Linking leader behavior and leadership consensus to team performance: Integrating direct consensus and dispersion models of group composition

Abstract

We sought to establish whether mean level within-team assessments of a leader's transformational behavior and the extent of perceived variability (i.e., consensus) among team members’ ratings around this mean level are separate yet related indicators of leader quality. To this end, using data from 108 work teams in a multinational field setting, we explored the relationship between managers’ transformational leadership behavior and team performance as moderated by the extent of variability among team members’ leadership behavior ratings. Recognizing that the relationship between leader behavior and team performance is indirect, we further examined whether team empowerment served as a mediating mechanism through which transformational leadership is evoked. Study results, based on ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analyses and bootstrapped estimates, were consistent with the hypothesized conceptual scheme of moderated mediation, in that the joint effects of transformational leadership behavior and consensus about transformational leadership were found to have an indirect effect on team performance through team empowerment. These findings broaden the focus of transformational leadership theory by illustrating that, within a team context, the transformational leadership–performance linkage is more nuanced than previously believed.