-
The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004) 857880Review
Leadership capacity in teams
David V. Daya,*, Peter Gronnb, Eduardo Salasc
a124 Bruce V. Moore Building, Department of Psychology,
Pennsylvania State University, University Park,
PA 16802-3100, United StatesbMonash University, Australia
cUniversity of Central Florida, United States
Abstract
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.
D 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Teamwork; IPO model; Back-up behavior
Contents
1. Leadership capacity in teams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 858
2. Developing leadership in teams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 859
3. Beyond IPO models of teams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 860
4. What is teamwork? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 862
4.1. Mutual performance monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 863
4.2. Back-up behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8631048-9843/$
-
doi:10.1016/j.l
* Correspo
E-mail addnding author. Fax: +1 814 863 7002.see front matter D
2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
eaqua.2004.09.001
ress: [email protected] (D.V. Day).
-
Our primary purpose is to review theory and research that is
relevant to emerging perspectives on
team leadership, as well as some of the foundational assumptions
on the nature of teamwork, teamlearning, and distributed leadership
(DL). One emerging perspective in particular that will be
examined
in detail involves expanding the conceptualization of team
leadership beyond those attributes that are
brought to a team by an individual (e.g., a formal or informal
leader), to also consider leadership that
emerges within a team. From the former and more traditional
perspective, leadership is viewed primarily
as an input to team processes and performance. It is
conceptualized mainly in terms of individual leader
skills, abilities, and behaviors or other leader attributes
(e.g., charisma) that are thought to directly affect
team processes and performance. From the latter perspective,
however, leadership is considered as an
outcome at the team level of analysis. Thus, the present
perspective seeks to expand the focus to include
ways that leadership is drawn frominstead of only added toteams
as a function of the processes
associated with people working together to accomplish shared
work (OConnor & Quinn, 2004).
Previous reviews of team leadership have focused almost
exclusively on the traditional perspective of
leadership as input to a team. In an earlier Leadership
Quarterly Yearly Review article on team
leadership, Zaccaro, Rittman, and Marks (2001) focused on the
importance of functional leadership in
teams. From this perspective, effective team leaders are those
individuals who take on whatever role
function is required in the team. Thus, a leaders primary
responsibility is to determine what functions
are missing or not being handled adequately in the team and do
it or get it done. Although a brief
mention was made of possible team influences on leader
effectiveness, the focus was primarily on the
influence of the leader on team effectiveness. In this manner,
it can be seen how a common or traditional4.3. Adaptability . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . 864
4.4. Leadership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 864
4.5. Team orientation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 864
5. Interventions for developing teamworks . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 865
5.1. Cross training. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 865
5.2. Metacognitive training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 865
5.3. Team coordination training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 867
5.4. Self-guided correction training . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 867
5.5. Assertiveness training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 867
5.6. Stress exposure training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 868
5.7. Scenario-based team training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 868
5.8. Team building . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 868
6. Group information processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 869
7. Team learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 869
8. Summary of the research on team learning . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 872
9. Team learning and team leadership . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 872
10. The possibility of distributed leadership . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 873
11. Remaining issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 875
12. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 876
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 877
1. Leadership capacity in teams
D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004)
857880858perspective on team leadership emphasizes the
contributions of an individual leader on group processes
and outcomes.
-
processes influence leader effectiveness. At a higher level,
however, leadership and team processes
can affect one another and be affected by prior team
performance. At an even more complex level ofanalysis, leadership
and team processes can be binextricably integrated such that the
boundaries ofeach set of processes become fairly indistinctQ (p.
6). This conceptualization gets at the inherentmultilevel nature of
team leadership, but does little to provide a conceptual
distinction between
leadership and teamwork.
Whereas most approaches tend to focus on the more basic
conceptualization, the present review will
widen the lens to also examine advances related to understanding
the more complex levels of team
leadership. Specifically, we will review recent research and
theory on topics related to how leadership
emerges or is drawn from teams as a function of working on and
accomplishing shared work. We argue
that at this level, it is not so much that leadership and team
processes become indistinguishable but that
leadership happens as an outcome of team processes, and this
team-level leadership is then used as a
resource in future process and performance episodes (Marks,
Mathieu, & Zaccaro, 2001).
Some of the reasons to expand the lens on the meaning of team
leadership stem from the increasing
popularity of teams as a way to organize the accomplishment of
work in organizations. It is also needed
to more accurately portray the ongoing nature of leadership,
performance, and results (Day, 2001). Fast
acting, temporary project teams have become commonplace in many
organizations (Sundstrom,
McIntyre, Halhill, & Richards, 2000) with evidence
suggesting that this team format represented fully
one third of all teams operating in the United States over a
decade ago (Gordon, 1992). It is likely that
this percentage is larger today in that it is an increasingly
common expectation for employees to be able
to work effectively in teams and often where there is no
formally appointed leader (or where team
members are all at the same position level).
In situations in which there is no formal leader, how does
leadership occur? One way is that an
individual or perhaps a couple of individuals emerge as the team
leaders. This is a traditional perspective
that is grounded in the well-established leader emergence
literature. But a different perspective is that all
team members participate in the leadership process, i.e., it is
a shared, distributed process that creates a
capacity for versatility and adaptability. It is also possible
for leadership to be an outcome of the
interrelationships of team members, rather than solely an
individual input into the team. In short, we
believe that leadership can take many forms and our purpose is
to elaborate on some of those forms that
have not been widely considered.
2. Developing leadership in teams
Central to this leadership-as-outcome perspective is that a team
can build its leadership capacity
through interacting with the goal of accomplishing shared work
as long as the team is also intentional or
purpose-driven around the learning and development that occurs
(Fallesen, 2004). As reviewed in aMore recently, a special issue of
Group and Organization Management examined the topic of the
binterfaceQ of leadership and team processes (Zaccaro &
Klimoski, 2002). In defining what they meanby the term interface,
Zaccaro and Klimoski note that this refers to bthe various ways
that leadershipand team processes become intertwined so as to
influence collective performanceQ (p. 6). At a morebasic level,
this can refer to how leadership processes influence team
performance or how team
D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004) 857880
859subsequent section of this article, formal interventions can
assist with the developmental process. In this
manner, leadership capacity is a resource that a team can draw
from in subsequent performance episodes.
-
leader. As noted by OConnor and Quinn (2004): bWhen leadership
is viewed as a property of wholesystems, as opposed to solely the
property of individuals, effectiveness in leadership becomes more
aproduct of those connections or relationships among the parts than
the result of any one part of that
system (such as the leader)Q (p. 423).For some time, there has
been the theoretical perspective in the literature that views
leadership as an
outcomeof effective social processes and structure (e.g., Gibb,
1954; Salancik, Calder, Rowland, Leblebici,
& Conway, 1975); however, it has not been a very prevalent
perspective. Nonetheless, there are benefits
associated with considering leadership as an outcome in that it
is something created by the team, and in
particular, is reflected in the social capital of the team.
Unlike human capital, in which the focus is on
developing individual knowledge, skills, and abilities, the
emphasis with social capital is on building
networked relationships among individuals that enhance
cooperation and resource exchange (e.g., con-
nectivity). Social capital is a resource that adds value to
teams and organizations (Tsai & Ghoshal, 1998).
3. Beyond IPO models of teams
To better understand the different perspectives on leadership in
teams, it might be helpful to take a
step back and examine frameworks that have been proposed for
understanding teaming and team
performance. The most common of these is based on the
influential work of Steiner (1972), McGrath
(1984), and Hackman (1987), who described team performance in
systems terms in which inputs to the
team influence team processes, which lead in turn to measurable
outcomes. This has come to be known
as the IPO (inputprocessoutput) model or framework (but
certainly not a theory) of team
performance. Inputs take the form of individual knowledge,
skills, abilities, and other forms of human
capital (e.g., a leaders skills and experience). In the context
of team leadership, a leader is typically
thought to bring specific leadership skills and competencies to
a team that are used in influencing core
processes, such as transition (e.g., strategy formulation),
action (e.g., coordination), and interpersonal
processes (e.g., conflict management; Marks et al., 2001).
