The Beauty of Ambiguity: Implications of Leader Indirect Communication on Team Effectiveness

Abstract

Communication is essential to leadership. Despite the benefits of a indirect communication style being broadly recognized in social psychology and political science literature, little is known about the impact of a leader’s indirect communication style at the workplace. The current research raises the questions of when and how leader indirect communication would exert positive influences on team-focused processes and effectiveness. Drawing on uncertainty reduction theory, we propose that for teams with higher team-member exchange quality, leader indirect communication is more likely to create team reflexivity, which in turn enhance team performance and team creativity. Using a multi-wave and multi-source survey from 87 teams, we find support for this hypothesized model. We discuss the theoretical implications of our findings, in particular regarding leader indirect communication as an emerging topic in leadership research.