The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004) 857880Review

Leadership capacity in teams

David V. Daya,*, Peter Gronnb, Eduardo Salasc

a124 Bruce V. Moore Building, Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park,

PA 16802-3100, United StatesbMonash University, Australia

cUniversity of Central Florida, United States

Abstract

The present article examines the state of the field regarding leadership in teams. A perspective is advanced that

considers leadership as an outcome of team processes (e.g., teamwork and team learning) that provides resources

for better team adaptation and performance in subsequent performance cycles. This perspective complements but

does not replace the perspective of leadership as an input to team processes and performance. Specific facets of the

teaming cycle are reviewed, including the nature of teamwork and interventions designed to facilitate its

development, the role of team learning as different from individual learning, and relatively recent advances in

understanding shared and distributed leadership (DL). These components of team leadership are cast within an

emerging IMOI (inputs, mediators, outcomes, inputs) framework proposed for understanding the cyclical and

ongoing nature of teams in organizations.

D 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Teamwork; IPO model; Back-up behavior

Contents

1. Leadership capacity in teams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 858

2. Developing leadership in teams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 859

3. Beyond IPO models of teams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 860

4. What is teamwork? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 862

4.1. Mutual performance monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 863

4.2. Back-up behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8631048-9843/$ -

doi:10.1016/j.l

* Correspo

E-mail addnding author. Fax: +1 814 863 7002.see front matter D 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

eaqua.2004.09.001

ress: dvd1@psu.edu (D.V. Day).

Our primary purpose is to review theory and research that is relevant to emerging perspectives on

team leadership, as well as some of the foundational assumptions on the nature of teamwork, teamlearning, and distributed leadership (DL). One emerging perspective in particular that will be examined

in detail involves expanding the conceptualization of team leadership beyond those attributes that are

brought to a team by an individual (e.g., a formal or informal leader), to also consider leadership that

emerges within a team. From the former and more traditional perspective, leadership is viewed primarily

as an input to team processes and performance. It is conceptualized mainly in terms of individual leader

skills, abilities, and behaviors or other leader attributes (e.g., charisma) that are thought to directly affect

team processes and performance. From the latter perspective, however, leadership is considered as an

outcome at the team level of analysis. Thus, the present perspective seeks to expand the focus to include

ways that leadership is drawn frominstead of only added toteams as a function of the processes

associated with people working together to accomplish shared work (OConnor & Quinn, 2004).

Previous reviews of team leadership have focused almost exclusively on the traditional perspective of

leadership as input to a team. In an earlier Leadership Quarterly Yearly Review article on team

leadership, Zaccaro, Rittman, and Marks (2001) focused on the importance of functional leadership in

teams. From this perspective, effective team leaders are those individuals who take on whatever role

function is required in the team. Thus, a leaders primary responsibility is to determine what functions

are missing or not being handled adequately in the team and do it or get it done. Although a brief

mention was made of possible team influences on leader effectiveness, the focus was primarily on the

influence of the leader on team effectiveness. In this manner, it can be seen how a common or traditional4.3. Adaptability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 864

4.4. Leadership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 864

4.5. Team orientation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 864

5. Interventions for developing teamworks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 865

5.1. Cross training. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 865

5.2. Metacognitive training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 865

5.3. Team coordination training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 867

5.4. Self-guided correction training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 867

5.5. Assertiveness training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 867

5.6. Stress exposure training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 868

5.7. Scenario-based team training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 868

5.8. Team building . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 868

6. Group information processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 869

7. Team learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 869

8. Summary of the research on team learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 872

9. Team learning and team leadership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 872

10. The possibility of distributed leadership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 873

11. Remaining issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 875

12. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 876

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 877

1. Leadership capacity in teams

D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004) 857880858perspective on team leadership emphasizes the contributions of an individual leader on group processes

and outcomes.

processes influence leader effectiveness. At a higher level, however, leadership and team processes

can affect one another and be affected by prior team performance. At an even more complex level ofanalysis, leadership and team processes can be binextricably integrated such that the boundaries ofeach set of processes become fairly indistinctQ (p. 6). This conceptualization gets at the inherentmultilevel nature of team leadership, but does little to provide a conceptual distinction between

leadership and teamwork.

Whereas most approaches tend to focus on the more basic conceptualization, the present review will

widen the lens to also examine advances related to understanding the more complex levels of team

leadership. Specifically, we will review recent research and theory on topics related to how leadership

emerges or is drawn from teams as a function of working on and accomplishing shared work. We argue

that at this level, it is not so much that leadership and team processes become indistinguishable but that

leadership happens as an outcome of team processes, and this team-level leadership is then used as a

resource in future process and performance episodes (Marks, Mathieu, & Zaccaro, 2001).

Some of the reasons to expand the lens on the meaning of team leadership stem from the increasing

popularity of teams as a way to organize the accomplishment of work in organizations. It is also needed

to more accurately portray the ongoing nature of leadership, performance, and results (Day, 2001). Fast

acting, temporary project teams have become commonplace in many organizations (Sundstrom,

McIntyre, Halhill, & Richards, 2000) with evidence suggesting that this team format represented fully

one third of all teams operating in the United States over a decade ago (Gordon, 1992). It is likely that

this percentage is larger today in that it is an increasingly common expectation for employees to be able

to work effectively in teams and often where there is no formally appointed leader (or where team

members are all at the same position level).

In situations in which there is no formal leader, how does leadership occur? One way is that an

individual or perhaps a couple of individuals emerge as the team leaders. This is a traditional perspective

that is grounded in the well-established leader emergence literature. But a different perspective is that all

team members participate in the leadership process, i.e., it is a shared, distributed process that creates a

capacity for versatility and adaptability. It is also possible for leadership to be an outcome of the

interrelationships of team members, rather than solely an individual input into the team. In short, we

believe that leadership can take many forms and our purpose is to elaborate on some of those forms that

have not been widely considered.

2. Developing leadership in teams

Central to this leadership-as-outcome perspective is that a team can build its leadership capacity

through interacting with the goal of accomplishing shared work as long as the team is also intentional or

purpose-driven around the learning and development that occurs (Fallesen, 2004). As reviewed in aMore recently, a special issue of Group and Organization Management examined the topic of the

binterfaceQ of leadership and team processes (Zaccaro & Klimoski, 2002). In defining what they meanby the term interface, Zaccaro and Klimoski note that this refers to bthe various ways that leadershipand team processes become intertwined so as to influence collective performanceQ (p. 6). At a morebasic level, this can refer to how leadership processes influence team performance or how team

D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004) 857880 859subsequent section of this article, formal interventions can assist with the developmental process. In this

manner, leadership capacity is a resource that a team can draw from in subsequent performance episodes.

leader. As noted by OConnor and Quinn (2004): bWhen leadership is viewed as a property of wholesystems, as opposed to solely the property of individuals, effectiveness in leadership becomes more aproduct of those connections or relationships among the parts than the result of any one part of that

system (such as the leader)Q (p. 423).For some time, there has been the theoretical perspective in the literature that views leadership as an

outcomeof effective social processes and structure (e.g., Gibb, 1954; Salancik, Calder, Rowland, Leblebici,

& Conway, 1975); however, it has not been a very prevalent perspective. Nonetheless, there are benefits

associated with considering leadership as an outcome in that it is something created by the team, and in

particular, is reflected in the social capital of the team. Unlike human capital, in which the focus is on

developing individual knowledge, skills, and abilities, the emphasis with social capital is on building

networked relationships among individuals that enhance cooperation and resource exchange (e.g., con-

nectivity). Social capital is a resource that adds value to teams and organizations (Tsai & Ghoshal, 1998).