Enhanced team processes are then causally
associated with effective outcomes, such as team performance.An
example of this can be found as a team begins to form. At an
initial forming stage, a team is
composed of some number of relatively independent individuals
who each have their own needs, goals,
and expected outcomes that motivate their behavior. Leadership
processes can help align these individual
needs, goals, and expected outcomes across individualsgiven that
creating alignment is thought to be a
major leadership task (Van Velsor & McCauley, 2004)with the
result being a shift in the definition of
self from completely personal (bIQ) to at least partly
collective (bweQ). Instead of a set of independent(and possibly
misaligned) individual identities, having the motivation and
ability to conceive of
themselves in collective terms allows for the identification of
the needs of the team, collective goals, and
expected team outcomes (Ellemers, de Gilder, & Haslam,
2004).
The creation of a collective (i.e., team-based) social identity
serves as a potent leadership resource for
subsequent performance. This central identification with the
team (bweQ) rather than the individual (bIQ)allows for different
forms of leadership to emerge and creates additional possibilities
for participating in
leadership. It also is a resource for developing team social
capital (Day, 2000) and as such, the leadership
of the team is developing rather thanor perhaps in addition
tothe development of any individual
D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004) 857880860An
IPO model of team performance has served as a useful heuristic for
conceptualizing the pivotal
role of team processes for enhancing team performance and also
in providing some guidance for team
-
research; however, it also has distinct limitations. Perhaps the
most important of these is that the notion
of outcome implies a final end state. In terms of the ongoing
nature of leadership, team processes, and
performance, a much better description than outcome might be
that of a bsearch to catch reality in flightQwhere the legacy of
the past is always shaping the future (Pettigrew, 1992, p. 10). In
a similar vein, Ilgen,
Hollenbeck, Johnson, and Jundt (in press) point out that
although team performance might be an output
at one time period, it is an input and part of the process
leading to performance in a subsequent time
period. IPO frameworks also imply a single-cycle and linear path
from inputs through outcomes, and
as noted by Igen et al., do not address the important role of
feedback loops on team processes or the
dynamic nature of team performance.
In place of IPO, Ilgen et al. (in press) suggest an alternative
IMOI model. Here, the bIQ still refersto inputs; however,
mediational influences (bMQ) replace processes because mediators
are thought tohave greater explanatory power on outcomes (bOQ). The
additional bIQ at the end of the acronymaddresses the important
concept of feedback loops or bcyclical causal feedbackQ that is
critical tounderstanding how teams perform over time. The omission
of the dashes between letters suggests that
the causal relations need not be linear, but that they could
also be nonlinear or conditional. Although
the IMOI model may not have the same sort of simplistic appeal
as an IPO framework, it does seem
to suggest a more realistic conceptualization of how a team
develops over time as well as the dynamic
nature of team performance.
In terms of an emerging view of team leadership as an output of
team processes, the IMOI
model helps to illustrate how team leadership can be considered
to originate with individual skills
and behaviors, and through engaging in shared (process) work
develop into team-level leadership
as an outcome that serves also as an input in the next stage of
team development and
performance. Fig. 1 illustrates our view of the team leadership
cycle in terms of building team
leadership capacity cast within the IMOI framework. In this
model, individual team member
resources (knowledge, skills, and abilities brought to the team)
contribute to the development of
teamwork, but are moderated by the resources and actions of a
leader and formal interventions
used to develop teamwork. In this manner, formal interventions
could substitute for leadership in
the development of teamwork; however, when formal interventions
are not in place, the quality of
leadership is critical in teamwork development. In turn,
teamwork in the form of key processes
(e.g., back-up behavior, performance monitoring, team
orientation) contributes to team learning
(e.g., learning behavior of the team that is shaped by its
learning orientation), which contributes to
creating team leadership capacity (e.g., cognitive, motivation,
and affective states of sharedness,
distributedness, and connectivity of team members). This team
leadership capacity (in the form of
social capital) is not only an output of the teaming cycle but
also serves as input for future or
ongoing performing and directly influences the human capital of
the team in subsequent
performance episodes.
Given that the model is focused on how team leadership capacity
is developed and not on how well
teams perform, there is no explicit incorporation of team
performance into the model. We view team
leadership capacity as an bemergent stateQ or a construct that
develops over the life of the team; istypically dynamic in nature;
and varies as a function of team inputs, processes, and
outcomes.
Although Ilgen et al. (in press) claim that emergent states
impact team performance directly, Marks et
al. (2001) disagree: bEmergent states do not represent team
interaction or team actions that lead
D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004) 857880
861toward outcomes. Rather, they are products of team experiences
(including team processes) and
become new inputs to subsequent processes and outcomesQ (p.
358). Team leadership capacity is an
-
D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004)
857880862example of such an emergent state with potential for
influencing future performance (although the
exact nature of this influence is unknown). We believe that team
performance is shaped by
complementary processes that occur in parallel IMOI cycles and
that ongoing team performance
episodes likely intersect with team leadership cycles; however,
it is premature to speculate on the
specific nature of these intersections.
We next turn our attention to addressing teamwork because this
is thought to be an important
mediational process in the development of team learning and team
leadership capacity (in addition to
team performance). The IMOI perspective on teams (Ilgen et al.,
in press) is much more helpful to
conceptualizing the types of multiple mediational processes
addressed in the present model than
traditional, linear, and univocal IPO models. The following
section provides a brief overview of the
nature of teamwork, how it can be developed through formal
interventions, and how it is differentiated
from team leadership.
4. What is teamwork?
Most organizations would espouse the goal of striving for better
teamwork from their
employees. Greater collaboration among employees is often seen
as a way to achieve collective
organizational goals and develop a competitive advantage. For
these reasons, executives and
managers often promote teamwork as a core value in their
organizations. Indeed, survey results of
Fig. 1. Team leadership cycle.
-
human resource professionals in Fortune 100 companies indicated
that teamwork and how to
capitalize on it were their highest priorities (Roomkin, Rosen,
& Dubbs, 1998, as cited in Naquin
& Tynan, 2003). Although few would refute the value of
building better teamwork in an
organization, what do we really know about the nature of
teamwork? Specifically, how do we
know if we have it and how do we get it? What are the actions,
events, behaviors and cognitions
that good teams exhibit?
Teamwork is a dynamic and elusive phenomenon. Despite the
decades of research on the topic,
organizations still have problems composing, developing, and
managing teams (Salas, Stagl, & Burke,
2004). There is also residual confusion about how teamwork
differs from team leadership (especially
when leadership is examined at the more aggregate level of
analysis). However, some progress has
been made in recent years in terms of a better understanding
about what comprises teamwork.
Teamwork is a set of interrelated and flexible cognitions,
behaviors, and attitudes that are used to
achieve desired mutual goals. In a sense, teams bthink,Q bdo,Q
and bfeelQ as they perform theirinterdependent tasks. These
cognitions, behaviors, and attitudes reflect the competencies
(i.e.,
knowledge, skills, and abilities and other characteristics) that
team members need to have in order
to execute effective team functions and to achieve performance
greater than the total independent
efforts of all individual team members.
Several researchers have advanced typologies or taxonomies of
key teamwork competencies (see
Stevens & Campion, 1994; Cannon-Bowers, Tannenbaum, Salas,
& Volpe, 1995). There is evidence
that some of these are essential to team performance (see Salas
et al., 2004), but there is not a clear
and consistent picture of the core elements of teamwork. There
remains too much fragmentation and a
lack of clarity on the core constructs. However, a clearer look
at the evidence of what has been shown
to facilitate or hinder the development of teamwork may help
point to a parsimonious set of core
elements. Recently, Salas, Sims, and Burke (2004) have argued
that there might be a bBig FiveQ inteamwork. They suggest that in
highly interdependent teams, five critical components emerged:
(a)
Mutual performance monitoring, (b) back-up behaviors, (c)
adaptability, (d) active leadership, and (e)
team orientation.
4.1. Mutual performance monitoring
Mutual performance monitoring can be defined as team members
ability to bkeep track of fellow teammembers [sic] work while
carrying out their own. . .to ensure that everything is running as
expected andto ensure that they are following procedures correctlyQ
(McIntyre & Salas, 1995, p. 23). Recent researchhas suggested
that effective teams are composed of members who maintain an
awareness of team
functioning. They do this by monitoring fellow members work such
that they catch mistakes, slips, or
lapses prior to or shortly after they have occurred. This
awareness requires a shared understanding (i.e.,
shared mental model) of the task, and team equipment roles and
requirements (see Cannon-Bowers,
Salas, & Converse, 1993).
