Carson Et Al 2007

Academy of Management Journal
2007, Vol. 50, No. 5, 12171234.
SHARED LEADERSHIP IN TEAMS:

AN INVESTIGATION OF ANTECEDENT CONDITIONS
AND PERFORMANCE
JAY B. CARSON
Southern Methodist University
PAUL E. TESLUK
University of Maryland
JENNIFER A. MARRONE
Seattle University
Shared leadership refers to a team property whereby leadership is distributed among
team members rather than focused on a single designated leader. We examined antecedent conditions that lead to the development of shared leadership and the influence
of shared leadership on team performance in a sample of 59 consulting teams. Both the
internal team environment, consisting of shared purpose, social support, and voice,
and external coaching were important predictors of shared leadership emergence. In
turn, shared leadership was found to predict team performance as rated by clients. We
conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for team leadership and
effectiveness.
tures and the pervasive presence of self-managing

teams, which are now well established and deeply
rooted in U.S. industry (Lawler, Mohrman, & Benson, 2001; Manz & Sims, 1987), emphasize the need
for leadership originating from within a team as
opposed to that originating from a single individual
elevated by hierarchy. Despite this transition in
leadership responsibilities from formal managers to
team members, relatively little research has addressed the implications of this evolutionary shift
to internally distributed forms of team leadership.
Early leadership scholars argued for the importance of leadership being shared among team members (Gibb, 1954; Katz & Kahn, 1978). Gibb, the first
to so argue, stated, Leadership is probably best
conceived as a group quality, as a set of functions
which must be carried out by the group. This concept of distributed leadership is an important
one (1954: 884). Katz and Kahn (1978) also suggested that when team members voluntarily and
spontaneously offer their influence to others in
support of shared goals, shared leadership can provide organizations with competitive advantage
through increases in commitment, in the personal
and organizational resources brought to bear on
complex tasks, in openness to reciprocal influence
from others, and in the sharing of information. Consequently, they argued, Those organizations in
which influential acts are widely shared are most
effective (Katz & Kahn, 1978: 332). These early
Leadership is considered crucial for enabling

team effectiveness (Cohen & Bailey, 1997; Hackman
& Walton, 1986; Kozlowski, Gully, Salas, & Cannon-Bowers, 1996), and some researchers have
even argued that it is the most critical ingredient
(Sinclair, 1992; Zaccaro, Rittman, & Marks, 2001).
Yet most existing research on team leadership has
focused narrowly on the influence of an individual
team leader (usually a manager external to a team),
thus largely neglecting leadership provided by
team members (Kozlowski & Bell, 2003; Stewart &
Manz, 1995). Several trends in team design, use,
and structure, however, point to the importance of
internal team leadership. First, the complexity and
ambiguity that teams often experience make it unlikely that a single external leader can successfully
perform all necessary leadership functions (Day,
Gronn, & Salas, 2004). Second, current forms of
teamwork that emphasize knowledge-based work
rely on employees who have high levels of expertise and seek autonomy in how they apply their
knowledge and skills (DeNisi, Hitt, & Jackson,
2003) and therefore desire greater opportunity to
shape and participate in the leadership functions
for their teams. Further, flatter organizational struc-
We would like to thank Hank Sims, Lisa Dragoni, and

