The role of leaders in shaping formal team norms

Abstract

We developed and tested a multilevel model of norm formation. Both leader expectations and staff expectations had a significant impact on the norms that teams adopted around collaborative problem solving. In addition, there was an interaction between the expectations of the leader and the staff. We found that when staff initially held low expectations of collaborative problem solving behaviors, leaders who held high expectations of such behaviors were able to significantly raise the collaborative problem solving norms established by their teams. Team problem solving norms significantly influenced individual team members' problem solving behaviors.