4.2. Back-up behavior
Back-up behavior is about supportive actions on the part of team
members. It is a product of teams
D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004) 857880
863effectively monitoring their own performance as well as that of
their members. Thus, mutual
performance monitoring allows for back-up behavior to occur. It
has been defined as bthe discretionary
-
provision resource and task-related to another member of ones
team that is intended to help that team
member obtain the goals as defined by his or her role. . . (and)
often result from a recognition bypotential back up providers that
there is a workload distribution problem in their teamQ (Porter et
al.,2003, pp. 391392). That is, while team members are monitoring
their teammates, they are able to detect
deficiencies or overloads and step in to assist when needed. As
a result, team members can shift work
responsibilities to others as it becomes necessary. This is very
similar to the construct Johnston and
Briggs (1968) referred to as load balancing.
4.3. Adaptability
If team members are performing mutual performance monitoring and
back-up behavior, then the team
can adapt. Adaptability refers to the ability to recognize
deviations from expected actions and readjust
actions accordingly. Thus, team adaptability has been defined as
a teams ability to recognize deviation
from expected action and readjust their strategies according to
the particular task demands at hand
(Cannon-Bowers et al., 1995; Salas et al., 2004). Adaptability
is what makes teams valuable in
organizations since they can allocate resources, self-correct,
and redistribute workload as they go in
response to changing organizational and external environmental
demands.
4.4. Leadership
Team leaders can make or break a team and are extremely
influential in terms of the degree of
teamwork that develops (or not). Team leaders (whether formally
appointed or emergent) create,
foster, promote, and maintain shared understanding to enable
effective teamwork. Thus, an effective
team leader will create a climate that encourages mutual
performance monitoring, supportive behavior,
and adaptability. Put somewhat differently, leaders can offer a
valuable input to team processes.
Effective team leaders shape the development of shared mental
models in their teams by
systematically seeking, evaluating, and organizing information
about team functioning and constraints
(Zaccaro et al., 2001). They then serve as sensemakers by
interpreting and communicating key
information to the team thereby creating a mental framework (or
template) that promotes common
understanding and action. In this manner, effective leaders can
help develop team-level leadership that
can be drawn from the team (i.e., serve as input) in subsequent
performance cycles. These resources
are what we referred to earlier as team leadership capacity.
4.5. Team orientation
The final dimension thought to be an essential aspect of
teamwork is the orientation of the team
toward the individual or the collective. Although the previous
dimensions have been behavioral in
nature, team orientation is attitudinal. Team or collective
orientation is the tendency to enhance
individual performance through the coordination, evaluation, and
use of task inputs from other group
members in an interdependent manner in performing a group task
(Driskell & Salas, 1992).
Moreover, several researchers have found that some individuals
with more of an egocentric
orientation prefer to work independently and will tend to
perform poorly in team settings relative to
D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004)
857880864situation in which they are allowed to work alone. As a
result, team performance will be significantly
enhanced by the ability to bring together team members who are
willing to be collectively oriented
-
Metacognition can be defined as the ability to understand and
monitor ones own thoughts, and the
assumptions and implications of ones activities (Brown,
Bransford, Ferrara, & Campione, 1983;Flavell, 1979).
Metacognitive and regulatory processes must necessarily extend
beyond the self when
working in teams. That is, individual-level cognitive and
behavioral skills must operate seamlessly
across the team in order to maximize team effectiveness. Team
members must be able to monitor the
pacing of their teams work and be able to step in to assist
teammates who need assistance whenand develop a shared (i.e.,
team-based) social identity. Others have recently elaborated on how
team
leaders can shape or develop collective identities in a team
(Lord & Brown, 2004). This type of team
orientation or collective team identity is a valuable resource
that can be drawn upon in future
performance episodes.
5. Interventions for developing teamwork
There are many ways to develop teamwork skills (e.g., building
individual competencies or
human capital for teamwork). The most common way is team
training, which can be conceptualized
as a set of theoretically based strategies or instructional
processes. Recent research has advanced and
tested a number of these strategies and we next review some
specific team training and development
strategies that have been used to enhance team performance. The
discussion includes current
information on the effectiveness of each of these instructional
approaches. Although there are more
training strategies than are depicted here, the ones described
below and summarized in Table 1
represent some of the most effective team training strategies as
based on the available empirical
evidence.
5.1. Cross training
The focus of cross training is in giving trainees exposure to,
and practice on, other teammates
tasks. That is, trainees experience the task requirements and
needs of one or more teammates (i.e.,
they bwalk in someone elses shoesQ). Cross training is therefore
designed to result in better teammember knowledge with respect to
teammates task responsibilities and coordination requirements.
Specifically, cross training may involve positional
clarification (team members are provided with
general knowledge of teammates general position and
responsibilities), positional modeling (where
the duties of each team member are discussed and observed), and
positional rotation (allows direct,
hands-on practice of each members specific tasks;
Blickensderfer, Cannon-Bowers, & Salas, 1998).
Evidence supporting the effectiveness of cross training has been
collected in both the laboratory and
the field. The bulk of this evidence suggests that cross
training can improve the teams anticipatory
behavior and foster communication and coordination strategies.
For example, Volpe, Cannon-Bowers,
Salas, and Spector (1996) found that cross training was an
important determinant of effective task
coordination, communication, and performance.
5.2. Metacognitive training
D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004) 857880
865overloaded. Furthermore, they must build and maintain a sense of
team efficacy to deal with
challenges faced in the operational environment (Kozlowski,
1998). Training to improve
-
Table 1
Team training and development instructional strategies
Instructional strategy Level Description Sources
Cross training Team Teammates develop an understanding of
the
tasks, duties, and responsibilities of coworkers by
performing other team members roles and tasks
Volpe et al., 1996;
Salas et al., 2001
Strategy targets team members interpositional
knowledge and shared mental models
Increases team coordination and reduces process loss
Metacognitive
training
Individual Targets trainees executive monitoring and
self-regulatory cognitive processes for development
Ford et al., 1998
Training develops metacognitive skills which
in turn regulate cognitive abilities, such as
inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning
and problem solving
Team coordination
training
Team Focuses on teaching team members about basic
process underlying teamwork
(e.g., communicationboth implicit and explicit)
Prince & Salas, 1993;
Salas et al., 1997, 1992
Strategy widely applied in aviation, medical
and military communities
Targets mutual performance monitoring
and back-up behavior
Self-guided
correction
training
Individual
and team
Team members are taught techniques for
monitoring and then categorizing their own
behaviors as to the degree of their effectiveness
Leedom & Simon, 1995;
Smith-Jentsch et al., 1998
This process generates instructive feedback
so that team members can review performance
episodes and correct deficiencies
Assertiveness
training
Individual Utilizes behavioral modeling techniques to
demonstrate both assertive and nonassertive
behaviors and aid in the creation
and reinforcement of assertiveness in trainees
Smith-Jentsch et al., 1996
Provides multiple practice and feedback
opportunities for trainees
Stress exposure
training
Individual
and team
Targets trainee knowledge of both potential
stressors and coping strategies
Driskell & Johnston, 1998
Develops trainee insight into the link
between stressors, perceived stress and
individual affect and performance
Scenario-based
team training
Individual
and team
Designed to structure training in complex,
distributed environments
Oser et al., 1999
Incorporates trigger events which elicit
targeted behavior in contextually rich and
realistic environments
Provides guidelines for training objectives,
trigger events, measures of performance,
scenario generation, exercise conduct and
control, data collection and feedback
Team building Team Team development strategy that targets
role
clarification, goal setting, problem solving or
interpersonal relations for improvement
Buller, 1986;
Salas et al., 1999
D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004)
857880866
-
metacognitive skills is designed to teach team members to become
more aware of the strategies they
use to learn, determine which strategies are most appropriate,
and enable periodic adjustment as
necessary. Specific strategies targeted may include error
detecting, effort and attention allocating,
elaborating, self-questioning, self-explanation, constructing
visual representations, activating prior
knowledge, and revision (Lin, 2001). Metacognitive skills have a
demonstrated relationship with
knowledge acquisition, behavior acquisition, and increased
self-efficacy (Ford, Smith, Weissbein,
Gully, & Salas, 1998).
5.3. Team coordination training
Team coordination training (also known as crew resource
management) has been successfully
applied across a wide variety of contexts, including aviation
settings (Prince & Salas, 1993), medical
environments (Gaba, Howard, & Small, 1995), and in other
complex team decision-making
situations (Salas, Cannon-Bowers, & Johnston, 1997). The
general purpose of team coordination
training is to prevent and mitigate errors (i.e., to improve
decision making during emergencies and
improve teamwork communication and coordination). The delivery
typically varies according to the
requirements dictated by each environment. These strategies have
been tested empirically and have
demonstrated substantial team performance improvements (e.g.,
Leedom & Simon, 1995; Salas,
Dickinson, Converse, & Tannenbaum, 1992; Salas, Fowlkes,
Stout, Milanovich, & Prince, 1999;
Salas, Burke, Bowers, & Wilson, 2001).
