Tensions between Teams and Their Leaders

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Abstract

The intersection of teamwork and leadership results in tensions, dilemmas, and paradoxes for both individuals and for institutions such as simultaneously empowering individuals at the same time it frustrates them when our naive, cultural understanding of leadership centralizes power and values leaders who can impose their will and vision on others. Perhaps the fundamental paradox of teamwork and leadership is that the more leadership is focused on an individual the less likely a teams potential will be realized. Six specific domains where tensions arise are: at team boundaries; culture; who is in charge, rationality/cognition; diversity; and collaborations. Three approaches - clarifying different levels of analysis, temporal factors, and overarching concepts - to resolving tensions are discussed. New conceptions of leadership and the importance of the larger cultural frame within which they are embedded are needed for the management of technology and innovation.

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The cognitive underpinnings of effective teamwork: a meta-analysis.

Leslie A DeChurch, Jessica Mesmer-Magnus (2010)

Major theories of team effectiveness position emergent collective cognitive processes as central drivers of team performance. We meta-analytically cumulated 231 correlations culled from 65 independent studies of team cognition and its relations to teamwork processes, motivational states, and performance outcomes. We examined both broad relationships among cognition, behavior, motivation, and performance, as well as 3 underpinnings of team cognition as potential moderators of these relationships. Findings reveal there is indeed a cognitive foundation to teamwork; team cognition has strong positive relationships to team behavioral process, motivational states, and team performance. Meta-analytic regressions further indicate that team cognition explains significant incremental variance in team performance after the effects of behavioral and motivational dynamics have been controlled. The nature of emergence, form of cognition, and content of cognition moderate relationships among cognition, process, and performance, as do task interdependence and team type. Taken together, these findings not only cumulate extant research on team cognition but also provide a new interpretation of the impact of underlying dimensions of cognition as a way to frame and extend future research. Copyright 2009 APA, all rights reserved.