Holly Slay, as well as Brad Kirkman and three anonymous reviewers, for their helpful comments on earlier
versions of this paper.
1217
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1218
perspectives challenged the convention that leadership is solely an individual phenomenon, but
there has been little empirical work on shared
forms of leadership until recently.
We define shared leadership as an emergent team
property that results from the distribution of leadership influence across multiple team members. It
represents a condition of mutual influence embedded in the interactions among team members that
can significantly improve team and organizational
performance (Day et al., 2004). Shared leadership
contrasts with the conventional paradigm (referred
to as vertical leadership by Pearce and Sims
[2002]), which emphasizes the role of the manager
who is positioned hierarchically above and external to a team, has formal authority over the team,
and is responsible for the teams processes and
outcomes (e.g., Druskat & Wheeler, 2003; Hackman
& Walton, 1986; Kozlowski et al., 1996). Recent
empirical work has demonstrated links between
shared leadership and team performance (e.g.,
Avolio, Jung, & Sivasubramaniam, 1996; Ensley,
Hmieleski, & Pearce, 2006; Pearce & Sims, 2002;
Sivasubramaniam, Murry, Avolio, & Jung, 2002).
Although these studies have helped advance the
concept of shared leadership, several remaining research gaps motivated this study.
The first purpose of our study was to begin to
theoretically identify and test conditions that support shared leadership in work teams. To our
knowledge, no studies have directly explored the
conditions that give rise to shared leadership. Reflecting a perspective on leadership in teams as a
dynamic process involving interactions between
team members and external team leaders (cf. Kozlowski et al., 1996; Zaccaro & Klimoski, 2002), we
consider conditions both internal and external to a
team. Two proximal factors that are likely to influence the development of shared leadership are internal team environment, including a shared purpose, social support, and voice, and level of
external coaching support. Considering these antecedent conditions for shared leadership also adds
to the scant literature on interactions between external and internal team leadership, which is important since both forms of leadership operate concurrently and in conjunction with one another (e.g.,
Manz & Sims, 1987).
A second purpose was to provide an improved
conceptualization and operationalization of the
shared leadership construct that reflects its theoretical complexity. Scholars have called for more attention to theoretical models of team leadership
that are developed at the team level rather than as
mere extrapolations of existing dyadic leadership
approaches (Kozlowski & Bell, 2003). Prior work on
October
shared leadership has relied primarily on aggregating team members assessments of the degree to
which leadership responsibilities are shared or certain behaviors are exhibited within a team, a procedure that may fail to capture the relational nature
of the patterns of shared influence in teams. Table
1, below, provides details on this previous work.
Utilizing social network theory (e.g., Brass, 1995;
Mehra, Smith, Dixon, & Robertson, 2006), we advanced a more complete conceptualization of the
emergent and relational nature of shared leadership
and took a social network measurement approach
in order to better capture these overall patterns of
influence.
A third purpose of this study was to predict
performance outcomes. Existing research on shared
leadership has almost exclusively relied on team
members and/or external leaders ratings of performance, a practice that raises concerns about both
common method variance and the ability to obtain
an independent assessment of a teams performance. (Again, Table 1, below, provides details.)
We studied the performance outcomes of shared
leadership using a source independent of teams
and their immediate leadership structures: specifically, the end users of the teams work products.
LITERATURE REVIEW AND HYPOTHESES

Shared Leadership Defined
Gibb (1954) first suggested the idea of two forms
of team leadership: distributed and focused. Focused leadership occurs when leadership resides
within a single individual, whereas distributed
leadership occurs when two or more individuals
share the roles, responsibilities, and functions of
leadership. Gronn (2002) argued that these two
concepts of focused and distributed leadership be
considered endpoints on a continuum rather than
rigid either-or categories.
To further develop the concept of how leadership
is shared among team members, we utilize Yukls
definition of leadership as influence processes involving determination of the groups or organizations objectives, motivating task behavior in pursuit of these objectives, and influencing group
maintenance and culture (1989: 5). Building on
the concept of leadership as influence and drawing
on multilevel theory (Kozlowski & Klein, 2000;
Morgeson & Hofmann, 1999), we define shared
leadership as an emergent team property that results from the distribution of leadership influence
across multiple team members. In keeping with the
notion of collective constructs (Morgeson & Hofmann, 1999), we argue that shared leadership orig-
2007
Carson, Tesluk, and Marrone
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TABLE 1
Previous Definitions and Measures of Shared Leadership
Study
Definition
Measure
Dependent Variable
Avolio, Jung, Murry, and

Sivasubramanium
(1996)
No explicit definition given, but shared

leadership is essentially viewed as
transformational leadership
manifested at the group level in
highly developed teams.
Team Multifactor Leadership