5.4. Self-guided correction training
Team self-correction is a process in which teammates think about
and discuss teammate roles and
responsibilities, team strategy, integral sequences and
responses, and related concepts. This training
strategy specifically targets mutual performance monitoring,
team leadership, and closed-loop
communication. The team is taught to diagnose, design, and
implement solutions to its team functional
problems. Behavioral modeling is one typical method for training
team self-correction and has been used
successfully in the past (e.g., Smith-Jentsch, Zeisig, Acton,
& McPherson, 1998) to build a greater
degree of shared expectations among team members and allow teams
to use more implicit coordination
and enable better overall performance.
5.5. Assertiveness training
Assertiveness training is designed to teach team members to
effectively communicate when they are:
(a) offering or requesting assistance, (b) offering a potential
solution, or (c) providing feedback to other
team members. An underlying assumption of this strategy is that
each team member is a resource who
can provide unique perspectives and solutions to team tasks
(Smith-Jentsch, Salas, & Baker, 1996).
Assertiveness training is a strategy that uses role modeling and
active practice to improve individual
members assertiveness. Research examining the impact of
assertiveness training has indicated that,
whereas both attitudinally focused and skill-based training
improved attitudes toward team member
assertiveness, practice and feedback are critical to producing
behavioral effects. When given proper
D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004) 857880
867practice and feedback opportunities, individual improvements in
assertiveness have been demonstrated
(Smith-Jentsch et al., 1996).
-
5.6. Stress exposure training
As teams often operate in stressful environments (especially in
military and aviation contexts), stress
exposure training may be provided to individuals and whole teams
in order to prepare them to maintain
effective performance under stressful conditions. It is designed
to make trainees more familiar with the
stress environment, build trainees confidence in their ability
to perform under stress, and develop the
skills of trainees to make their performance more effective in
the stress environment. When these
objectives are met, stress exposure training has been able to
reduce the negative influence of stress on
team performance (Driskell & Johnston, 1998).
5.7. Scenario-based team training
The aim of this strategy is to provide opportunities for the
trainees to develop team competencies by
practicing in simulated environments that are representative of
actual operational conditions and
receiving feedback linked to specific events that occur during
training. It tightly links critical tasks,
learning objectives, scenario design, performance measurement,
and feedback, and has been empirically
tested and operationally demonstrated in a variety of team
training environments (Oser, Cannon-Bowers,
Salas, & Dwyer, 1999). In short, it creates linkages among
critical scenario components that can be used
to guide the systematic infrastructure design. These linkages
have many potential advantages, among
which include: (a) reduced number and experience level of
personnel to operate as part of the scenario
planning and control staff, (b) facilitation of the development
of new scenarios, and (c) maximization of
use of previously developed scenarios.
5.8. Team building
Team building has also been referred to as team development and
is an extremely popular and
common intervention. Team building interventions may focus on
role clarification, goal setting, problem
solving, or interpersonal relations as a target. Taken together,
there is no conclusive evidence of
empirical support for the effect of team building on performance
(e.g., Buller, 1986; Woodman &
Sherwood, 1980). However, when examining the specific components
of team building, it has been
found that interventions emphasizing role clarification were
most likely to increase performance,
whereas interventions emphasizing goal setting, problem solving,
or interpersonal relations were no
more likely to render an increase or decrease in performance
(Salas, Rozell, Mullen, & Driskell, 1999).
Team building is also less likely to be effective as function of
team sizelarger teams typically derive
less benefit from team building interventions (Salas, Fowlkes,
Stout, Milanovich, & Prince, 1999).
In sum, the literature on teamwork has identified five
interrelated components that are thought to be
critical for the development of teamwork, including (a) mutual
performance monitoring, (b) back-up
behaviors, (c) adaptability, (d) team leadership, and (e) team
orientation. There are also recognized
interventions that can be used to enhance teamwork. If teamwork
is considered as an important
mediational process as based on the IMOI model (Ilgen et al., in
press), one question is whether it can
help create team-based leadership as an outcome. Put somewhat
differently, can teamwork help to create
team-level leadership resources and enhance the leadership
capacity of the team? A relevant issue to
D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004)
857880868address is whether the research evidence supports the
possibility of team-level processes, such as
leadership. The literature on group information processing
suggests that it is indeed possible.
-
6. Group information processing
One perspective that supports the notion of a team-level
leadership focus is the recognition that
groups (like individuals) process relevant and available
information to perform intellectual tasks.1
Group-level information processing binvolves the degree to which
information, ideas, or cognitive
Their review also noted some differences between how individuals
and groups process information. For
example, groups generally decrease variability in the way
information is processed relative to
D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004) 857880
869individuals. There are other differences that are a result of
the fact that groups are composed of multiple
individuals. Hinsz et al. termed these bdimensions of
variabilityQ for understanding group-levelinformation processing
(e.g., communalityuniqueness of information, convergencediversity
of ideas,
accentuationattenuation of cognitive processes, and
belongingnessdistinctiveness of members).
The four dimensions of variability relate to the contribution
and combination aspects of team-level
information processing and reflect its inherent multilevel
nature. Contributions reflect the individual
level, whereas combination occurs at the group or team level.
The information, ideas, cognitive
processes, leadership skills, or other forms of human capital
that team members bring to an interaction
are the individual-level contributions. The ways in which these
individual contributions are aggregated
during team interaction and the development of teamwork
illustrate the combination process. The
important point to consider is that team-level phenomena are
almost always based to some degree on
individual-level skills and processes. When discussing something
like team learning, for example, it is
necessary to remember that team learning cannot occur without
some level of individual learning. Thus,
there must be both the motivation and ability to learn among the
various team members. But that does
not mean that team learning is the same as aggregated individual
learning, as discussed in the next
section.
7. Team learning
If team-level information processing can occur as Hinsz et al.
(1997) suggest, then it is a logical
extension to consider the possibility of team learning,
especially in terms of building leadership
capacity in a team. Learning is often a precursor to adaptation
(Ilgen et al., in press). In this manner,
being motivated and able to learn is a prerequisite for
effective leadership and at the team level
1We should also note that we do not draw a firm distinction
between groups and teams in our review of this literature (also see
Sundstrom
et al., 2000). Although there are likely to be certain
distinctions in terms of the type or amount of interdependence, the
debate about what is a
group and what is a team is beyond the scope of the present
paper. Furthermore, semantic debates of this type are rarely useful
or productive. It
has been argued that bthe amount of worthwhile knowledge that
comes out of any field of inquiry. . .tends to be in inverse
proportion to theprocesses are shared, and are being shared, among
the group members and how this sharing of
information affects both individual- and group-level outcomesQ
(Hinsz, Tindale, & Vollrath, 1997). Theparticular outcome of
interest here is leadership.
Hinsz et al. (1997) demonstrated based on a comprehensive review
of the literature that the same
information-processing components that are thought to describe
how individuals process information
(e.g., attention, encoding, storage, retrieval, response,
feedback, and so forth) are also relevant to groups.amount of
discussion about the meaning of words that goes into it. Such
discussion, far from being necessary to clear thinking and
precise
knowledge, obscures both, and is bound to lead to endless
argument about words instead of matters of substanceQ (Magee, 1985,
p. 49).
-
learning would provide an important means of developing
leadership resources. A definition of team
learning that has been offered in the literature views it as ba
relatively permanent change in the teamscollective level of
knowledge and skill produced by the shared experience of the team
membersQ (Elliset al., 2003, p. 822). In this way, team learning
depends on each members individual ability to
acquire knowledge, skills, and abilities as well as his or her
ability to collectively share that
information with teammates. The focus of this conceptualization
and definition of team learning is as
an outcome. A process-oriented definition of team learning was
offered by Edmondson (1999), who
conceptualized learning at the team level of analysis as ban
ongoing process of reflection and action,characterized by asking
questions, seeking feedback, experimenting, reflecting on results,
and
discussing errors or unexpected outcomes of actionsQ (Edmondson,
1999, p. 353). She referred tothese kinds of activities as learning
behavior. It is through these activities that learning is enacted
at
the team level. Our perspective mirrors that of Ellis et al. and
Edmondson in viewing team learning as
both a process and an outcome (see Fig. 1).