3. Beyond IPO models of teams

To better understand the different perspectives on leadership in teams, it might be helpful to take a

step back and examine frameworks that have been proposed for understanding teaming and team

performance. The most common of these is based on the influential work of Steiner (1972), McGrath

(1984), and Hackman (1987), who described team performance in systems terms in which inputs to the

team influence team processes, which lead in turn to measurable outcomes. This has come to be known

as the IPO (inputprocessoutput) model or framework (but certainly not a theory) of team

performance. Inputs take the form of individual knowledge, skills, abilities, and other forms of human

capital (e.g., a leaders skills and experience). In the context of team leadership, a leader is typically

thought to bring specific leadership skills and competencies to a team that are used in influencing core

processes, such as transition (e.g., strategy formulation), action (e.g., coordination), and interpersonal

processes (e.g., conflict management; Marks et al., 2001). Enhanced team processes are then causally

associated with effective outcomes, such as team performance.An example of this can be found as a team begins to form. At an initial forming stage, a team is

composed of some number of relatively independent individuals who each have their own needs, goals,

and expected outcomes that motivate their behavior. Leadership processes can help align these individual

needs, goals, and expected outcomes across individualsgiven that creating alignment is thought to be a

major leadership task (Van Velsor & McCauley, 2004)with the result being a shift in the definition of

self from completely personal (bIQ) to at least partly collective (bweQ). Instead of a set of independent(and possibly misaligned) individual identities, having the motivation and ability to conceive of

themselves in collective terms allows for the identification of the needs of the team, collective goals, and

expected team outcomes (Ellemers, de Gilder, & Haslam, 2004).

The creation of a collective (i.e., team-based) social identity serves as a potent leadership resource for

subsequent performance. This central identification with the team (bweQ) rather than the individual (bIQ)allows for different forms of leadership to emerge and creates additional possibilities for participating in

leadership. It also is a resource for developing team social capital (Day, 2000) and as such, the leadership

of the team is developing rather thanor perhaps in addition tothe development of any individual

D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004) 857880860An IPO model of team performance has served as a useful heuristic for conceptualizing the pivotal

role of team processes for enhancing team performance and also in providing some guidance for team

research; however, it also has distinct limitations. Perhaps the most important of these is that the notion

of outcome implies a final end state. In terms of the ongoing nature of leadership, team processes, and

performance, a much better description than outcome might be that of a bsearch to catch reality in flightQwhere the legacy of the past is always shaping the future (Pettigrew, 1992, p. 10). In a similar vein, Ilgen,

Hollenbeck, Johnson, and Jundt (in press) point out that although team performance might be an output

at one time period, it is an input and part of the process leading to performance in a subsequent time

period. IPO frameworks also imply a single-cycle and linear path from inputs through outcomes, and

as noted by Igen et al., do not address the important role of feedback loops on team processes or the

dynamic nature of team performance.

In place of IPO, Ilgen et al. (in press) suggest an alternative IMOI model. Here, the bIQ still refersto inputs; however, mediational influences (bMQ) replace processes because mediators are thought tohave greater explanatory power on outcomes (bOQ). The additional bIQ at the end of the acronymaddresses the important concept of feedback loops or bcyclical causal feedbackQ that is critical tounderstanding how teams perform over time. The omission of the dashes between letters suggests that

the causal relations need not be linear, but that they could also be nonlinear or conditional. Although

the IMOI model may not have the same sort of simplistic appeal as an IPO framework, it does seem

to suggest a more realistic conceptualization of how a team develops over time as well as the dynamic

nature of team performance.

In terms of an emerging view of team leadership as an output of team processes, the IMOI

model helps to illustrate how team leadership can be considered to originate with individual skills

and behaviors, and through engaging in shared (process) work develop into team-level leadership

as an outcome that serves also as an input in the next stage of team development and

performance. Fig. 1 illustrates our view of the team leadership cycle in terms of building team

leadership capacity cast within the IMOI framework. In this model, individual team member

resources (knowledge, skills, and abilities brought to the team) contribute to the development of

teamwork, but are moderated by the resources and actions of a leader and formal interventions

used to develop teamwork. In this manner, formal interventions could substitute for leadership in

the development of teamwork; however, when formal interventions are not in place, the quality of

leadership is critical in teamwork development. In turn, teamwork in the form of key processes

(e.g., back-up behavior, performance monitoring, team orientation) contributes to team learning

(e.g., learning behavior of the team that is shaped by its learning orientation), which contributes to

creating team leadership capacity (e.g., cognitive, motivation, and affective states of sharedness,

distributedness, and connectivity of team members). This team leadership capacity (in the form of

social capital) is not only an output of the teaming cycle but also serves as input for future or

ongoing performing and directly influences the human capital of the team in subsequent

performance episodes.

Given that the model is focused on how team leadership capacity is developed and not on how well

teams perform, there is no explicit incorporation of team performance into the model. We view team

leadership capacity as an bemergent stateQ or a construct that develops over the life of the team; istypically dynamic in nature; and varies as a function of team inputs, processes, and outcomes.

Although Ilgen et al. (in press) claim that emergent states impact team performance directly, Marks et

al. (2001) disagree: bEmergent states do not represent team interaction or team actions that lead

D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004) 857880 861toward outcomes. Rather, they are products of team experiences (including team processes) and

become new inputs to subsequent processes and outcomesQ (p. 358). Team leadership capacity is an

D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004) 857880862example of such an emergent state with potential for influencing future performance (although the

exact nature of this influence is unknown). We believe that team performance is shaped by

complementary processes that occur in parallel IMOI cycles and that ongoing team performance

episodes likely intersect with team leadership cycles; however, it is premature to speculate on the

specific nature of these intersections.

We next turn our attention to addressing teamwork because this is thought to be an important

mediational process in the development of team learning and team leadership capacity (in addition to

team performance). The IMOI perspective on teams (Ilgen et al., in press) is much more helpful to

conceptualizing the types of multiple mediational processes addressed in the present model than

traditional, linear, and univocal IPO models. The following section provides a brief overview of the

nature of teamwork, how it can be developed through formal interventions, and how it is differentiated

from team leadership.