Questionnaire (TMLQ
Form 5X) aggregated to the
team level
Self-reported ratings
(undergraduate project team
effectiveness)
Pearce and Sims (2002)
Distributed influence from within the

team (p. 172).
Ratings (aggregated to team

level) on behavioral scales
for five leadership
strategies: aversive,
directive, transactional,
transformational, and
empowering
Self-reported and manager

ratings of seven
effectiveness dimensions
(automobile change
management teams)
Team Multifactor Leadership

Questionnaire (TMLQ
Form 5X) aggregated to the
team level
Team potency (self-ratings at

times 1 and 2) and team
grades assigned by
instructor (undergraduate
project team effectiveness).
Lateral influence among peers (p. 176).
Sivasubramanium,
Murry, Avolio, and
Jung (2002)
Collective influence of members in a

team on each other (p. 68).
How members of a group evaluate
the influence of the group as opposed
to one individual within or external
to the group (p. 68).
Pearce and Conger

(2003)
A dynamic, interactive influence

process among individuals in groups
for which the objective is to lead one
another to the achievement of group
or organizational goals or both. . . .
[L]eadership is broadly distributed
among a set of individuals instead of
centralized in [the] hands of a single
individual who acts in the role of a
superior (p. 1).
Not applicable
Not applicable
Pearce, Yoo, and Alavi

(2004)
Simultaneous, ongoing, mutual

influence process within a team that
is characterized by serial
emergence of official as well as
unofficial leaders (p. 48).

for four leadership
strategies: directive,
transactional,
empowering
Self-ratings of problem-solving
quality and effectiveness
(virtual teams of student
social workers)
Ensley, Hmieleski, and

Pearce (2006)
Team process where leadership is

carried out by the team as a whole,
rather than solely by a single
designated individual (p. 220).

for four leadership
strategies: directive,
transactional,
empowering
Growth index for new

ventures, consisting of the
average of firm revenue
growth and employee
growth rates (new venture
TMTs)
Mehra, Smith, Dixon,

and Robertson (2006)
Shared, distributed phenomenon in

which there can be several (formally
appointed and/or emergent) leaders
(p. 233).
Qualitative coding based on

visual analysis of
leadership network
diagrams
Team sales divided by team

size (financial services sales
teams)
inates with individual members of a team engaging

in activities that influence the team and other team
members in areas related to direction, motivation,
and support (Yukl, 1989) and through the series of
interactions that team members have with each
other involving the negotiation and sharing of leadership responsibilities. The resulting collective
structure can be considered to be a leadership network that influences and shapes both team and
individual activities and outcomes.
Leadership can be conceptualized in relation to
either the strength of influence (i.e., its quality or
effectiveness) or the source of influence (i.e., single
versus multiple team members). Our definition is
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focused on multiple sources of influence and refers

to widespread influence within teams rather than
to specific leadership behaviors, formal positions,
specific types of influence, or the effectiveness of
the leadership exhibited by these sources. Building
on these ideas of distributed influence and drawing
upon Gibbss (1954) original conceptualization, we
believe shared leadership can be conceptualized
along a continuum based on the number of leadership sources (i.e., team members) having a high
degree of influence in a team. Anchoring the low
end of the continuum are cases in which team
members follow the leadership of a single individual. Although the leadership exhibited by this single individual might be quite strong, leadership
here originates from only a single source. In contrast, at the high end of the shared leadership continuum are teams in which most, if not all, team
members provide leadership influence to one another. Here, the source of leadership influence is
distributed among team members rather than concentrated or focused in a single individual. In these
teams, team members both lead and follow one
another in such a way that at a given time, members
are both providing leadership for certain aspects of
team functioning and also responding to the leadership provided by other team members in different
areas. Teams with high levels of shared leadership
may also shift and/or rotate leadership over time, in
such a way that different members provide leadership at different points in the teams life cycle and
development.
Shared leadership is a relational1 phenomenon
involving mutual influence between team members as they work toward team objectives, and
social network theory provides a natural theoretical and analytical approach to studying the relational influence structure in teams (Mehra et
al., 2006). The exercise of leadership influence
(Yukl, 1989) occurs in the context of team member relationships and presumes the existence of
followers or influencees (Bedeian & Hunt,
2006). Shared leadership creates patterns of reciprocal influence that further develop and reinforce existing relationships among team members. Thus, social network theory is appropriate
as it examines patterns of relationships among
When we use the terms relational and relationships here, we are simply referring to the interactions
between two or more people. These terms are not meant
to imply that shared leadership presumes the existence
of or is the result of close personal friendships among
team members. We thank an anonymous reviewer for
highlighting the need to make this distinction.
October
individuals such as advice, information, and