Edmondsons (1999) work is interesting in that it demonstrated
that certain team beliefs were
important conditions for team learning behavior. Specifically,
she found that team psychological safety,
and to a lesser extent, team efficacy, were related to team
learning behavior as assessed by both self-
report of team members as well as by an independent observer.
Team psychological safety was defined
as ba shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk
takingQ (p. 354). It is thought to depend on asense of confidence
that the team will not reject or embarrass a team member for asking
a question or
making a contribution. This confidence is based on mutual trust
and respect among team members. Team
efficacy is an extension of the well-documented role of
self-efficacy in enhancing individual
performance, and pertains to the shared belief that the team is
capable of using new information to
generate useful results. According to Edmondson, team
psychological safety and team efficacy are
complementary processes in which team efficacy supplements the
positive effect of the teams sense of
psychological safety on its learning. The implications of these
results suggest that engaging in learning
behavior in a team is highly dependent on team psychological
safety. What is needed, however, is a
better understanding of how team psychological safety develops
and what specific conditions enhance or
impede it.
In an attempt to address this unanswered question from her
earlier study, Edmondson, Bohmer, and
Pisano (2001) analyzed the learning and performance of cardiac
surgery teams that were implementing
new microsurgical technology. Their approach mixed qualitative
interviews with more quantitative
analyses of 669 heart operations conducted in 16 hospitals. The
overarching goal was to differentiate
the successful implementers of this new technology from the less
successful implementers.
Psychological safety was found to be important for successful
implementation in that it supported
the kinds of behavioral change necessary for learning the new
implementation. When lower-status
team members were afraid of censure from higher-status surgeons
on the team, this posed an obstacle
to the teams learning and performance. Interview data suggested
that there were specific actions of
the formal team leader in terms of signaling openness to
feedback and communicating a rationale for
change that were important in creating team psychological
safety. This is consistent with a traditional
perspective on team leadership in that the leader helps foster
certain conditions that enhance team
processes and learning.
Based on their research and experience with learning teams,
Edmondson, Bohmer, and Pisano (2001)
D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004)
857880870have made specific recommendations for leaders to help
create environments for team learning. The first
is to be accessible, because that helps make clear that others
opinions are welcomed and valued. The
-
second is to ask for input. In addition to a climate of
accessibility and openness, asking explicitly for
contributions from team members can help enhance a learning
environment. The third is to serve as what
they call a bfallibility modelQ (p.132) by admitting mistakes to
the team because it signals that errors andother concerns can be
discussed without fear of punishment. In this way, it can be seen
how individual
leaders can help enhance cooperation, teamwork, and learning in
a team. Individual leaders matter in
creating teamwork and building team learning that are necessary
preconditions for team-level leadership
capacity.
More recent research in this vein has investigated the role of
subgroup strengthdefined as the
degree of overlap across multiple demographic characteristics
among a subset of team membersas
well as team heterogeneity on team learning (Gibson &
Vermeulen, 2003). Strong subgroups occur in a
team when there are pairs with considerable overlap and pairs
with very little overlap. The essence of the
proposed relevance of subgroup strength is that subgroups within
larger-sized teams may have a positive
impact because they function as supportive cohorts (i.e., a
group of people who share a similar
background and have a similar worldview) within a team. However,
those teams in which subgroup
strength was either very weak or very strong were hypothesized
to have the lowest levels of team
learning (i.e., an inverted-U curvilinear effect).
Results supported both of these central hypotheses. Subgroup
strength was also shown to moderate
the relationship between specific organizational design concerns
(performance management by an
external leader, team empowerment, and the use of knowledge
management systems) and team learning.
A primary contribution of this study is in demonstrating
empirically that team composition matters when
it comes to team learning, which might also help understand its
relationship to team effectiveness. It also
demonstrated that the effectiveness of specific aspects of a
teams organizational context that are thought
to stimulate learning depends on team composition.
In another recent study of team learning (Bunderson &
Sutcliffe, 2003), the role of team learning
orientation, or the teams climate of proactive learning, was
examined. Building on the work of Dweck
(1986) that has examined individual motivational processes
thought to affect learning (i.e., performance
versus learning goals), curvilinear effects of team learning
orientation on team effectiveness was
hypothesized. Specifically, it was proposed that btoo much
emphasis on learning can detract fromperformance just as too little
emphasis on learning can detract from performanceQ (p. 554).
Support wasfound for the curvilinear hypothesis on the two measured
components of business unit performance
performance to plan and profit per unit. An important
implication of these findings is that
overemphasizing (or underemphasizing) team learning may not be
an effective strategy when it comes
to enhancing team performance. Instead, the right balance must
be struck between the learning and
performance orientations adopted by the team.
Another recent study (Ellis et al., 2003) took a somewhat
different perspective on team learning,
conceptualizing it as an outcome rather than an antecedent or
process variable. Using the group
information-processing framework outlined by Hinsz et al.
(1997), the authors proposed that project
teams need to attend to, encode, store, and retrieve information
both within and between the minds of
team members in order to learn. The results from a study of 109
four-person student teams engaged in a
simulated war games exercise demonstrated several interesting
points with regard to team learning: (a)
Personality matters: Teams composed of members high on
Agreeableness had lower levels of learning;
(b) Structure matters: Project teams working within a paired
structure learned more than those that were
D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004) 857880
871structured divisionally or functionally; (c) Workload
distribution matters: Teams encountering an uneven
workload distribution learned less than teams encountering an
even workload distribution; and (d) a
-
One way in which an adaptive challenge can be faced is if the
leader creates a solution and gives it to
the team for implementation. This can be an effective strategy
provided that the leader can construct sucha solution. This becomes
increasingly unlikely the more complex the environment. There is
another
possible downside to this approach: It fosters dependencies in
followers. If followers are conditioned to9. Team learning and team
leadership
From a general perspective, learning is centrally important to
leadership. A classic distinction between
management and leadership is that management is mostly about
working within the status quo more
efficiently whereas leadership is primarily about change
(Kotter, 1990). Learning is not always necessary
for greater efficiency but it is essential in fostering any kind
of individual, team, or organizational change
in that learning is a precursor for adaptation (Ilgen et al., in
press). It has been argued that a hallmark of
effective teams in complex environments is their willingness and
ability to learn their way out of novel
problems (Dixon, 1993; Weick, 1993) or what some have called
adaptive challenges (Drath, 2001;
Heifetz, 1994). These are the kinds of challenges confronting a
team for which it has no preexisting
resources, remedies, tools, solutions, and may not even have the
means for accurately naming or
describing the challenge (Drath, p. 21). Adaptive challenges are
in contrast to technical challenges,
which are more routine problems or decisions that must be made.
These might be difficult problems, but
the existing resources are sufficient for addressing them
effectively. Technical challenges do not require
much leadership and may not demand any team leadership
resources; however, coming to terms with
adaptive challenges is considered to be a major leadership task
according to Drath.btruth supported winsQ model is superior: At
least two team members need to have access to the sameinformation
in order for the team to learn.
8. Summary of the research on team learning
There have been notable findings in the recent research on team
learning in organizational (as
compared with educational) contexts, both in terms of
conceptualizing team learning as a process and as
an outcome. Edmondson and colleagues have demonstrated that team
psychological safety is an
important antecedent of team learning behavior, and that there
are specific things that leaders can do to
enhance the psychological safety of their teams. The context in
which the team performs matters in terms
of its demographic composition (subgroup strength), its relative
personality in terms of agreeableness, as
well as aspects of structure, workload distribution, and access
to information. It was also found that team
learning orientation was important to performance up to a point
beyond which it impeded performance.
These are all interesting findings with theoretical and
practical implications. What has not been
discussed in any detail is the relationship between team
learning and team-based leadership. To date, the
focus has been mainly on what individual leaders can do to
enhance team learning, and to a lesser extent
the relationship between team learning and team performance. The
role of individual leaders in teams is
and will continue to be an important topic of research and
theory. But what is also needed is a greater
understanding of how team learning is related to the emergence
of team-level leadership capacity.
D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004)
857880872look to the formal or informal leader for btheQ answer in
challenging times, then these followers may notbe able to learn or
lead collectively with any consistency or effectiveness. They will
be stuck if the leader
-
leade
can e
One
emerg
Leadership is probably best conceived as a group quality, as a
set of functions which must becarried out by the group. This
concept of ddistributed leadershipT is an important one. If there
areleadership functions which must be performed in any group, and
if these functions may be
dfocusedT or ddistributedT, then leaders will be identifiable
both in terms of the frequency and interms of the multiplicity or
pattern of functions performed (p. 884).
