership through on-the-job experiences in adulthood; there is little integration of leader developmental experiences that occur before and after adulthood, as well as those that occur beyond the workplace. Additionally, the influencing mechanism of experiences during the leader development process has been understudied. Using an interdisciplinary perspective, we present a framework that explores the critical developmental experiences at each stage in the lifespan. These experiences influence one's expertise in leadership through the mediating role and dynamic interaction of the leader experience processing system and the leader self-view system that are introduced in the model of this framework. This theoretical study systematically explores experiential opportunities across the course of life and within multiple contexts, as well as the underlying mechanisms that foster leader development. There are important implications for enhancing process-oriented leadership research and leadership pedagogical practices.     

From competency to conversation: A multi-perspective approach to collective leadership development

Collective leadership involves the participation of multiple entities in the leadership process. This body of research is informed by a variety of theoretical perspectives, including person-centered, social network, social-relational, sociomaterial, and institutional views. Despite multiple calls for leadership development to move beyond individual leadership, collective leadership development remains focused on coaching and competency development, extending rather than reconsidering the person-centered perspective. We argue that it is necessary and timely to align the practice-based literature on leadership development with theoretical and empirically-based perspectives on collective leadership. We provide a multi-perspective framework of collective leadership development by 1) introducing a wider disciplinary range of theoretical perspectives on collective leadership development; 2) integrating these perspectives with leadership development approaches for different forms of collective leadership; 3) illustrating how the multiple perspectives on collective leadership development can be applied to specific work contexts; and 4) identifying directions for future research.     

Collective Leadership and Circles: Not Invented Here

Issues like police-community relations, violence—from neighborhood to global levels, economic inequality, and climate change have been only minimally addressed within behavior analysis, despite the oft repeated mantra that they are all at root behavioral. Disciplines determine the scope of their interests; behavior analysis and behavioral systems analysis have long claimed at least potential expertise in changing not only individual behavior, but also the collective and interlocking functioning of larger institutions and systems. In this paper we note that standard organizational behavior management (OBM) practices primarily emphasizing centralized leadership are unlikely to be adequate for such work. We therefore argue that collective leadership, a strategy that has not been emphasized in OBM, will be required to operationalize behavioral systems interventions in situations where centralized leadership is impossible or dangerous, and suggest circle processes as one behaviorally specifiable approach to constructing collective leadership, an approach that behavioral systems analysts are well-positioned to test and refine.     

Top Management Team Members’ Decision Influence and Cooperative Behaviour: An Empirical Study in the Information Technology Industry

Organizational leadership is generally distributed between the chief executive officer (CEO) and the top management team (TMT) members. Building on this observation, we present an empirical investigation of the cues for CEOs to delegate decision‐making influence to particular TMT members. In the literature, explanations both based on expertise and driven by similarity are described. In this study, we reconcile both explanations by examining the moderating role of the TMT's level of ‘cooperative behaviour’ (collaboration and information exchange). We analyse when and in what circumstances TMT members’ expertise and similarity to the CEO regarding his/her functional background and/or locus‐of‐control predict their decision‐making influence. We postulate that TMT cooperative behaviour will advance the effect of expertise on TMT members’ decision influence but impede the effect of similarity to the CEO. Our hypotheses are tested on a data set of 135 TMT members from 32 Dutch and Belgian information technology firms. Overall, we find that our proposed research model is confirmed for technology‐oriented decisions. Furthermore, we draw exploratory conclusions about the effect of TMT cooperative behaviour on the systematic distribution of decision influence in TMTs.     

Leadership,information, and risk attitude: A game theoretic approach

This paper experimentally investigates how risk attitudes mitigate leadership effectiveness in a collective setting with projects that exhibit both free riding and coordination problems. We take two novel approaches: 1) the introduction of economic game theory to psychological studies of leadership, and 2) the application of the leadership ontology of Drath et al. (2008) as a cross-disciplinary integrative framework. Leadership here is focused on the presence or absence of direction, alignment, and commitment as well as antecedent beliefs and practices that are held within a collective (for us, our experimental participants). Our leadership context is stripped down to very minimal conditions: three group members, an investment decision, and the introduction of information regarding group members' attitudes toward risk. We find that the mere mention of risk attitude (whether risky or risk averse) undermines leadership effectiveness in mitigating free riding for our 420 experimental participants. Our study's primary implications lie in the application of game theory methodology to the psychological study of leadership, the introduction of relevant individual difference constructs to economic studies of leadership, and the advocation of the Drath et al. (2008) framework as a helpful integrative mechanism for interdisciplinary leadership research.     

