Shared leadership performance relationship trajectories as a function of team interventions and members' collective personalities

Abstract

We used longitudinal data from 205 members of 53 student teams who competed in a complex business simulation over 10 weeks to test: (1) whether shared leadership and performance were related reciprocally over time; (2) the relative magnitude of those relationships; and (3) whether a shared leadership intervention changes those relationships. We also considered the influence of team members' mean level personality to account for compositional effects. As anticipated, shared leadership and performance were related positively and reciprocally over time. Moreover, the shared leadership to performance relationship grew stronger and positive whereas the performance to shared leadership relationship remained fairly consistent over time. As expected, the intervention positively related to the trajectory of shared leadership. Finally, we did not find evidence for the hypothesized relationships of personality on shared leadership nor the strength of the intervention.