Gibb (1954) then foreshadowed a definitional dilemma in the
event that a group became the unit of
analysis, which might result in either the dilution of the
concept of leader or its removal altogether. It is a
predicament in a group to identify whose behavior should be
observed in drawing up role prescriptions
of leadership. It becomes even trickier to identify criteria by
which to differentiate a leader from others in10. The possibility
of distributed leadership
Shared or distributed leadership (again, we use these terms
interchangeably) is slowly gaining
momentum as a field of interest with both scholars and
practitioners. Thus far, the literature on
distributed leadership (DL) is relatively modest but steadily
growing, with research strongest in the fields
of business management and educational leadership. At the time
of this writing, Bennett, Harvey, Wise,
and Woods (2003) have provided the most comprehensive review of
the DL literature and there has been
at least one edited collection of writings on DL (Pearce &
Conger, 2003a). Some historical antecedents
of DL have been surveyed by Pearce and Conger (2003b), although
there are important oversights in
their review (e.g., Brown, 1989; Brown & Hosking, 1986;
Gibb, 1954; Gronn, 2002b). The concept of
DL has also been subjected to critical analysis by Gronn
(2002a,b) and Spillane, Halverson, and
Diamond (2000), and is the subject matter of a forthcoming
monograph-length study (Gronn, in press).
Despite these healthy indications of scholarly activity, OToole,
Galbraith, and Lawler (2003) report an
indifferent reception to their work on DL and claim that DL has
been blargely ignored in the researchliteratureQ (p.251).
According to Pearce and Conger (2003b), the prevailing view of
leadership is that it is concentrated or
focused, in which the brelationship between the leader and the
led is a vertical one of topdowninfluenceQ (p. 1). As a
consequence, much attention has been paid to the behaviors,
mind-sets, andactions of the leader (singular) in a team or other
work unit. Half a century ago, however, Gibb (1954)
allowed for a different possibility when he wrote that:a
team
memrship in the team. Another way to put this is that the team
becomes more versatile in terms of how it
nact leadership. This versatility is a direct function of the
teams overall capacity for leadership.
possibility for what might contribute to this team-level
leadership capacity can be found in the
ing literature on shared or distributed leadership.cannot
envision a solution for them. As noted recently, leaders who
enhance a strong personal
identification in followers tend to promote leader dependence
(Kark, Shamir, & Chen, 2003). But having
the collective capacity to face an adaptive challenge in an open
and learning-oriented manner broadens
the resources of the team, which should contribute to greater
adaptability and effectiveness.
One possibility that is created through teamwork and team
learning is a broader capacity for
D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004) 857880 873.
Gibb went on to suggest that the concept of leader may no longer
have scientific value if team
bers are differentiated primarily in terms of the leadership
roles that they play (e.g., initiator,
-
energizer, harmonizer, expediter). This role-based perspective
on team leadership is very similar to the
functional perspective offered by Zaccaro et al. (2001).
The possibility raised by Gibb (1954) of a distribution of
leadership across a group lay dormant for
over three decades until it was resurrected as part of an
explanation for patterns of role sharing,
networking, and consensus decision making observed in informally
structured social movements
(Brown, 1989; Brown & Hosking, 1986). Subsequently, interest
in conceptual and empirical possibilities
of DL began to develop.
Since the late 1990s, DL has been interpreted in a number of
ways, with definitions ranging from the
unduly restrictive to the highly fluid and open ended. One view
of DL is that it identical to team- or
group-level leadership (Locke, 2003). In some cases (e.g.,
Barry, 1991), shared team leadership refers to
emergent, fluctuating levels of individual team member
influence, or mutual influence of, by, and on
team members (Pearce, 2004). In still other approaches (e.g.,
Avolio, Sivasubramaniam, Murry, Jung, &
Garger, 2003), it extends to the bcollective influence of the
group on individual membersQ (p. 149).Another slightly expanded
view is that DL involves informal influence as part of ba dynamic,
interactiveinfluence process among individuals in work groups,Q
both lateral and vertical, but with the key attributebeing bmore
than just downward influence on subordinates by an appointed or an
elected leaderQ(Conger & Pearce, 2003, p. 286). Others identify
DL with group-based mutuality of influence, but adopt
a slightly less fixed or frozen view of groups in the guise of
social networks (Mayo, Meindl, & Pastor,
2003). Finally, when workplaces are conceptualized as
communities of practice (Gronn, 2003),
conventional role binaries, such as leadershipfollowership and
superordinatesubordinate, tend to give
way to the kinds of alternative or substitute roles envisaged by
Gibb and, as part of leadership in teams,
by Burke, Fiore, and Salas (2003).
An alternate perspective to tracking relations and flows of
influence has been to focus on role space
occupancy. Thus, the idea that two or more incumbents may share
a role space has been documented in a
series of case studies by Heenan and Bennis (1999). This is the
idea of co-leadership or joint leadership
(although see Locke, 2003, for a contrarian view), the
historical antecedents of which have been traced
back as far as the practice of co-consuls in republican Rome
(Sally, 2002) and the tetrarchy (of four
Caesars) instituted by the emperor Diocletian in the imperial
Roman era (Freeman, 2003). DL with co-
leadership as the unit of analysis takes two main forms. The
first is anchored in a formal relationship in
which, for example, the role incumbents exercise co- or joint
authority. A good example of the dynamics
of shared role space is co-principals in schools (Court, 2003;
Gronn & Hamilton, 2004). The second may
be either a formally or informally grounded relationship across
hierarchical levels as in the case of school
principals or their deputies (Nias, 1987), managers and their
immediate subordinates (Krantz, 1989),
between organizational heads and campus or branch heads (Gronn,
1999), or between adjacent role
incumbents, such as chairpersons and chief executives
(Chityayat, 1985; Stewart, 1991a,b).
Apart from an explicit or implied emphasis on lateral relations
(in contrast to vertical leadership), a
common feature of the examples discussed so far is numbers. That
is, leadership is recast as distributed
or shared due to an increase in leader personnel beyond a sole
leader to include two, three, or more
persons. In effect, DL in this sense means more than one leader.
While there are criteria other than
numbers for defining teams, somewhere in this terrain of small
numbers there is a threshold beyond
which one crosses over into the territory of teams. The
application of DL to suborganizational units, such
as groups and teams, represents the outer limits of DL for some
(e.g., most of the contributors to the
D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004)
857880874volume edited by Pearce & Conger, 2003a). Apart from
Pearce (2004, p. 50), however, who specifies a
team size of five or fewer members for optimal DL, most
discussions of team-based DL are vague about
-
(Hodgson, Levinson, & Zaleznik, 1965) based on a field study
of the administrative triumvirate formed
by three senior medical executives and clinicians. The
analytical focus was on key dimensions of the
forms
1988
Despite the progress made in better understanding DL, there are
some important ongoing questionsand unresolved issues. One concern
is the status of DL. In a field which is well known for its
badjectivalismQ (i.e., versions of leadership distinguished by
endless additions of adjectives such as
transf
seemof human capital (knowledge, skills, and abilities) as
people work and learn together (Coleman,
).working division of labor within the constellation (role
specialization, differentiation, and comple-
mentarity) and the impact of this kind of DL across a
psychiatric institute. Subsequently, Gronn (1999)
built on these attributes in an attempt to specify four
necessary and sufficient conditions for the
development and consolidation of relations of trust in
plural-member, joint work units: (a) shared values,
(b) experience of psychological space, (c) contrasting
temperaments, and (d) opportunities for role
rehearsal.
11. Remaining issues
It is hoped that this summary is sufficient to indicate that DL
represents an exciting new development
in leadership. It is one lens for conceptualizing and studying
leadership as a team (or organization)
phenomenon, and not just as an individual attribute or behavior
that is brought to a team. In effect, the
team creates this leadership capacity as a function of its
collective human capital, teamwork, and
learning (see Fig. 1). This perspective on team leadership
builds on the traditional model that views a
leaders knowledge, skills, and abilities (i.e., human capital)
as input to team processes that builds team-
level leadership capacity through the mediational processes of
teamwork and team learning. Team-level
leadership thus serves not only as one form of output but also
as input to the ongoing cycle of team
performing. In this manner, the social capital associated with
team leadership (Day, 2000) creates newscope and the actual size of
teams. Spillane et al. (2000) extend DL beyond suborganizational
units to
allow for it to be manifest, potentially, across an entire
organization and beyond:
Our central argument is that school leadership is best
understood as a distributed practice, stretched
over the schools social and situational contexts (p. 23,
original emphasis).