friendship networks and emphasizes the relationship as the unit of analysis (Brass, 1995; Sparrowe, Liden, Wayne, & Kraimer, 2001). Further,
social network analysis allows for the study of
multiple sources of leadership influence and the
ability to model patterns of influence within a
team and preserve rich data about the actual distribution of influence (Mehra et al., 2006).
In keeping with social network theory, we argue
that the pattern of emerging mutual influence in
teams can be conceptualized as an increase in the
density of the teams internal leadership networks.
A leadership network is the pattern of individuals
who rely on others for leadership within a team,
and density increases as this reliance on one another for leadership grows. Density, as used conceptually in social network research, is a structural
property representing the pattern of relationships
within a team, and it describes the overall level of
different types of exchanges among members of a
given social network (Sparrowe et al., 2001). Sparrowe and his colleagues described this team-level
construct as follows: Density is analogous to the
mean number of ties per group member. The more
ties each group member enjoys with the other
group members, the greater the density of the network (2001: 317). Here, ties between team members (also referred to as relationships) exist when
one team member perceives another as exerting
leadership influence in the team. Thus, the density
of a leadership network is the mean number of
relationships (per team member) involving leadership influence. When more team members provide
leadership to their peers, the density of this type of
network increases. Operationally, network density
is a measure of the proportion of total possible
relationships (actual ties over potential ties) that
exists in a given network (Wasserman & Faust,
1994) and thus captures variance in the overall
patterns of relationships rather than variance in
shared perceptions of a construct (as is the case
with aggregated behavioral scales). Accordingly,
utilizing network density as a measure of shared
leadership appropriately reflects the extent to
which leadership influence is distributed among a
relatively high or relatively low proportion of team
members.
Relationship with Similar Constructs
Having defined and described the nature of
shared leadership, it is also helpful to describe
briefly its relationship to other similar constructs,
such as team autonomy or self-management, team
empowerment, cooperation, team cognition (e.g.,
2007
transactive memory systems and team mental models), and emergent leadership. Self-managing and
autonomous team designs are those in which team
members have greater responsibility for setting
their own goals, monitoring their own progress,
and making their own decisions than do team
members in manager-led teams (Hackman, 1987).
Although self-managing team designs may promote
the development of shared leadership through increased self-management (Manz & Sims, 1987), or
through heightened trust or autonomy (Langfred,
2004), such designs in themselves do not necessarily result in leadership influence being widely distributed in a team, as other factors, such as the
internal team environment and external coaching,
may also influence shared leadership (Wageman,
2001).
Team empowerment is a motivational construct
and has been defined as the collective experience
of heightened levels of task motivation as a result of
team members assessments of their teams tasks as
providing them with high levels of meaningfulness,
autonomy, impact, and potency (Kirkman & Rosen,
1997). From a temporally dynamic perspective,
team empowerment can be viewed as an emergent
state that either precedes or follows team processes,
depending on the stage of a teams development
and performance cycle (cf. Marks, Mathieu, & Zaccaro, 2001). From this perspective, team empowerment may facilitate the development of shared
leadership by motivating team members to exercise
influence. Conversely, shared leadership may also
lead to greater team empowerment by heightening
members sense of meaningfulness, autonomy, impact, or potency, depending on the stage of a teams
development. However, a team may experience a
high level of empowerment yet still have a strong
external leader providing most of the leadership
influence, with very little shared leadership exhibited by team members.
Shared leadership is related to but distinct from
other team processes such as cooperation or helping, which refer to team members working with
and/or assisting other team members with their
tasks (Kozlowski & Bell, 2003). Although these
types of behavior relate to being an effective team
member and promote efficiency, they do not involve the active influence that is essential to leadership. In keeping with this conceptualization, a
recent study showed only a moderate correlation
between shared leadership and cooperation or
helping (Ziegert, 2005).
Shared leadership is also distinct from team cognition constructs, such as transactive memory systems (TMSs), or structures through which members
can collectively encode, store, and retrieve infor-
1221
mation and expertise (Wegner, 1986), and team