4. What is teamwork?

Most organizations would espouse the goal of striving for better teamwork from their

employees. Greater collaboration among employees is often seen as a way to achieve collective

organizational goals and develop a competitive advantage. For these reasons, executives and

managers often promote teamwork as a core value in their organizations. Indeed, survey results of

Fig. 1. Team leadership cycle.

human resource professionals in Fortune 100 companies indicated that teamwork and how to

capitalize on it were their highest priorities (Roomkin, Rosen, & Dubbs, 1998, as cited in Naquin

& Tynan, 2003). Although few would refute the value of building better teamwork in an

organization, what do we really know about the nature of teamwork? Specifically, how do we

know if we have it and how do we get it? What are the actions, events, behaviors and cognitions

that good teams exhibit?

Teamwork is a dynamic and elusive phenomenon. Despite the decades of research on the topic,

organizations still have problems composing, developing, and managing teams (Salas, Stagl, & Burke,

2004). There is also residual confusion about how teamwork differs from team leadership (especially

when leadership is examined at the more aggregate level of analysis). However, some progress has

been made in recent years in terms of a better understanding about what comprises teamwork.

Teamwork is a set of interrelated and flexible cognitions, behaviors, and attitudes that are used to

achieve desired mutual goals. In a sense, teams bthink,Q bdo,Q and bfeelQ as they perform theirinterdependent tasks. These cognitions, behaviors, and attitudes reflect the competencies (i.e.,

knowledge, skills, and abilities and other characteristics) that team members need to have in order

to execute effective team functions and to achieve performance greater than the total independent

efforts of all individual team members.

Several researchers have advanced typologies or taxonomies of key teamwork competencies (see

Stevens & Campion, 1994; Cannon-Bowers, Tannenbaum, Salas, & Volpe, 1995). There is evidence

that some of these are essential to team performance (see Salas et al., 2004), but there is not a clear

and consistent picture of the core elements of teamwork. There remains too much fragmentation and a

lack of clarity on the core constructs. However, a clearer look at the evidence of what has been shown

to facilitate or hinder the development of teamwork may help point to a parsimonious set of core

elements. Recently, Salas, Sims, and Burke (2004) have argued that there might be a bBig FiveQ inteamwork. They suggest that in highly interdependent teams, five critical components emerged: (a)

Mutual performance monitoring, (b) back-up behaviors, (c) adaptability, (d) active leadership, and (e)

team orientation.

4.1. Mutual performance monitoring

Mutual performance monitoring can be defined as team members ability to bkeep track of fellow teammembers [sic] work while carrying out their own. . .to ensure that everything is running as expected andto ensure that they are following procedures correctlyQ (McIntyre & Salas, 1995, p. 23). Recent researchhas suggested that effective teams are composed of members who maintain an awareness of team

functioning. They do this by monitoring fellow members work such that they catch mistakes, slips, or

lapses prior to or shortly after they have occurred. This awareness requires a shared understanding (i.e.,

shared mental model) of the task, and team equipment roles and requirements (see Cannon-Bowers,

Salas, & Converse, 1993).

4.2. Back-up behavior

Back-up behavior is about supportive actions on the part of team members. It is a product of teams

D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004) 857880 863effectively monitoring their own performance as well as that of their members. Thus, mutual

performance monitoring allows for back-up behavior to occur. It has been defined as bthe discretionary

provision resource and task-related to another member of ones team that is intended to help that team

member obtain the goals as defined by his or her role. . . (and) often result from a recognition bypotential back up providers that there is a workload distribution problem in their teamQ (Porter et al.,2003, pp. 391392). That is, while team members are monitoring their teammates, they are able to detect

deficiencies or overloads and step in to assist when needed. As a result, team members can shift work

responsibilities to others as it becomes necessary. This is very similar to the construct Johnston and

Briggs (1968) referred to as load balancing.

4.3. Adaptability

If team members are performing mutual performance monitoring and back-up behavior, then the team

can adapt. Adaptability refers to the ability to recognize deviations from expected actions and readjust

actions accordingly. Thus, team adaptability has been defined as a teams ability to recognize deviation

from expected action and readjust their strategies according to the particular task demands at hand

(Cannon-Bowers et al., 1995; Salas et al., 2004). Adaptability is what makes teams valuable in

organizations since they can allocate resources, self-correct, and redistribute workload as they go in

response to changing organizational and external environmental demands.

4.4. Leadership

Team leaders can make or break a team and are extremely influential in terms of the degree of

teamwork that develops (or not). Team leaders (whether formally appointed or emergent) create,

foster, promote, and maintain shared understanding to enable effective teamwork. Thus, an effective

team leader will create a climate that encourages mutual performance monitoring, supportive behavior,

and adaptability. Put somewhat differently, leaders can offer a valuable input to team processes.

Effective team leaders shape the development of shared mental models in their teams by

systematically seeking, evaluating, and organizing information about team functioning and constraints

(Zaccaro et al., 2001). They then serve as sensemakers by interpreting and communicating key

information to the team thereby creating a mental framework (or template) that promotes common

understanding and action. In this manner, effective leaders can help develop team-level leadership that

can be drawn from the team (i.e., serve as input) in subsequent performance cycles. These resources

are what we referred to earlier as team leadership capacity.

4.5. Team orientation

The final dimension thought to be an essential aspect of teamwork is the orientation of the team

toward the individual or the collective. Although the previous dimensions have been behavioral in

nature, team orientation is attitudinal. Team or collective orientation is the tendency to enhance

individual performance through the coordination, evaluation, and use of task inputs from other group

members in an interdependent manner in performing a group task (Driskell & Salas, 1992).

Moreover, several researchers have found that some individuals with more of an egocentric

orientation prefer to work independently and will tend to perform poorly in team settings relative to

D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004) 857880864situation in which they are allowed to work alone. As a result, team performance will be significantly

enhanced by the ability to bring together team members who are willing to be collectively oriented

Metacognition can be defined as the ability to understand and monitor ones own thoughts, and the

assumptions and implications of ones activities (Brown, Bransford, Ferrara, & Campione, 1983;Flavell, 1979). Metacognitive and regulatory processes must necessarily extend beyond the self when

working in teams. That is, individual-level cognitive and behavioral skills must operate seamlessly

across the team in order to maximize team effectiveness. Team members must be able to monitor the

pacing of their teams work and be able to step in to assist teammates who need assistance whenand develop a shared (i.e., team-based) social identity. Others have recently elaborated on how team

leaders can shape or develop collective identities in a team (Lord & Brown, 2004). This type of team

orientation or collective team identity is a valuable resource that can be drawn upon in future

performance episodes.

5. Interventions for developing teamwork

There are many ways to develop teamwork skills (e.g., building individual competencies or

human capital for teamwork). The most common way is team training, which can be conceptualized

as a set of theoretically based strategies or instructional processes. Recent research has advanced and

tested a number of these strategies and we next review some specific team training and development

strategies that have been used to enhance team performance. The discussion includes current

information on the effectiveness of each of these instructional approaches. Although there are more

training strategies than are depicted here, the ones described below and summarized in Table 1

represent some of the most effective team training strategies as based on the available empirical

evidence.