The servant identity: Influences on the cognition and behavior of servant leaders

This paper approaches the study of servant leadership by concentrating on the identity of servant leaders. An identity is important to one's sense of self and it influences the way a leader cognitively processes socially relevant information and exercises a particular leadership behavior in response to a situation. Unlike existing studies, which typically approach servant leadership as one of a number of possible leadership styles, and which merely describe its characteristics, this paper serves to explain the basis for individuals enacting this mode of leadership. This paper defines and elaborates on the servant identity by showing the psychological factors constituting it. Taking a socio-cognitive approach, the paper offers a theoretical framework for the servant identity. The framework encompasses the cognitive and behavioral disposition of leaders with servant identity and the organizational contexts that influence it. This new angle on servant leadership opens avenues for future research and practice.     

Multi‐Leader Teams in Review: A Contingent‐Configuration Perspective of Effectiveness

Multi‐leader teams are characterized by multiple leaders exhibiting mutual influence on each other while working towards a common team goal. An unexplored assumption in this literature is that increasing the number of leaders is related to heightened team effectiveness. The authors propose that this notion is oversimplified and suggest a contingency model of multi‐leader team effectiveness. The authors suggest that the context determines the effectiveness of a particular multi‐leader team configuration, because each formation has unique internal team mechanisms. To investigate this perspective, we review the multi‐leader team literature (175 articles) by categorizing the extant theory and research as falling within nine multi‐leader configurations along two key dimensions: (1) the proportion of leaders within a team; and (2) the dispersion of leadership through role co‐enactment of team leaders. This framework enables a more coherent understanding as to the benefits and the costs of each specific multi‐leader team configuration and a clearer evaluation of the contexts in which varying configurations are most effective. Four emerging themes related to configuration–contextualization are explained and theoretical implications for interpreting leadership effectiveness in multi‐leader team settings are discussed.     

The servant leadership advantage: When perceiving low differentiation in leader-member relationship quality influences team cohesion,team task performance and service OCB

How does servant leaders' unique ability to place each follower's needs above their own influence relationships between followers and impact their collective performance? In a study that integrates principles of servant leadership with the social comparison theoretical framework, we tested a group-level model to examine how servant leadership induces low perceived differentiation in leader-member relationship quality (perceived LMX differentiation) within a group, which strengthens team cohesion and in turn positively influences team task performance and service-oriented organizational citizenship behaviors (service OCB). Our sample comprised 229 employees nested in 67 work teams. Structural equation modeling results indicate that servant leadership significantly predicts low perceived LMX differentiation; perceived LMX differentiation is strongly related to team cohesion such that the lower the perceived differentiation, the stronger the team's cohesiveness. And, team cohesion is also strongly related to both the team's task performance and service OCB. Perceived LMX differentiation and team cohesion mediate the effect of servant leadership on both team task performance and service OCB.     

The shared leadership of teams: A meta-analysis of proximal,distal, and moderating relationships

The current meta-analysis examines the relationship between shared leadership and team performance. It also assesses the role of team confidence (i.e., collective efficacy and team potency) in this relationship. Mediation analyses supported the hypothesis that team confidence partially mediates the effects of shared leadership on team performance. We also found support for the notion that shared leadership explains unique variance in team performance, over and above that of vertical leadership. Furthermore, a variety of substantive continuous and categorical variables were investigated as moderators of the shared leadership–team performance relationship. Specifically, the relationship between shared leadership and team performance was moderated by task interdependence, team tenure, and whether performance was objectively versus subjectively measured. Finally, results suggest that the approach used when measuring shared leadership can also play a role in the observed validity. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

The role of leadership in shared mental model convergence and team performance improvement: An agent-based computational model