mental models (TMMs), or shared understandings
about the attributes of a team or its task at hand
(Cannon-Bowers, Salas, & Converse, 1993). Conceptually, the primary distinction between shared
leadership and these team knowledge structures is
that the former concerns collective influence,
whereas the latter concerns collective cognition.
This conceptual difference may perhaps best be
seen in the distinction between measurement approaches. Shared leadership assesses the distribution of leadership among team members. TMS measures capture team-level systems for utilizing and
integrating individually and collectively held expertise (Lewis, 2003). TMM measures assess the
similarity and accuracy of individual mental models within a team (Marks, Zaccaro, & Mathieu,
2000). Although these are three distinct concepts,
TMMs and TMSs are likely both facilitated by
shared leadership, through the continual influencebased interactions and social exchanges (Klimoski
& Mohammed, 1994) that occur as team members
share leadership responsibilities. Reciprocally,
through effective coordination of expertise and the
development of mutual understandings, TMSs and
TMMs likely enable the emergence of shared
leadership.
Finally, emergent leadership refers to group
members exerting significant influence over other
members of their group although no formal authority has been vested in them (Schneier & Goktepe,
1983). Shared leadership is consistent with some of
the early group research by Bales (1953), who
found that two informal leaders often emerge in
leaderless groups: one focused on the group task,
and one concentrating on relational issues. This
research is similar to that on shared leadership in
that it typically concerns whether leadership is
provided informally by a group member (known as
an emergent leader) in addition to or instead of
being provided by a formally appointed leader (e.g.,
Wheelan & Johnston, 1996). However, emergent
leadership research differs by focusing on the characteristics of individuals and groups that predict
informal leadership emergence, as well as narrowly
considering only one or two persons as emergent
leaders and ignoring the leadership influence of
others. In sum, shared leadership is distinct from
emergent leadership in that the former can take
place in a team with or without a designated leader,
can be either formal or informal, and addresses the
distribution and sharing of leadership among all
team members, in contrast to only one or two
leaders.
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Antecedent Conditions: Internal and External

Researchers studying shared leadership have argued that for shared leadership to emerge, two sets
of activities must occur (Katz & Kahn, 1978). First,
the members of a team must offer leadership and
seek to influence the direction, motivation, and
support of the group. Second, the team as a whole
must be willing to rely on leadership by multiple
team members. For these individual and collective
behaviors to occur, team members must believe
that offering influence to and accepting it from
fellow team members are welcome and constructive actions. We considered key factors both internal and externalthat are likely to impact the
development of shared leadership in teams through
these mechanisms. The first condition is an internal team environment that supports the development of shared leadership over time, and the second is the level of supportive coaching provided by
an external leader.
We propose first that shared leadership is facilitated by an overall team environment that consists
of three dimensions: shared purpose, social support, and voice. These dimensions, drawn from a
review of research on shared leadership (e.g.,
Avolio et al., 1996; Barry, 1991; Pearce & Conger,
2003; Seers, 1996; Yukl, 1989), represent distinct
concepts that are also highly interrelated and mutually reinforcing, thereby representing a higherorder construct (cf. Edwards, 2001; Law, Wong, &
Mobley, 1998). We refer to them here, collectively,
as an internal team environment enabling shared
leadership because they work together to produce
the kind of team context that encourages team
members willingness to both offer leadership influence and rely on the leadership of other team
members (Katz & Kahn, 1978).
Shared purpose, the first dimension of an internal team environment enabling shared leadership,
exists when team members have similar understandings of their teams primary objectives and
take steps to ensure a focus on collective goals.
Prior work has theorized and demonstrated that
team members who have a common sense of purpose and agreed-upon goals are more likely to feel
motivated, empowered, and committed to their
team and work (Kirkman & Rosen, 1999; Liden,
Wayne, & Sparrowe, 2000; OLeary-Kelly, Martocchio, & Frink, 1994). These heightened levels of
motivation, empowerment, and commitment that
individuals experience when their team possesses
a shared purpose increase the willingness of team
members to share the teams leadership responsibilities (Avolio et al., 1996). In addition, with a
commonly understood set of objectives and direc-
October
tion, team members are more likely to establish

