Harsh Leadership and Team Member Deviance: An Exploration of Leader-Team Extraversion Incongruence

Abstract

In an effort to account for the characteristics of both leaders and teams in the process of leadership, we explore leader-team extraversion configurations and their association with leader and team member behaviors that can negatively impact teams and organizations. Drawing on research from personality and team leadership, we look to leader prototypicality theory to form hypotheses for whether leader-team extraversion incongruence (extraverted leaders of introverted teams; introverted leaders of extraverted teams) will be associated with leaders’ harsh enactment of the leadership process (i.e., through leaders’ use of pressure tactics of influence) and team members’ organizational deviance (OD). To test our hypotheses, we conduct a time-lagged field survey study of 75 leaders and their respective teams (with 324 individual team members) in the nuclear power industry. Using multilevel polynomial regression analyses, we find that leader-team extraversion incongruence is associated with leaders’ increased use of pressure tactics of influence and team members’ organizational deviance. Our research contributes to research and theory on leadership, extraversion, and organizational deviance as well as leader prototypicality.