Leadership Style and Team Processes In Self-Managed Teams
Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies , May, 2008 by Stephanie T. Solansky
Team leadership merits continued attention because leaders have an impact on how the team develops and performs. In this article, team processes are explored within self-managed teams that develop different leadership styles. In particular, two leadership styles are compared: shared leadership and single leadership. The results of the study suggest that teams with shared leadership have motivational and cognitive advantages over teams that took the traditional approach of relying on a single leader. The article concludes with a discussion of the results, implications, and future research opportunities. Keywords: leadership; shared leadership; self-managed teams; motivation; cognition.
Two key concepts in organizational studies are explored in this article: leadership and teams. In particular, this article represents an empirical analysis of leadership styles and team processes within self-managed teams. Self-managed teams have the autonomy to make important decisions concerning their team processes (Katzenbach & Smith, 1993; S. G. Cohen, 1991; Yukl, 1998). A key team process is leadership. Without leadership, team members are unlikely to identify with team objectives (Sivasubramaniam, Murry, Avolio, & Jung, 2002). Barry (1991) argued that self-managed teams need more leadership than conventional teams around both task-related issues and team development issues. However, because leadership is not designated in self-managed teams, an interesting question is: What do leadership processes look like in these types of teams?
The motivation behind this article is to explore the notion that if the necessity of leadership does not disappear in teams where no leader is designated, then do self-managed teams emerge with a single leader who assumes a dominant position or a collective sense of leadership where the functions of leadership are shared among the team members? In addition, the other key processes that self-managed teams must attend to are likely impacted by which type of leadership emerges. In other words, how are team motivational, cognitive, and social processes impacted by whether a dominant person assumes the leadership role or if the team shares the leadership function? It is the purpose of this article to provide some exploratory, empirical evidence of how these key processes (motivational, cognitive, and social) are influenced by the type of leadership process that emerges within self-managed teams.
Literature Review
Organizations are increasingly employing teams as their fundamental organizing unit (Salas & Fiore, 2004). For example, some estimates claim 80% of companies with 100 or more employees rely on teams and groups for their everyday work (Peterson, Mitchell, Thompson, & Burr, 2000; S. G. Cohen & Bailey, 1997). In addition, Offerman and Spiros (2001) found that managers spend almost 40% of their time working with teams or groups, and almost 50% of these managers report that the demand for team development will increase. Organizations have clearly found teams to be effective. The combination of skills, expertise, and resources of team members enable the team to potentially optimize the speed and efficiency in which complex tasks can be completed (McComb, Green, & Compton, 1999).
A team is a group for which there are assigned role functions, usually limited life span membership, and a conscious awareness of interdependency (Salas, Dickinson, Converse, & Tannenbaum, 1992). Several team processes need to be undertaken to maintain these role functions and awareness of interdependency. Peterson et al. (2000) and Yoo and Kanawattanachai (2001) suggested that there are different types of team processes (motivation, cognition, and socialization) and argued that research needs to examine these multiple processes at work in teams. Team motivation is a critical team process because without it teams are not going to exert the necessary effort to complete tasks (Zaccaro, Rittman, & Marks, 2001). Team socialization is a critical team process because teams need to be cohesive to perform well and be committed to the team's objectives (House & Shamir, 1993). Team cognition is a critical team process because it represents the acquisition, storage, manipulation, and use of information within teams (Klimoski & Mohammed, 1994). The goal in this article is to understand how motivational, social, and cognitive team processes are impacted in regard to leadership style.
Shared Leadership and Self-Managed Teams
Often work teams are allowed to self-manage their team processes, that is, the team has the authority and responsibility to manage how their team functions. In addition, typically self-managed teams have no formal leader designated by the authority that creates the team. Rather, the team is allowed to designate its own leader. What is interesting from the standpoint of leadership is whether a self-managed team over time emerges with a "leader" in the traditional sense of someone who assumes a dominant position and is the major source of influence for both task and social processes or if the team develops a collective sense of leadership where the traditional functions of the leader are shared among the team members.
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