Research in shared mental models has immeasurably aided our understanding of effective teamwork and taskwork. However, little research has focused on the role that leaders play, if any, in influencing, developing and/or fostering shared mental models and thereby improving team performance. We developed an agent-based computational model based on McComb's theory of three-phase mental model development, where agents repeatedly share individual opinions (orientation phase), evaluate and respond to the opinions expressed by others (differentiation phase), and modify their understanding of the team based on the responses (integration phase). Leadership and team properties are represented in three experimental parameters: social network structure, heterogeneity of agents' domains of expertise, and level of their mutual interest. Participative leadership is represented by a fully connected network, while Leader–Member eXchange (LMX) is represented by a fully connected network of in-group members and several out-group members connected only to the leader. Our simulation results show that, in general, participative leadership promotes mental model convergence better than LMX. In the meantime, the team performance improvement is achieved by participative leadership only when members have both heterogeneous domains of expertise and strong mutual interest. In all other conditions, participative leadership causes the worst degradation of team performance through team development processes, while LMX is the best to minimize such team degradation. Implications and suggestions for future research are provided.     

Leadership and team identification: Exploring the followers' perspective

This study investigates the influence of leadership on followers' identification with their work group. Adopting a qualitative research approach, it takes on the followers' perspective for inductively deriving leadership behaviors that pertain to the development of team identification. Based on in-depth data from members of seven teams in the context of UN peacebuilding operations, four aggregate leadership dimensions can be identified that are conducive to members' team identification: providing guidance, encouraging involvement, role modeling, and administering teamwork. Accordingly, this study adds to the exploration of leadership behaviors relevant for team identification that have not been considered by extant research. The results may lay the foundations for future investigations on complementary effects of different leadership behaviors for fostering followers' identification with their work group.     

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.     

The Challenge of Integration: A Review of the M&A Integration Literature

The integration of acquired or merging firms is a key driver of the success or failure of mergers and acquisitions (M&As). Over the last 30 years, a substantial body of research has addressed M&A integration, offering rich but widely dispersed insights into this phenomenon. This paper takes stock of the current knowledge, based on a review of articles published in scholarly journals. The review advances the conceptual understanding of the phenomenon by inductively developing an overarching framework for the M&A integration literature, where integration success is a function of context, structural and communication‐based interventions, which interact with collective sensemaking processes and negotiations among integration stakeholders. Based on this framework, a research agenda is suggested. I proposes that, in particular, the interaction between structural interventions and leadership warrants further study. Also, little is known about integration project management and integration team composition or the interaction between integration context and collective sensemaking processes. Finally, there is a shortage of research on temporal dynamics within integration projects. The review demonstrates that M&A scholars made substantial progress regarding our understanding of the M&A integration process, yet much remains to be done.     

Obstacles and opportunities for female leadership in mammalian societies: A comparative perspective

Women remain universally underrepresented in the top leadership positions. A comparative evolutionary framework may offer new insights into the value of and potential barriers to female leadership. Here we define leaders as individuals who impose a disproportional influence on the collective behaviors of group members. We reviewed data for 76 social species of non-human mammals to reveal the circumstances favoring female leadership and species exhibiting female-biased leadership in two or more contexts (e.g., collective movements, group foraging, conflict resolution within groups, or conflicts between groups). Although rare across the lineage, female-biased leadership is pervasive in killer whales, lions, spotted hyenas, bonobos, lemurs, and elephants; leaders emerge without coercion and followers benefit from the social support and/or ecological knowledge from elder females. Our synthesis elucidates barriers to female leadership, but also reveals that traditional operationalizations of leadership are themselves male-biased. We therefore propose a new agenda for assessing the overlooked ways that females exert influence in groups.     

‘Contestation,negotiation, and resolution’: The relationship between power and collective leadership

The relationship between power and collective leadership (CL) has been theoretically understood and empirically addressed in many different ways. To make sense of this diversity, we investigate and diagram the role of power in CL. First, we identify six representations of power—six ways in which scholars have found that power shapes the emergence and enactment of CL. These representations include: Even in CL, individual power matters; Leaders can devolve power to their subordinates by empowering them; Contextual characteristics related to power can influence the possibility and enactment of CL; CL can create the collective power necessary for people in marginalized positions to challenge embedded power dynamics; Power is intrinsic to the co-construction process; Attributions affect who can enact CL, how they are viewed, and whether they have power. Second, we offer a conceptual framework that provides a comprehensive way to understand the relationship between power and CL. The framework includes two dimensions, one related to power (that runs from episodic to systemic) and the other related to CL (that runs from entitative to emergent). Third, we create a conceptual map by placing the six representations within this framework. Based on our research, we make the case that we cannot understand CL without understanding the ubiquitous, complex, and even contradictory role of power. We also suggest avenues for expanding and elaborating discussions of power in the CL literature.     