goals and take actions that support the activities of
other team members, thereby facilitating both goaloriented and work-directive leadership behaviors
by team members (Seers, 1996), as well as a collective direction to team activities (Yukl, 1989).
The second dimension of an internal team environment that supports shared leadership is social
support, which is defined as team members efforts
to provide emotional and psychological strength to
one another. Team members support one another
through encouraging and recognizing individual
and team contributions and accomplishments
(Marks et al., 2001). This helps to create an environment where team members feel that their input
is valued and appreciated. By actively participating
in a team and feeling supported, team members are
more likely to work cooperatively and develop a
sense of shared responsibility for team outcomes
(Kirkman & Rosen, 1999). Social support is associated with group maintenance and culture (Yukl,
1989), leader support/supportive behaviors (Seers,
1996), relational leadership (Barnard, 1938), and
developing and maintaining a team by providing
interpersonal glue that helps build a strong internal social network (Barry, 1991).
The third dimension of this internal team environment is voice. No standard definition of voice
exists, as it has been used in a variety of research
areas to describe constructive change-oriented
communication, participation in decision making,
involvement, certain extra-role work behaviors,
due process, and employee grievance procedures
(Van Dyne & LePine, 1998); however, at its core,
voice connotes participation and input. We define
it here as the degree to which a teams members
have input into how the team carries out its purpose. Voice is associated with interaction facilitation/participative behaviors in teams (Seers,
1996), and these types of behaviors can result in
higher levels of social influence among team members through increased engagement and involvement. In addition, voice has been associated with
participation in decision making and constructive
discussion and debate around alternative approaches to team goals, tasks, and procedures (De
Dreu & West, 2001; Simons, Pelled, & Smith, 1999),
which can improve the amount of collective influence, involvement, and commitment relative to important team decisions. Thus, the presence of high
levels of voice in a team should create an environment where people engage in mutual leadership by
being committed to and becoming proactively involved in helping the team achieve its goals and
objectives and constructively challenging each
other in pursuit of group goals.
2007
These three dimensions are mutually reinforcing