5.1. Cross training

The focus of cross training is in giving trainees exposure to, and practice on, other teammates

tasks. That is, trainees experience the task requirements and needs of one or more teammates (i.e.,

they bwalk in someone elses shoesQ). Cross training is therefore designed to result in better teammember knowledge with respect to teammates task responsibilities and coordination requirements.

Specifically, cross training may involve positional clarification (team members are provided with

general knowledge of teammates general position and responsibilities), positional modeling (where

the duties of each team member are discussed and observed), and positional rotation (allows direct,

hands-on practice of each members specific tasks; Blickensderfer, Cannon-Bowers, & Salas, 1998).

Evidence supporting the effectiveness of cross training has been collected in both the laboratory and

the field. The bulk of this evidence suggests that cross training can improve the teams anticipatory

behavior and foster communication and coordination strategies. For example, Volpe, Cannon-Bowers,

Salas, and Spector (1996) found that cross training was an important determinant of effective task

coordination, communication, and performance.

5.2. Metacognitive training

D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004) 857880 865overloaded. Furthermore, they must build and maintain a sense of team efficacy to deal with

challenges faced in the operational environment (Kozlowski, 1998). Training to improve

Table 1

Team training and development instructional strategies

Instructional strategy Level Description Sources

Cross training Team Teammates develop an understanding of the

tasks, duties, and responsibilities of coworkers by

performing other team members roles and tasks

Volpe et al., 1996;

Salas et al., 2001

Strategy targets team members interpositional

knowledge and shared mental models

Increases team coordination and reduces process loss

Metacognitive

training

Individual Targets trainees executive monitoring and

self-regulatory cognitive processes for development

Ford et al., 1998

Training develops metacognitive skills which

in turn regulate cognitive abilities, such as

inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning

and problem solving

Team coordination

training

Team Focuses on teaching team members about basic

process underlying teamwork

(e.g., communicationboth implicit and explicit)

Prince & Salas, 1993;

Salas et al., 1997, 1992

Strategy widely applied in aviation, medical

and military communities

Targets mutual performance monitoring

and back-up behavior

Self-guided

correction

training

Individual

and team

Team members are taught techniques for

monitoring and then categorizing their own

behaviors as to the degree of their effectiveness

Leedom & Simon, 1995;

Smith-Jentsch et al., 1998

This process generates instructive feedback

so that team members can review performance

episodes and correct deficiencies

Assertiveness

training

Individual Utilizes behavioral modeling techniques to

demonstrate both assertive and nonassertive

behaviors and aid in the creation

and reinforcement of assertiveness in trainees

Smith-Jentsch et al., 1996

Provides multiple practice and feedback

opportunities for trainees

Stress exposure

training

Individual

and team

Targets trainee knowledge of both potential

stressors and coping strategies

Driskell & Johnston, 1998

Develops trainee insight into the link

between stressors, perceived stress and

individual affect and performance

Scenario-based

team training

Individual

and team

Designed to structure training in complex,

distributed environments

Oser et al., 1999

Incorporates trigger events which elicit

targeted behavior in contextually rich and

realistic environments

Provides guidelines for training objectives,

trigger events, measures of performance,

scenario generation, exercise conduct and

control, data collection and feedback

Team building Team Team development strategy that targets role

clarification, goal setting, problem solving or

interpersonal relations for improvement

Buller, 1986;

Salas et al., 1999

D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004) 857880866

metacognitive skills is designed to teach team members to become more aware of the strategies they

use to learn, determine which strategies are most appropriate, and enable periodic adjustment as

necessary. Specific strategies targeted may include error detecting, effort and attention allocating,

elaborating, self-questioning, self-explanation, constructing visual representations, activating prior

knowledge, and revision (Lin, 2001). Metacognitive skills have a demonstrated relationship with

knowledge acquisition, behavior acquisition, and increased self-efficacy (Ford, Smith, Weissbein,

Gully, & Salas, 1998).

5.3. Team coordination training

Team coordination training (also known as crew resource management) has been successfully

applied across a wide variety of contexts, including aviation settings (Prince & Salas, 1993), medical

environments (Gaba, Howard, & Small, 1995), and in other complex team decision-making

situations (Salas, Cannon-Bowers, & Johnston, 1997). The general purpose of team coordination

training is to prevent and mitigate errors (i.e., to improve decision making during emergencies and

improve teamwork communication and coordination). The delivery typically varies according to the

requirements dictated by each environment. These strategies have been tested empirically and have

demonstrated substantial team performance improvements (e.g., Leedom & Simon, 1995; Salas,

Dickinson, Converse, & Tannenbaum, 1992; Salas, Fowlkes, Stout, Milanovich, & Prince, 1999;

Salas, Burke, Bowers, & Wilson, 2001).

5.4. Self-guided correction training

Team self-correction is a process in which teammates think about and discuss teammate roles and

responsibilities, team strategy, integral sequences and responses, and related concepts. This training

strategy specifically targets mutual performance monitoring, team leadership, and closed-loop

communication. The team is taught to diagnose, design, and implement solutions to its team functional

problems. Behavioral modeling is one typical method for training team self-correction and has been used

successfully in the past (e.g., Smith-Jentsch, Zeisig, Acton, & McPherson, 1998) to build a greater

degree of shared expectations among team members and allow teams to use more implicit coordination

and enable better overall performance.

5.5. Assertiveness training

Assertiveness training is designed to teach team members to effectively communicate when they are:

(a) offering or requesting assistance, (b) offering a potential solution, or (c) providing feedback to other

team members. An underlying assumption of this strategy is that each team member is a resource who

can provide unique perspectives and solutions to team tasks (Smith-Jentsch, Salas, & Baker, 1996).

Assertiveness training is a strategy that uses role modeling and active practice to improve individual

members assertiveness. Research examining the impact of assertiveness training has indicated that,

whereas both attitudinally focused and skill-based training improved attitudes toward team member

assertiveness, practice and feedback are critical to producing behavioral effects. When given proper

D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004) 857880 867practice and feedback opportunities, individual improvements in assertiveness have been demonstrated

(Smith-Jentsch et al., 1996).

5.6. Stress exposure training

As teams often operate in stressful environments (especially in military and aviation contexts), stress

exposure training may be provided to individuals and whole teams in order to prepare them to maintain

effective performance under stressful conditions. It is designed to make trainees more familiar with the

stress environment, build trainees confidence in their ability to perform under stress, and develop the

skills of trainees to make their performance more effective in the stress environment. When these

objectives are met, stress exposure training has been able to reduce the negative influence of stress on

team performance (Driskell & Johnston, 1998).