Inclusive leadership and team innovation: The role of team voice and performance pressure

In today's complex and rapidly changing business environment, team innovation is increasingly critical to the survival and success of organizations. Although the relevant literature highlights the importance of leadership in team innovation, previous studies have mainly focused on transformational leadership and have yielded inconsistent results. To address this void, this study integrates the goal-setting theory into the input-process-output framework and proposes a moderated mediation model to examine the relationship between inclusive leadership and team innovation. The results of hierarchical regression analysis from two survey-based field studies in China demonstrated that team voice mediated the relationship between inclusive leadership and team innovation and performance pressure moderated the direct relationship between inclusive leadership and team voice as well as the indirect relationship between inclusive leadership and team innovation via team voice such that the relationships were stronger when performance pressure was high.     

Observing leadership as behavior in teams and herds – An ethological approach to shared leadership research

Both Shared Leadership Theory and evolutionary theories of leadership emphasize the role of team-level patterns of influence on team or group success. Yet, most of the empirical work on the effects of shared leadership assesses the concept through patterns of subjective perceptions of leadership and behavior. Although these studies give us important insights, subjective perceptions of leadership are prone to biases. In this paper, we draw on evolutionary theories of the development of leadership in groups and argue that group-level patterns of observable behavior have a direct effect on team outcomes above and beyond patterns of leadership and behavior perceptions. On the basis of a brief review of ethological assessment methods of leadership in animal groups, we derive implications for team leadership research methods to test hypotheses on team-level influence patterns and performance. Emphasizing the role of influence in terms of interpersonal behavior we formulate implications for the assessment and analysis of verbal and nonverbal behavior in teams. Finally, we discuss how technological advances may be utilized to promote behavioral observations in team leadership research.     

How and When Servant Leaders Enable Collective Thriving: The Role of Team–Member Exchange and Political Climate

Thriving teams are critical to the effective functioning of an organization. Extending Spreitzer et al.’s (2005) socially embedded model of thriving at work to the team level, this study explores how and when servant leadership promotes collective thriving. Through data collected from 80 teams composed of 520 employees, the study reveals that servant leaders help embed members in high‐quality team–member exchange relationships, which in turn enables their collective thriving. The authors find that a highly political climate is a dual‐stage moderator hindering the positive impact of servant leadership on collective thriving. The findings move forward extant servant leadership and thriving literature. The authors also offer practical implications for how organizations can nurture and reap benefits from thriving teams and the active role of employees in this process.     

Polynomial regression analysis and response surface methodology in leadership research

Congruence has served as an important research framework for many leadership research topics. Perhaps the most frequently used methodological/statistical approach for testing the congruence framework is polynomial regression analysis (PRA) with response surface methodology (RSM). As this approach was introduced to organizational sciences more than two decades ago, we can now identify the main issues with the use of this approach in leadership research. To systematically investigate these issues, we first review how PRA and RSM have been used in various leadership studies. We then review the levels-of-analysis and rater model assumptions prevalent in PRA in terms of multilevel techniques, choice of centering options, and issues of endogeneity. Finally, to better understand the inconsistencies and variabilities that exist in leadership research, we review the use of two main RSM features and summarize additional statistical techniques for assessment in this realm. Overall, we aim to promote the rigorousness of this methodology within the study of congruence in leadership research by enhancing its capability in theory testing and building.     

Leadership capacity in teams

The present article examines the state of the field regarding leadership in teams. A perspective is advanced that considers leadership as an outcome of team processes (e.g., teamwork and team learning) that provides resources for better team adaptation and performance in subsequent performance cycles. This perspective complements but does not replace the perspective of leadership as an input to team processes and performance. Specific facets of the teaming cycle are reviewed, including the nature of teamwork and interventions designed to facilitate its development, the role of team learning as different from individual learning, and relatively recent advances in understanding shared and distributed leadership (DL). These components of team leadership are cast within an emerging IMOI (inputs, mediators, outcomes, inputs) framework proposed for understanding the cyclical and ongoing nature of teams in organizations.