Content area
Full Text
Keywords Transformational leadership, Team working, Team performance
Abstract Despite transformational leadership enjoying success and attention as an exceptional leadership theory, few scholars have investigated a specific link between transformational leadership theory and team performance. As such, we discuss how transformational leadership theory can provide a framework in which to investigate a leader's impact on team performance. We posit that idealized influence/inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration could produce intermediate outcomes such as shared vision, team commitment, an empowered team environment and functional team conflict. In turn, these intermediate outcomes may positively affect team communication, cohesion and conflict management. Implications for team development, team training and team structure are presented. Limitations and future directions are also discussed.
Globalization of marketplaces, information availability in terms of speed and volume, and increased competitiveness have changed the way organizations function and respond (Katzenbach, 1998). The need for increased flexibility and responsiveness, and the urgent and frenzied pace of product/service development has yielded tasks that prove too complex and time-consuming for individual attention and completion (Katzenbach, 1998; Swezey and Salas, 1992). Because teams can better provide a directed and collaborative effort to address complex task concerns, organizations around the world have significantly increased their dependency on teams (Montoya-Weiss et al., 2001; Salas et al., 1992). Although reliance on teams has increased drastically since the early 1980s, research surrounding team development has not been able to keep pace with the growing need for understanding how teams can achieve more effective performance (Stout et al., 1997; Tannenbaum et al., 1991).
Although achieving higher levels of individual performance is widely researched in the transformational leadership literature (Avolio and Yammarino, 2002; Bass, 1985, 1990), achieving higher levels of team performance has not been as widely researched (Bass et al., 2003). Yet, DeGroot et al. (2000, p. 363) noted in their meta-analysis that when leadership and performance were examined "results show an effect size at the group level of analysis that is double in magnitude relative to the effect size at the individual level". Therefore, evidence suggests that transformational leadership and team performance may be a fruitful area for further exploration.
Previous conceptualizations have linked transformational leadership with various aspects of team performance. For example, Waldman (1994) discussed improving multi-functional team innovation processes...