5.7. Scenario-based team training

The aim of this strategy is to provide opportunities for the trainees to develop team competencies by

practicing in simulated environments that are representative of actual operational conditions and

receiving feedback linked to specific events that occur during training. It tightly links critical tasks,

learning objectives, scenario design, performance measurement, and feedback, and has been empirically

tested and operationally demonstrated in a variety of team training environments (Oser, Cannon-Bowers,

Salas, & Dwyer, 1999). In short, it creates linkages among critical scenario components that can be used

to guide the systematic infrastructure design. These linkages have many potential advantages, among

which include: (a) reduced number and experience level of personnel to operate as part of the scenario

planning and control staff, (b) facilitation of the development of new scenarios, and (c) maximization of

use of previously developed scenarios.

5.8. Team building

Team building has also been referred to as team development and is an extremely popular and

common intervention. Team building interventions may focus on role clarification, goal setting, problem

solving, or interpersonal relations as a target. Taken together, there is no conclusive evidence of

empirical support for the effect of team building on performance (e.g., Buller, 1986; Woodman &

Sherwood, 1980). However, when examining the specific components of team building, it has been

found that interventions emphasizing role clarification were most likely to increase performance,

whereas interventions emphasizing goal setting, problem solving, or interpersonal relations were no

more likely to render an increase or decrease in performance (Salas, Rozell, Mullen, & Driskell, 1999).

Team building is also less likely to be effective as function of team sizelarger teams typically derive

less benefit from team building interventions (Salas, Fowlkes, Stout, Milanovich, & Prince, 1999).

In sum, the literature on teamwork has identified five interrelated components that are thought to be

critical for the development of teamwork, including (a) mutual performance monitoring, (b) back-up

behaviors, (c) adaptability, (d) team leadership, and (e) team orientation. There are also recognized

interventions that can be used to enhance teamwork. If teamwork is considered as an important

mediational process as based on the IMOI model (Ilgen et al., in press), one question is whether it can

help create team-based leadership as an outcome. Put somewhat differently, can teamwork help to create

team-level leadership resources and enhance the leadership capacity of the team? A relevant issue to

D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004) 857880868address is whether the research evidence supports the possibility of team-level processes, such as

leadership. The literature on group information processing suggests that it is indeed possible.

6. Group information processing

One perspective that supports the notion of a team-level leadership focus is the recognition that

groups (like individuals) process relevant and available information to perform intellectual tasks.1

Group-level information processing binvolves the degree to which information, ideas, or cognitive

Their review also noted some differences between how individuals and groups process information. For

example, groups generally decrease variability in the way information is processed relative to

D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004) 857880 869individuals. There are other differences that are a result of the fact that groups are composed of multiple

individuals. Hinsz et al. termed these bdimensions of variabilityQ for understanding group-levelinformation processing (e.g., communalityuniqueness of information, convergencediversity of ideas,

accentuationattenuation of cognitive processes, and belongingnessdistinctiveness of members).

The four dimensions of variability relate to the contribution and combination aspects of team-level

information processing and reflect its inherent multilevel nature. Contributions reflect the individual

level, whereas combination occurs at the group or team level. The information, ideas, cognitive

processes, leadership skills, or other forms of human capital that team members bring to an interaction

are the individual-level contributions. The ways in which these individual contributions are aggregated

during team interaction and the development of teamwork illustrate the combination process. The

important point to consider is that team-level phenomena are almost always based to some degree on

individual-level skills and processes. When discussing something like team learning, for example, it is

necessary to remember that team learning cannot occur without some level of individual learning. Thus,

there must be both the motivation and ability to learn among the various team members. But that does

not mean that team learning is the same as aggregated individual learning, as discussed in the next

section.

7. Team learning

If team-level information processing can occur as Hinsz et al. (1997) suggest, then it is a logical

extension to consider the possibility of team learning, especially in terms of building leadership

capacity in a team. Learning is often a precursor to adaptation (Ilgen et al., in press). In this manner,

being motivated and able to learn is a prerequisite for effective leadership and at the team level

1We should also note that we do not draw a firm distinction between groups and teams in our review of this literature (also see Sundstrom

et al., 2000). Although there are likely to be certain distinctions in terms of the type or amount of interdependence, the debate about what is a

group and what is a team is beyond the scope of the present paper. Furthermore, semantic debates of this type are rarely useful or productive. It

has been argued that bthe amount of worthwhile knowledge that comes out of any field of inquiry. . .tends to be in inverse proportion to theprocesses are shared, and are being shared, among the group members and how this sharing of

information affects both individual- and group-level outcomesQ (Hinsz, Tindale, & Vollrath, 1997). Theparticular outcome of interest here is leadership.

Hinsz et al. (1997) demonstrated based on a comprehensive review of the literature that the same

information-processing components that are thought to describe how individuals process information

(e.g., attention, encoding, storage, retrieval, response, feedback, and so forth) are also relevant to groups.amount of discussion about the meaning of words that goes into it. Such discussion, far from being necessary to clear thinking and precise

knowledge, obscures both, and is bound to lead to endless argument about words instead of matters of substanceQ (Magee, 1985, p. 49).

learning would provide an important means of developing leadership resources. A definition of team

learning that has been offered in the literature views it as ba relatively permanent change in the teamscollective level of knowledge and skill produced by the shared experience of the team membersQ (Elliset al., 2003, p. 822). In this way, team learning depends on each members individual ability to

acquire knowledge, skills, and abilities as well as his or her ability to collectively share that

information with teammates. The focus of this conceptualization and definition of team learning is as

an outcome. A process-oriented definition of team learning was offered by Edmondson (1999), who

conceptualized learning at the team level of analysis as ban ongoing process of reflection and action,characterized by asking questions, seeking feedback, experimenting, reflecting on results, and

discussing errors or unexpected outcomes of actionsQ (Edmondson, 1999, p. 353). She referred tothese kinds of activities as learning behavior. It is through these activities that learning is enacted at

the team level. Our perspective mirrors that of Ellis et al. and Edmondson in viewing team learning as

both a process and an outcome (see Fig. 1).

Edmondsons (1999) work is interesting in that it demonstrated that certain team beliefs were

important conditions for team learning behavior. Specifically, she found that team psychological safety,

and to a lesser extent, team efficacy, were related to team learning behavior as assessed by both self-

report of team members as well as by an independent observer. Team psychological safety was defined

as ba shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk takingQ (p. 354). It is thought to depend on asense of confidence that the team will not reject or embarrass a team member for asking a question or

making a contribution. This confidence is based on mutual trust and respect among team members. Team

efficacy is an extension of the well-documented role of self-efficacy in enhancing individual

performance, and pertains to the shared belief that the team is capable of using new information to

generate useful results. According to Edmondson, team psychological safety and team efficacy are

complementary processes in which team efficacy supplements the positive effect of the teams sense of

psychological safety on its learning. The implications of these results suggest that engaging in learning

behavior in a team is highly dependent on team psychological safety. What is needed, however, is a

better understanding of how team psychological safety develops and what specific conditions enhance or

impede it.