and complementary. When team members are able
to speak up and get involved (voice), the likelihood
that many of them will exercise leadership increases greatly. The opportunity for voice also facilitates shared leadership by strengthening both a
common sense of direction and the potential for
positive interpersonal support in a team. When
teams are focused on collective goals (shared purpose), there is a greater sense of meaning and increased motivation for team members to both speak
up and invest themselves in providing leadership
to the team and to respond to the leadership of
others. The motivation to participate and provide
input toward achieving common goals and a common purpose can also be reinforced by an encouraging and supportive climate. When team members
feel recognized and supported within their team
(social support) they are more willing to share responsibility, cooperate, and commit to the teams
collective goals. Thus, these three dimensions work
together to create an internal team environment
that is characterized by a shared understanding
about purpose and goals, a sense of recognition and
importance, and high levels of involvement, challenge, and cooperation. Therefore, we predict:
Hypothesis 1. An internal team environment
consisting of shared purpose, social support,
and voice is positively related to the level of
shared leadership in a team.
External Team Coaching
Scholars studying shared leadership and leadership in self-managing teams have noted the critical
role of external team leaders in the development of
team members motivation and capabilities to lead
themselves and become self-directed (Kozlowski et
al., 1996; Manz & Sims, 1987). When discussing
this role, researchers have frequently stressed the
importance of coaching behaviors, which Hackman
and Wageman defined as external team leaders
direct interaction with a team intended to help
team members make coordinated and task-appropriate use of their collective resources in accomplishing the teams task (2005: 269). Researchers
have identified different types of team coaching,
distinguishing between forms that are more supportive and reinforcing of a teams self-leadership
and those that focus on identifying team problems
and engaging in active task interventions that interfere with the teams autonomy and self-management (Morgeson, 2005; Wageman, 2001). Here, we
specifically refer to the former, which has been
called supportive coaching (Morgeson, 2005) be-
1223
cause it is more closely connected with the development of team self-management, initiative, and
autonomy, whereas active coaching is more likely
to undermine these team characteristics and possibly inhibit the development of shared leadership.
Supportive coaching can also be distinguished
from other external team leadership functions,
such as designing a team and its task (Wageman,
2001) and facilitating boundary management
(Druskat & Wheeler, 2003).
Through supportive coaching, external team
managers can contribute to the development of
shared leadership in a variety of ways. First, by
engaging in behaviors such as encouraging, reinforcing, and rewarding instances in which team
members demonstrate leadership, supportive
coaching fosters a sense of self-competence and
team independence among team members (Manz &
Sims, 1987). When team members believe that they
have significant autonomy and are confident in
their skills for managing the work of their team,
they should be more likely to demonstrate leadership. Supporting this assertion, Wageman (2001)
found a positive association between supportive
coaching by a team manager and self-management
by team members. Second, by providing a team
with encouragement and support, external coaching can help build a shared commitment to the
team and its objectives that can reduce free riding
and increase the likelihood that team members will
demonstrate personal initiative (Hackman & Wageman, 2005). Third, by giving teams suggestions
about appropriate task strategies that ensure that
their activities are well aligned with work requirements and demands (Hackman & Wageman, 2005),
supportive coaching provides team members
greater clarity on how to best manage their work
and processes. Thus, team members are more likely
to influence each other because they share this
understanding (Kozlowski et al., 1996). Therefore,
we predict:
Hypothesis 2. External team coaching is positively related to the level of shared leadership
in a team.
The second, more indirect, way in which external coaching may influence shared leadership is
based on a functional approach to team leadership.
According to this approach, the role of an external
team leader is to do whatever is not being adequately managed by the team itself (Hackman &
Walton, 1986). When teams have a supportive internal environment, team coaching by an external
team leader is likely to be largely redundant with
this internal environment and therefore less critical
to the emergence of shared leadership among team
1224
members. However, for teams that lack a strong

shared purpose and do not promote full engagement and participation, and in which team members are unable to provide each other with social
support, a functional leadership perspective suggests that external leaders coaching may be particularly important. Specifically, effective team
coaching by an external leaderfocused on building collective commitment to a team and its work,
assisting the team with aligning activities with task
requirements, and fostering independence can
help provide the motivational and consultative
functions (Hackman & Wageman, 2005) that enable
shared leadership but have not been adequately
developed by the team internally. External team
leaders can also help team members understand the
different skills and capabilities of team members
and how they can be integrated to address the demands of the team task. This understanding can
motivate individual team members to initiate and
engage in internal leadership activities and do so in
a coordinated fashion resulting in an emergent pattern of shared leadership. In this fashion, an external team leaders supportive coaching can enable
shared leadership to emerge when a team has yet to
develop a high level of social support, shared purpose, and voice. These relationships between an
internal team environment and an external leaders
team coaching suggest:
Hypothesis 3. Team coaching by an external
leader interacts with the internal team environment in predicting shared leadership: coaching is more strongly related to shared leadership when the internal team environment is
unsupportive.
Shared Leadership and Team Performance
Shared leadership is an important intangible resource available to teams, and therefore it should
enhance team performance on complex tasks (Day
et al., 2004). When team members offer their leadership to others and to the mission or purpose of
their team, they should experience higher commitment, bring greater personal and organizational resources to bear on complex tasks, and share more
information (Katz & Kahn, 1978). When they are
also open to influence from fellow team members,
the team can function with respect and trust and
develop shared leadership that in turn becomes an
additional resource for improving team process and
performance (Day et al., 2004; Marks et al., 2001).
This intangible resource, which is derived from the
network relationships within the team, results in
greater effort, coordination, and efficiency (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998).
October
Only a handful of empirical studies have been

