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Self-leadership
Christopher P. Neck
Research on team innovation and performance has become increasingly important as organizations move to flatter, more diverse ways of organizing and are forced to develop creative solutions to complex problems. More specifically, the implementation of cross-functional and self-managed work teams has created new challenges, particularly in organizations that have traditionally rewarded vertical leadership and individual innovation and performance. As [83] Seers et al . (2003, p. 96) assert, "self-managed teams constitute one of the most prominent features of post-industrial era organizations". As more and more organizations turn to team approaches in both profit and non-profit arenas, the study of team leadership and performance has become critical ([74] Pearce et al. , 2004).
In particular, the increasing emphasis on team-based knowledge work, or work that involves significant investment of intellectual capital by a group of skilled professionals, is forcing us to expand our traditional models of leadership, as vested in one individual, to encompass more complex models of leadership, that include such concepts as self- and shared leadership ([31] Houghton et al. , 2003). However, the implementation of team-based knowledge work is not always associated with increased effectiveness (e.g. [1] Ashley, 1992; [90] Verespej, 1990), and teams often fail to live up to their potential due to their inability to smoothly coordinate team members' actions and the lack of effective leadership to guide this process ([11] Burke et al. , 2003). As a result, it is important to develop models of team leadership that are more predictive of successful outcomes such as knowledge creation and productivity.
One promising development in the area of team leadership is the construct of shared leadership. Shared leadership is defined as "a dynamic, interactive influence process among individuals in groups for which the objective is to lead one another to the achievement of group or organizational goals or both" ([68] Pearce and Conger, 2003, p. 1). A prominent distinction between shared leadership and more traditional forms of leadership is that the influence processes involved may frequently include peer or lateral influence in addition to upward and downward hierarchical influence processes. Particularly in cross-functional teams which lack hierarchical authority, or have a formally appointed leader who is highly dependent on the team members' unique knowledge, skills, and backgrounds,...