In an attempt to address this unanswered question from her earlier study, Edmondson, Bohmer, and

Pisano (2001) analyzed the learning and performance of cardiac surgery teams that were implementing

new microsurgical technology. Their approach mixed qualitative interviews with more quantitative

analyses of 669 heart operations conducted in 16 hospitals. The overarching goal was to differentiate

the successful implementers of this new technology from the less successful implementers.

Psychological safety was found to be important for successful implementation in that it supported

the kinds of behavioral change necessary for learning the new implementation. When lower-status

team members were afraid of censure from higher-status surgeons on the team, this posed an obstacle

to the teams learning and performance. Interview data suggested that there were specific actions of

the formal team leader in terms of signaling openness to feedback and communicating a rationale for

change that were important in creating team psychological safety. This is consistent with a traditional

perspective on team leadership in that the leader helps foster certain conditions that enhance team

processes and learning.

Based on their research and experience with learning teams, Edmondson, Bohmer, and Pisano (2001)

D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004) 857880870have made specific recommendations for leaders to help create environments for team learning. The first

is to be accessible, because that helps make clear that others opinions are welcomed and valued. The

second is to ask for input. In addition to a climate of accessibility and openness, asking explicitly for

contributions from team members can help enhance a learning environment. The third is to serve as what

they call a bfallibility modelQ (p.132) by admitting mistakes to the team because it signals that errors andother concerns can be discussed without fear of punishment. In this way, it can be seen how individual

leaders can help enhance cooperation, teamwork, and learning in a team. Individual leaders matter in

creating teamwork and building team learning that are necessary preconditions for team-level leadership

capacity.

More recent research in this vein has investigated the role of subgroup strengthdefined as the

degree of overlap across multiple demographic characteristics among a subset of team membersas

well as team heterogeneity on team learning (Gibson & Vermeulen, 2003). Strong subgroups occur in a

team when there are pairs with considerable overlap and pairs with very little overlap. The essence of the

proposed relevance of subgroup strength is that subgroups within larger-sized teams may have a positive

impact because they function as supportive cohorts (i.e., a group of people who share a similar

background and have a similar worldview) within a team. However, those teams in which subgroup

strength was either very weak or very strong were hypothesized to have the lowest levels of team

learning (i.e., an inverted-U curvilinear effect).

Results supported both of these central hypotheses. Subgroup strength was also shown to moderate

the relationship between specific organizational design concerns (performance management by an

external leader, team empowerment, and the use of knowledge management systems) and team learning.

A primary contribution of this study is in demonstrating empirically that team composition matters when

it comes to team learning, which might also help understand its relationship to team effectiveness. It also

demonstrated that the effectiveness of specific aspects of a teams organizational context that are thought

to stimulate learning depends on team composition.

In another recent study of team learning (Bunderson & Sutcliffe, 2003), the role of team learning

orientation, or the teams climate of proactive learning, was examined. Building on the work of Dweck

(1986) that has examined individual motivational processes thought to affect learning (i.e., performance

versus learning goals), curvilinear effects of team learning orientation on team effectiveness was

hypothesized. Specifically, it was proposed that btoo much emphasis on learning can detract fromperformance just as too little emphasis on learning can detract from performanceQ (p. 554). Support wasfound for the curvilinear hypothesis on the two measured components of business unit performance

performance to plan and profit per unit. An important implication of these findings is that

overemphasizing (or underemphasizing) team learning may not be an effective strategy when it comes

to enhancing team performance. Instead, the right balance must be struck between the learning and

performance orientations adopted by the team.

Another recent study (Ellis et al., 2003) took a somewhat different perspective on team learning,

conceptualizing it as an outcome rather than an antecedent or process variable. Using the group

information-processing framework outlined by Hinsz et al. (1997), the authors proposed that project

teams need to attend to, encode, store, and retrieve information both within and between the minds of

team members in order to learn. The results from a study of 109 four-person student teams engaged in a

simulated war games exercise demonstrated several interesting points with regard to team learning: (a)

Personality matters: Teams composed of members high on Agreeableness had lower levels of learning;

(b) Structure matters: Project teams working within a paired structure learned more than those that were

D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004) 857880 871structured divisionally or functionally; (c) Workload distribution matters: Teams encountering an uneven

workload distribution learned less than teams encountering an even workload distribution; and (d) a

One way in which an adaptive challenge can be faced is if the leader creates a solution and gives it to

the team for implementation. This can be an effective strategy provided that the leader can construct sucha solution. This becomes increasingly unlikely the more complex the environment. There is another

possible downside to this approach: It fosters dependencies in followers. If followers are conditioned to9. Team learning and team leadership

From a general perspective, learning is centrally important to leadership. A classic distinction between

management and leadership is that management is mostly about working within the status quo more

efficiently whereas leadership is primarily about change (Kotter, 1990). Learning is not always necessary

for greater efficiency but it is essential in fostering any kind of individual, team, or organizational change

in that learning is a precursor for adaptation (Ilgen et al., in press). It has been argued that a hallmark of

effective teams in complex environments is their willingness and ability to learn their way out of novel

problems (Dixon, 1993; Weick, 1993) or what some have called adaptive challenges (Drath, 2001;

Heifetz, 1994). These are the kinds of challenges confronting a team for which it has no preexisting

resources, remedies, tools, solutions, and may not even have the means for accurately naming or

describing the challenge (Drath, p. 21). Adaptive challenges are in contrast to technical challenges,

which are more routine problems or decisions that must be made. These might be difficult problems, but

the existing resources are sufficient for addressing them effectively. Technical challenges do not require

much leadership and may not demand any team leadership resources; however, coming to terms with

adaptive challenges is considered to be a major leadership task according to Drath.btruth supported winsQ model is superior: At least two team members need to have access to the sameinformation in order for the team to learn.

8. Summary of the research on team learning

There have been notable findings in the recent research on team learning in organizational (as

compared with educational) contexts, both in terms of conceptualizing team learning as a process and as

an outcome. Edmondson and colleagues have demonstrated that team psychological safety is an

important antecedent of team learning behavior, and that there are specific things that leaders can do to

enhance the psychological safety of their teams. The context in which the team performs matters in terms

of its demographic composition (subgroup strength), its relative personality in terms of agreeableness, as

well as aspects of structure, workload distribution, and access to information. It was also found that team

learning orientation was important to performance up to a point beyond which it impeded performance.

These are all interesting findings with theoretical and practical implications. What has not been

discussed in any detail is the relationship between team learning and team-based leadership. To date, the

focus has been mainly on what individual leaders can do to enhance team learning, and to a lesser extent

the relationship between team learning and team performance. The role of individual leaders in teams is

and will continue to be an important topic of research and theory. But what is also needed is a greater

understanding of how team learning is related to the emergence of team-level leadership capacity.