An additional perspective on DL is to consider the numerical
manifestations of it (i.e., couples,
pairings, or small groups) in holistic, as opposed to
aggregated, terms. Here, the focus is on joint work
units and the properties of the relations between the unit
members. This is similar to the issue of
connectivity discussed by OConnor and Quinn (2004) with regard
to an organizations capacity for
leadership, in which connectivity is defined as bthe relative
interrelatedness of the members of anorganizationQ (p. 423).
It also appears at least somewhat like Hunt and Ropos (1997)
processual systems approach, that
examines leadership as part of a holistic configuration of
components within a group or organization.
Besides this example, there are few such holistic accounts and
some, such as Locke (2003), dismiss the
very idea of holism. The pioneering work in this area examined
the bexecutive role constellationQ
D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004) 857880
875ormational leadership and charismatic leadership), to what
extent is DL simply the latest in a
ingly never-ending list of adjectival forms? On the other hand,
is there an argument for claiming
-
(OConnor & Quinn, 2004). But the literature suggests that
there are some similarities and some
differences when comparing individual and group processes (Hinsz
et al., 1997) and we need much moreresearch that considers
leadership as a team-level property.
There is an echo of this comment in Burns (2003) recent claim
that ball leadership is collectiveQ (p.75) or in Draths (2001)
assertion that ball leadership is shared leadershipQ (p. 61) in the
sense that teammembers must first recognize a particular action as
leadership in order for leadership to be evident. In
this manner, even the most autocratic and vertical forms of
leadership can be conceptualized as shared so
long as others agree to go along with it. From this perspective,
however, the meaning of shared
leadership is diluted in its application to any situation in
which leaders and followers act in ways that can
be thought of as leadership. Team leadership capacity allows for
versatile forms of leadership to emerge.
The leadership repertoire of a team is thus broadened to
transcend individual models of leadership to also
recognize that leadership can be developed as an emergent state
in teams.
12. Conclusions
The focus of the present review was on developing a better
understanding of team leadership capacity
and how it develops as an emergent state in teams. Team
leadership capacity was conceptualized as a
resource that develops as a function of individual human capital
(knowledge, skills, and abilities)
including the leadership resources of a formal or informal
leaderas well as teamwork and team
learning. These team leadership resources (i.e., social capital)
serve as input in the ongoing cycle and
episodic nature of teams. We draw from a recent framework (Ilgen
et al., in press) that expands on the
overly simplistic IPO (inputprocessoutput) perspectives on teams
to one that includes the
acknowledgement of mediational processes, nonlinear or
conditional effects, and feedback loops in
which an output is used as input in a subsequent team cycle
(e.g., team performance episodes; Marks et
al., 2001).
Team leadership capacity is thought to be an important resource
for teams, especially when complex
adaptive challenges are experienced. These are the kinds of
problems that no single leader can bethat it represents a new and
altogether different leadership paradigm? There is a strong sense
in much of
literature that DL is an idea whose time has finally come. In
some cases, the acceptance of DL has arisen
due to recognition of the increasing nonsustainability of a
focused model of individual leader
omniscience (e.g., Pearce, 2004). Relying on centralized
leadership focused on an individual team leader
has distinct limits of effectiveness, especially in dealing with
complex adaptive changes. Others have
wondered whether the attention accorded DL is a sign of an
emerging postheroic phase of leadership
(e.g., Gronn, 2002a) and even whether the notion of solo
leadership has ever been valid historically
(OToole et al., 2003). Ironically, it has recently been argued
that teams have become the new
organizational hero and that there is a bteam halo effectQ
whereby teams tend to not be blamed for theirfailures (Naquin &
Tynan, 2003).
Teams are not the panacea for organizational woes. At best the
evidence is mixed regarding the
benefits of teams and teamwork. Nonetheless, there are distinct
potential benefits of widening the lens to
include team-level leadership. Such an approach recognizes that
there are resources that are created
through connections and relationships that can be drawn from in
responding to leadership challenges
D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004)
857880876expected to solve. These are challenges confronting a team
for which it has no preexisting resources,
remedies, tools, solutions, and may not even have the means for
accurately naming or describing the
-
Thousand Oaks, CA7 Sage.Burns, J. M. (2003). Transforming
leadership: A new pursuit of happiness. London7
Atlantic.Cannon-Bowers, J., Salas, E., & Converse, S. (1993).
Shared mental models in expert team decision making. In N. J.
Castellan,Jr. (Ed.), Individual and group decision making: Current
issues (pp. 221246). Hillsdale, NJ7 Lawrence ErlbaumAssociates.
Cannon-Bowers, J. A., Tannenbaum, S. I., Salas, E., & Volpe,
C. E. (1995). Defining team competencies and establishing
team training requirements. In R. Guzzo, E. Salas, &
Associates (Eds.), Team effectiveness and decision making in
organizations (pp. 333380). San Francisco, CA7
Jossey-Bass.Chityayat, G. (1985). Working relationships between the
chairman of the boards of directors and the CEO. Management
International Review, 25, 6570.
Coleman, J. S. (1988). Social capital in the creation of human
capital. American Journal of Sociology, 94, S95S120
(Suppl.).
Conger, J. A., & Pearce, C. L. (2003). A landscape of
opportunities: Future research on shared leadership. In C. L.
Pearce, & J.challenge (Drath, 2001, p. 21). Adaptive challenges
have been contrasted with technical challenges,
which are more routine problems to solve or decisions that must
be made. These might be difficult
problems, but the existing resources are sufficient for
addressing them effectively. Technical challenges
do not require much if any leadership in that they are possible
to address using the relevant and available
knowledge, skills, and abilities contained in the team. Adaptive
challenges require different ways of
making sense and adapting to the environment. Team leadership
capacity can be developed as an
emergent state in teams through teamwork, team learning, and
shared leadership. It can provide the kinds
of resources that help teams to be resilient and versatile even
under the most challenging circumstances.
References
Avolio, B. J., Sivasubramaniam, N., Murry, W. D., Jung, D.,
& Garger, J. W. (2003). Assessing shared leadership:
Development
and preliminary validation of a team multifactor leadership
questionnaire. In C. L. Pearce, & J. A. Conger (Eds.),
Shared
leadership: Reframing the hows and whys of leadership (pp.
141172). Thousand Oaks, CA7 Sage.Barry, D. (1991). Managing the
bossless team: Lessons in distributed leadership. Organization
Dynamics, 20(1), 3147.
Bennett, N., Harvey, J. A., Wise, C., & Woods, P. A. (2003).
Desk study review of distributed leadership. Nottingham7
NationalCollege for School Leadership.
Blickensderfer, E., Cannon-Bowers, J. A., & Salas, E.
(1998). Cross-training and team performance. In J. A.
Cannon-Bowers, &
E. Salas (Eds.), Making decisions under stress: Implications for
individual and team training (pp. 299312). Washington,
DC7 APA Press.Brown, A. L., Bransford, J. D., Ferrara, R. A.,
& Campione, J. C. (1983). Learning, remembering, and
understanding. In J. H.
Flavell, & E. M. Markman (Eds.), Handbook of child
psychology: Cognitive Development, vol. 3 (pp. 77166). New
York7John Wiley and Sons.
Brown, M. H. (1989). Organizing activity in the womens movement:
An example of distributed leadership. In B. Klandermans
(Ed.), International social movement research, vol. 2 (pp.
225240). Greenwich, CT7 JAI.Brown, M. H., & Hosking, D. -M.
(1986). Distributed leadership and skilled performance as
successful organization in social
movements. Human Relations, 39, 6579.
Buller, P. F. (1986). The team building-task performance
relation: Some conceptual and methodological refinements. Group
&
Organization Studies, 11, 147168.
Bunderson, J. S., & Sutcliffe, K. M. (2003). Management team
learning orientation and business unit performance. Journal of
Applied Psychology, 88, 552560.
Burke, C. S., Fiore, S. M., & Salas, E. (2003). The role of
shared cognition in enabling share leadership and team
adaptability.
In C. L. Pearce, & J. A. Conger (Eds.), Shared leadership:
Reframing the hows and whys of leadership (pp. 103122).
D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004) 857880
877A. Conger (Eds.), Shared leadership: Reframing the hows and whys
of leadership (pp. 285303). Thousand Oaks, CA7Sage.
