A Team-Based Leadership Framework—The Interplay of Leadership Self-Efficacy, Power, Collaboration and Teamwork Processes Influencing Team Performance

Abstract

This study identified a framework of team-based leadership facing the change of future requirements of agile organizations and new work and aims to clarify the underlying mechanisms and how they work together and under what conditions. Data were collected from leaders in three separate surveys characterized by various countries, first languages and different ethnicity. A total of 401 completed interviews were collected and the results were analyzed at the individual level. All variables were modeled in a path diagram and tested applying structural equation modeling. The results show that leadership self-efficacy is a key mechanism that let team-based leadership emerge. Leadership self-efficacy is related to personal power, collaboration, teamwork processes and team task performance, but there is no direct effect on team contextual performance. Personal power is correlated with team task performance. Positional power is interrelated with team contextual performance and personal power. Teamwork processes partially mediate the relation between leadership self-efficacy and team task performance as well as team contextual performance. The study findings identified that the leader role perception by teammates can affect personal power and that organizational politics, expressions of narcissists personal characteristics or cross-cultural context dependency can have an impact on positional power. Theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed, together with limitations and recommendations for future research.