D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004) 857880872look to the formal or informal leader for btheQ answer in challenging times, then these followers may notbe able to learn or lead collectively with any consistency or effectiveness. They will be stuck if the leader

leade

can e

One

emerg

Leadership is probably best conceived as a group quality, as a set of functions which must becarried out by the group. This concept of ddistributed leadershipT is an important one. If there areleadership functions which must be performed in any group, and if these functions may be

dfocusedT or ddistributedT, then leaders will be identifiable both in terms of the frequency and interms of the multiplicity or pattern of functions performed (p. 884).

Gibb (1954) then foreshadowed a definitional dilemma in the event that a group became the unit of

analysis, which might result in either the dilution of the concept of leader or its removal altogether. It is a

predicament in a group to identify whose behavior should be observed in drawing up role prescriptions

of leadership. It becomes even trickier to identify criteria by which to differentiate a leader from others in10. The possibility of distributed leadership

Shared or distributed leadership (again, we use these terms interchangeably) is slowly gaining

momentum as a field of interest with both scholars and practitioners. Thus far, the literature on

distributed leadership (DL) is relatively modest but steadily growing, with research strongest in the fields

of business management and educational leadership. At the time of this writing, Bennett, Harvey, Wise,

and Woods (2003) have provided the most comprehensive review of the DL literature and there has been

at least one edited collection of writings on DL (Pearce & Conger, 2003a). Some historical antecedents

of DL have been surveyed by Pearce and Conger (2003b), although there are important oversights in

their review (e.g., Brown, 1989; Brown & Hosking, 1986; Gibb, 1954; Gronn, 2002b). The concept of

DL has also been subjected to critical analysis by Gronn (2002a,b) and Spillane, Halverson, and

Diamond (2000), and is the subject matter of a forthcoming monograph-length study (Gronn, in press).

Despite these healthy indications of scholarly activity, OToole, Galbraith, and Lawler (2003) report an

indifferent reception to their work on DL and claim that DL has been blargely ignored in the researchliteratureQ (p.251).

According to Pearce and Conger (2003b), the prevailing view of leadership is that it is concentrated or

focused, in which the brelationship between the leader and the led is a vertical one of topdowninfluenceQ (p. 1). As a consequence, much attention has been paid to the behaviors, mind-sets, andactions of the leader (singular) in a team or other work unit. Half a century ago, however, Gibb (1954)

allowed for a different possibility when he wrote that:a team

memrship in the team. Another way to put this is that the team becomes more versatile in terms of how it

nact leadership. This versatility is a direct function of the teams overall capacity for leadership.

possibility for what might contribute to this team-level leadership capacity can be found in the

ing literature on shared or distributed leadership.cannot envision a solution for them. As noted recently, leaders who enhance a strong personal

identification in followers tend to promote leader dependence (Kark, Shamir, & Chen, 2003). But having

the collective capacity to face an adaptive challenge in an open and learning-oriented manner broadens

the resources of the team, which should contribute to greater adaptability and effectiveness.

One possibility that is created through teamwork and team learning is a broader capacity for

D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004) 857880 873. Gibb went on to suggest that the concept of leader may no longer have scientific value if team

bers are differentiated primarily in terms of the leadership roles that they play (e.g., initiator,

energizer, harmonizer, expediter). This role-based perspective on team leadership is very similar to the

functional perspective offered by Zaccaro et al. (2001).

The possibility raised by Gibb (1954) of a distribution of leadership across a group lay dormant for

over three decades until it was resurrected as part of an explanation for patterns of role sharing,

networking, and consensus decision making observed in informally structured social movements

(Brown, 1989; Brown & Hosking, 1986). Subsequently, interest in conceptual and empirical possibilities

of DL began to develop.

Since the late 1990s, DL has been interpreted in a number of ways, with definitions ranging from the

unduly restrictive to the highly fluid and open ended. One view of DL is that it identical to team- or

group-level leadership (Locke, 2003). In some cases (e.g., Barry, 1991), shared team leadership refers to

emergent, fluctuating levels of individual team member influence, or mutual influence of, by, and on

team members (Pearce, 2004). In still other approaches (e.g., Avolio, Sivasubramaniam, Murry, Jung, &

Garger, 2003), it extends to the bcollective influence of the group on individual membersQ (p. 149).Another slightly expanded view is that DL involves informal influence as part of ba dynamic, interactiveinfluence process among individuals in work groups,Q both lateral and vertical, but with the key attributebeing bmore than just downward influence on subordinates by an appointed or an elected leaderQ(Conger & Pearce, 2003, p. 286). Others identify DL with group-based mutuality of influence, but adopt

a slightly less fixed or frozen view of groups in the guise of social networks (Mayo, Meindl, & Pastor,

2003). Finally, when workplaces are conceptualized as communities of practice (Gronn, 2003),

conventional role binaries, such as leadershipfollowership and superordinatesubordinate, tend to give

way to the kinds of alternative or substitute roles envisaged by Gibb and, as part of leadership in teams,

by Burke, Fiore, and Salas (2003).

An alternate perspective to tracking relations and flows of influence has been to focus on role space

occupancy. Thus, the idea that two or more incumbents may share a role space has been documented in a

series of case studies by Heenan and Bennis (1999). This is the idea of co-leadership or joint leadership

(although see Locke, 2003, for a contrarian view), the historical antecedents of which have been traced

back as far as the practice of co-consuls in republican Rome (Sally, 2002) and the tetrarchy (of four

Caesars) instituted by the emperor Diocletian in the imperial Roman era (Freeman, 2003). DL with co-

leadership as the unit of analysis takes two main forms. The first is anchored in a formal relationship in

which, for example, the role incumbents exercise co- or joint authority. A good example of the dynamics

of shared role space is co-principals in schools (Court, 2003; Gronn & Hamilton, 2004). The second may

be either a formally or informally grounded relationship across hierarchical levels as in the case of school

principals or their deputies (Nias, 1987), managers and their immediate subordinates (Krantz, 1989),

between organizational heads and campus or branch heads (Gronn, 1999), or between adjacent role

incumbents, such as chairpersons and chief executives (Chityayat, 1985; Stewart, 1991a,b).