-
Court, M. (2003). Towards democratic leadership: Co-principal
initiatives. International Journal of Leadership in Education,
6,
161183.
Day, D. V. (2000). Leadership development: A review in context.
Leadership Quarterly, 11, 581613.
Day, D. V. (2001). Assessment of leadership outcomes. In S. J.
Zaccaro, & R. J. Klimoski (Eds.), The nature of
organizational
leadership (pp. 384410). San Francisco, CA7 Jossey-Bass.Dixon,
N. M. (1993). Developing managers for the learning organization.
Human Resource Management Review, 3, 243254.
Drath, W. (2001). The deep blue sea: Rethinking the source of
leadership. San Francisco, CA7 Jossey-Bass.Driskell, J. E., &
Johnston, J. H. (1998). Stress exposure training. In J. A.
Cannon-Bowers, & E. Salas (Eds.), Making decisions
under stress: Implications for individual and team training (pp.
191217). Washington, DC7 APA Press.Driskell, J. E., & Salas, E.
(1992). Collective behavior and team performance. Human Factors,
34, 277288.
Dweck, C. S. (1986). Motivational processes affecting learning.
American Psychologist, 41, 10401048.
Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior
in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44,
350383.
Edmondson, A., Bohmer, R., & Pisano, G. (2001, October).
Speeding up team learning. Harvard Business Review, 125132.
Edmondson, A. C., Bohmer, R. M., & Pisano, G. P. (2001).
Disrupted routines: Team learning and new technology
implementation in hospitals. Administrative Science Quarterly,
46, 685716.
Ellemers, N., de Gilder, D., & Haslam, S. A. (2004).
Motivating individuals and groups at work: A social identity
perspective
on leadership and group performance. Academy of Management
Review, 29, 459478.
Ellis, A. P. J., Hollenbeck, J. R., Ilgen, D. R., Porter, C. O.
L. H., West, B. J., & Moon, H. (2003). Team learning:
Collectively
connecting the dots. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88,
821835.
Fallesen, J. J. (2004, May). Elements of purpose-driven leader
development. Paper presented at the 40th International Applied
Military Psychology Symposium, Oslo, Norway.
Flavell, J. H. (1979). Metacognition and cognitive monitoring: A
new area of cognitivedevelopmental inquiry. American
Psychologist, 34(10), 906911.
Ford, J. K., Smith, E. M., Weissbein, D. A., Gully, S. M., &
Salas, E. (1998). Relationships of goal-orientation,
metacognitive
activity, and practice strategies with learning outcomes and
transfer. Journal of Applied Psychology, 83, 218233.
Freeman, C. (2003). The closing of the western mind: The rise of
faith and the fall of reason. London7 Pimlico.Gaba, D. M., Howard,
S. K., & Small, S. D. (1995). Situation awareness in
anesthesiology. Human Factors, 37, 2031.
Gibb, C. A. (1954). Leadership. In G. Lindzey (Ed.), Handbook of
Social Psychology, vol. 2 (pp. 877917). Reading,
MA7Addison-Wesley.
Gibson, C., & Vermeulen, F. (2003). A healthy divide:
Subgroups as a stimulus for team learning behavior.
Administrative
Science Quarterly, 48, 202239.
Gordon, J. (1992). Work teams: How far have they come? Training,
29, 5962.
Gronn, P. (1999). Substituting for leadership: The neglected
role of the leadership couple. Leadership Quarterly, 10, 4162.
Gronn, P. (2002a). Distributed leadership. In K. Leithwood,
& P. Hallinger (Eds.), Second international handbook of
educational leadership and administration (pp. 653696).
Dordrecht7 Kluwer.Gronn, P. (2002b). Distributed leadership as a
unit of analysis. The Leadership Quarterly, 13, 423451.
Gronn, P. (2003). Leaderships place in a community of practice.
In M. Brundrett, N. Burton, & R. Smith (Eds.), Leadership
in
education (pp. 2335). London7 Sage.Gronn, P. (2005). Distributed
organisational leadership. Greenwich, CA7 Information Age
Publishing, in press.Gronn, P., & Hamilton, A. (2004). bA bit
more life in the leadershipQ: Co-principalship as distributed
leadership practice.
Leadership and Policy in Schools, 3, 335.
Hackman, J. R. (1987). The design of work teams. In J. W. Lorsch
(Ed.), Handbook of Organizational Behavior (pp. 315342).
Englewood Cliffs, NJ7 Prentice-Hall.Heenan, D. A., & Bennis,
W. (1999). Co-Leaders: The power of great partnerships. New York7
Wiley.Heifetz, R. (1994). Leadership without easy answers.
Cambridge, MA7 Harvard University.Hinsz, V. B., Tindale, R. S.,
& Vollrath, D. A. (1997). The emerging conceptualization of
groups as information processors.
Psychological Bulletin, 121, 4364.
Hodgson, R. C., Levinson, D. J., & Zaleznik, A. (1965). The
executive role constellation: An analysis of personality and
role
relations in management. Boston7 Harvard University Graduate
School of Business Administration.
D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004)
857880878Hunt, J. S., & Ropo, A. (1997). Leadership and faculty
motivation. In J. L. Bess (Ed.), Teaching well and liking it:
Motivating
faculty to teach effectively (pp. 219247). Baltimore, MD7 Johns
Hopkins University Press.
-
Ilgen, D. R., Hollenbeck, J. R., Johnson, M., & Jundt, J.
(in press). Teams in organizations: From IPO models to IMOI
models. Annual Review of Psychology.
Johnston, W. A., & Briggs, G. E. (1968). Team performance as
a function of team arrangement and work load. Journal of
Applied Psychology, 52, 8994.
Kark, R., Shamir, B., & Chen, G. (2003). The two faces of
transformational leadership: Empowerment and dependency.
Journal
of Applied Psychology, 88, 246255.
Kotter, J. P. (1990). A force for change: How leadership differs
from management. New York7 Free Press.Kozlowski, S. W. J. (1998).
Training and developing adaptive teams: Theory, principles, and
research. In J. A. Cannon-Bowers,
& E. Salas (Eds.),Making decisions under stress:
Implications for individual and team training (pp. 115153).
Washington,
DC7 APA Press.Krantz, J. (1989). The managerial couple:
Superiorsubordinate relationships as a unit of analysis. Human
Resources
Management, 28, 161175.
Leedom, D. K., & Simon, R. (1995). Improving team
coordination: A case for behavioral-based training. Military
Psychology,
7, 109122.
Lin, X. (2001). Designing metacognitive activities. Educational
Technology Research and Development, 49(2), 2340.
Locke, E. A. (2003). Leadership: Starting at the top. In C. L.
Pearce, & J. A. Conger (Eds.), Shared leadership: Reframing
the
hows and whys of leadership (pp. 271284). Thousand Oaks, CA7
Sage.Lord, R. G., & Brown, D. J. (2004). Leadership processes
and follower self-identity. Mahwah, NJ7 Erlbaum.Magee, B. (1985).
Philosophy and the real world: An introduction to Karl Popper.
LaSalle, IL7 Open Court.Marks, M. A., Mathieu, J. E., &
Zaccaro, S. J. (2001). A temporally based framework and taxonomy of
team processes.
Academy of Management Review, 26, 356376.
Mayo, M., Meindl, J. R., & Pastor, J. -C. (2003). Shared
leadership in work teams: A social network approach. In C. L.
Pearce,
& J. A. Conger (Eds.), Shared leadership: Reframing the hows
and whys of leadership (pp. 193214). Thousand Oaks, CA7Sage.
McGrath, J. E. (1984). Groups: Interaction and performance.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ7 Prentice-Hall.McIntyre, R. M., & Salas,
E. (1995). Measuring and managing for team performance: Emerging
principles from complex
environments. In R. Guzzo, & E. Salas (Eds.), Team
effectiveness and decision making in organizations (pp. 149203).
San
Francisco, CA7 Jossey-Bass.Naquin, C. E., & Tynan, R. O.
(2003). The team halo effect: Why teams are not blamed for their
failures. Journal of Applied
Psychology, 88, 332340.
Nias, J. (1987). One finger, one thumb: A case study of the
deputy heads part in the leadership in a nursery/infant school. In
G.
Southworth (Ed.), Readings in primary school management (pp.
3053). London7 Falmer.OConnor, P. M. G., & Quinn, L. (2004).
Organizational capacity for leadership. In C. D. McCauley, & E.
Van Velsor (Eds.),
The Center for Creative Leadership Handbook of Leadership
Development (2nd