Apart from an explicit or implied emphasis on lateral relations (in contrast to vertical leadership), a

common feature of the examples discussed so far is numbers. That is, leadership is recast as distributed

or shared due to an increase in leader personnel beyond a sole leader to include two, three, or more

persons. In effect, DL in this sense means more than one leader. While there are criteria other than

numbers for defining teams, somewhere in this terrain of small numbers there is a threshold beyond

which one crosses over into the territory of teams. The application of DL to suborganizational units, such

as groups and teams, represents the outer limits of DL for some (e.g., most of the contributors to the

D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004) 857880874volume edited by Pearce & Conger, 2003a). Apart from Pearce (2004, p. 50), however, who specifies a

team size of five or fewer members for optimal DL, most discussions of team-based DL are vague about

(Hodgson, Levinson, & Zaleznik, 1965) based on a field study of the administrative triumvirate formed

by three senior medical executives and clinicians. The analytical focus was on key dimensions of the

forms

1988

Despite the progress made in better understanding DL, there are some important ongoing questionsand unresolved issues. One concern is the status of DL. In a field which is well known for its

badjectivalismQ (i.e., versions of leadership distinguished by endless additions of adjectives such as

transf

seemof human capital (knowledge, skills, and abilities) as people work and learn together (Coleman,

).working division of labor within the constellation (role specialization, differentiation, and comple-

mentarity) and the impact of this kind of DL across a psychiatric institute. Subsequently, Gronn (1999)

built on these attributes in an attempt to specify four necessary and sufficient conditions for the

development and consolidation of relations of trust in plural-member, joint work units: (a) shared values,

(b) experience of psychological space, (c) contrasting temperaments, and (d) opportunities for role

rehearsal.

11. Remaining issues

It is hoped that this summary is sufficient to indicate that DL represents an exciting new development

in leadership. It is one lens for conceptualizing and studying leadership as a team (or organization)

phenomenon, and not just as an individual attribute or behavior that is brought to a team. In effect, the

team creates this leadership capacity as a function of its collective human capital, teamwork, and

learning (see Fig. 1). This perspective on team leadership builds on the traditional model that views a

leaders knowledge, skills, and abilities (i.e., human capital) as input to team processes that builds team-

level leadership capacity through the mediational processes of teamwork and team learning. Team-level

leadership thus serves not only as one form of output but also as input to the ongoing cycle of team

performing. In this manner, the social capital associated with team leadership (Day, 2000) creates newscope and the actual size of teams. Spillane et al. (2000) extend DL beyond suborganizational units to

allow for it to be manifest, potentially, across an entire organization and beyond:

Our central argument is that school leadership is best understood as a distributed practice, stretched

over the schools social and situational contexts (p. 23, original emphasis).

An additional perspective on DL is to consider the numerical manifestations of it (i.e., couples,

pairings, or small groups) in holistic, as opposed to aggregated, terms. Here, the focus is on joint work

units and the properties of the relations between the unit members. This is similar to the issue of

connectivity discussed by OConnor and Quinn (2004) with regard to an organizations capacity for

leadership, in which connectivity is defined as bthe relative interrelatedness of the members of anorganizationQ (p. 423).

It also appears at least somewhat like Hunt and Ropos (1997) processual systems approach, that

examines leadership as part of a holistic configuration of components within a group or organization.

Besides this example, there are few such holistic accounts and some, such as Locke (2003), dismiss the

very idea of holism. The pioneering work in this area examined the bexecutive role constellationQ

D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004) 857880 875ormational leadership and charismatic leadership), to what extent is DL simply the latest in a

ingly never-ending list of adjectival forms? On the other hand, is there an argument for claiming

(OConnor & Quinn, 2004). But the literature suggests that there are some similarities and some

differences when comparing individual and group processes (Hinsz et al., 1997) and we need much moreresearch that considers leadership as a team-level property.

There is an echo of this comment in Burns (2003) recent claim that ball leadership is collectiveQ (p.75) or in Draths (2001) assertion that ball leadership is shared leadershipQ (p. 61) in the sense that teammembers must first recognize a particular action as leadership in order for leadership to be evident. In

this manner, even the most autocratic and vertical forms of leadership can be conceptualized as shared so

long as others agree to go along with it. From this perspective, however, the meaning of shared

leadership is diluted in its application to any situation in which leaders and followers act in ways that can

be thought of as leadership. Team leadership capacity allows for versatile forms of leadership to emerge.

The leadership repertoire of a team is thus broadened to transcend individual models of leadership to also

recognize that leadership can be developed as an emergent state in teams.

12. Conclusions

The focus of the present review was on developing a better understanding of team leadership capacity

and how it develops as an emergent state in teams. Team leadership capacity was conceptualized as a

resource that develops as a function of individual human capital (knowledge, skills, and abilities)

including the leadership resources of a formal or informal leaderas well as teamwork and team

learning. These team leadership resources (i.e., social capital) serve as input in the ongoing cycle and

episodic nature of teams. We draw from a recent framework (Ilgen et al., in press) that expands on the

overly simplistic IPO (inputprocessoutput) perspectives on teams to one that includes the

acknowledgement of mediational processes, nonlinear or conditional effects, and feedback loops in

which an output is used as input in a subsequent team cycle (e.g., team performance episodes; Marks et

al., 2001).

Team leadership capacity is thought to be an important resource for teams, especially when complex

adaptive challenges are experienced. These are the kinds of problems that no single leader can bethat it represents a new and altogether different leadership paradigm? There is a strong sense in much of

literature that DL is an idea whose time has finally come. In some cases, the acceptance of DL has arisen

due to recognition of the increasing nonsustainability of a focused model of individual leader

omniscience (e.g., Pearce, 2004). Relying on centralized leadership focused on an individual team leader

has distinct limits of effectiveness, especially in dealing with complex adaptive changes. Others have

wondered whether the attention accorded DL is a sign of an emerging postheroic phase of leadership

(e.g., Gronn, 2002a) and even whether the notion of solo leadership has ever been valid historically

(OToole et al., 2003). Ironically, it has recently been argued that teams have become the new

organizational hero and that there is a bteam halo effectQ whereby teams tend to not be blamed for theirfailures (Naquin & Tynan, 2003).

Teams are not the panacea for organizational woes. At best the evidence is mixed regarding the

benefits of teams and teamwork. Nonetheless, there are distinct potential benefits of widening the lens to

include team-level leadership. Such an approach recognizes that there are resources that are created

through connections and relationships that can be drawn from in responding to leadership challenges

D.V. Day et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 15 (2004) 857880876expected to solve. These are challenges confronting a team for which it has no preexisting resources,

remedies, tools, solutions, and may not even have the means for accurately naming or describing the

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Cannon-Bowers, J. A., Tannenbaum, S. I., Salas, E., & Volpe, C. E. (1995). Defining team competencies and establishing

team training requirements. In R. Guzzo, E. Salas, & Associates (Eds.), Team effectiveness and decision making in

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Conger, J. A., & Pearce, C. L. (2003). A landscape of opportunities: Future research on shared leadership. In C. L. Pearce, & J.challenge (Drath, 2001, p. 21). Adaptive challenges have been contrasted with technical challenges,

which are more routine problems to solve or decisions that must be made. These might be difficult

problems, but the existing resources are sufficient for addressing them effectively. Technical challenges

do not require much if any leadership in that they are possible to address using the relevant and available

knowledge, skills, and abilities contained in the team. Adaptive challenges require different ways of

making sense and adapting to the environment. Team leadership capacity can be developed as an

emergent state in teams through teamwork, team learning, and shared leadership. It can provide the kinds

of resources that help teams to be resilient and versatile even under the most challenging circumstances.

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