conducted with shared leadership as an explicit
source of leadership, but the results are promising
(see Table 1). Avolio and colleagues (1996) explored shared leadership among teams of undergraduate students and found a positive correlation
with self-reported effectiveness. Pearce and Sims
(2002) studied the relationship between shared
leadership and change management team effectiveness at a large automotive manufacturing firm and
found shared leadership to be a more useful predictor than the vertical leadership of appointed
team leaders. Sivasubramaniam and colleagues
(2002) found that team leadership, defined in a
manner similar to previous definitions of shared
leadership as the collective influence of team members on each other, was positively related to both
team performance and potency over time in a sample of undergraduate business students. Pearce,
Yoo, and Alavi (2004) studied shared leadership in
virtual teams engaged in social work projects and
again found that shared leadership was a stronger
predictor of team performance than vertical leadership. Ensley, Hmielski, and Pearce (2006) also
found shared leadership to be a stronger predictor
than vertical leadership of new venture performance in a sample of top management teams.
Finally, there is also indirect support for shared
leadership predicting team performance. Taggar,
Hackett, and Saha (1999) examined emergent leadership within teams and found that team performance was greatest when other team members, in
addition to the emergent leader, demonstrated high
levels of leadership influence. Failure of even a
single member to exhibit leadership behavior was
found to be detrimental to team performance. Although shared leadership was not formally defined
or measured, these findings seem to support the
notion that shared leadership may result in greater
effectiveness than the emergence of a single internal team leader. Taken as a whole, these studies
suggest that shared leadership is an important predictor of team performance and provides a resource
for teams that goes beyond the leadership of any
single individual. Therefore, we predict:
Hypothesis 4. The degree of shared leadership
in a team is positively related to team
performance.
METHODS
Sample
The study sample included 59 consulting teams
comprised of MBA students (n 348) from a large
eastern university. Teams ranged in size fromfour
2007
to seven members with a mean size of 5.93 individuals. Sixty-seven percent of the sample members were male, and ages ranged from 24 to 42 years
(mean age 29). Participants were 56 percent
white, 33 percent Asian, 5 percent black, and 5
percent Hispanic. This sample was well suited to
testing our hypotheses because the teams tasks
were highly similar and their life cycles were
identical, thus ruling out mitigating factors often
present in empirical team research. Teams were
engaged in real consulting projects and worked
closely with their clients over a five-month period
that concluded with a significant deliverable (a
client presentation and an accompanying report). Thus, the likelihood that findings would
be generalizable to nonstudent populations was
strengthened.
The universitys MBA Consulting Program office
assigned students to their teams, which were multifunctional in terms of members areas of concentration and expertise. Each team worked on a current problem or business need for an existing firm
and had a faculty advisor who served as an external
leader and also assigned grades. Each external team
leader acted much like a partner in a consulting
firm who supervises multiple projects; he or she
was available to provide general guidance and support for the team in working with the client
throughout the course of the project. Teams did not
have formally appointed internal leaders.
Data from teams were collected through surveys
administered approximately two-thirds of the way
through the projects, and data from clients and
faculty advisors were collected through surveys administered after the projects and final deliverables
were completed and presented to the clients. We
surveyed clients to obtain independent sources of
team performance and used the faculty surveys
primarily to gather information on the level of
project demands faced by the teams. Surveys were
received from 348 team members (a 100 percent
response rate), from faculty advisors for 51 of
the teams (an 86 percent response rate), and from
client contacts for 56 of the teams (a 95 percent
response rate).
Measures
Team performance. Client contacts who had
worked closely with a team and were the end users
of the project results were asked to rate the effectiveness of each team in terms of project deliverables, presentation, and helpfulness of recommendations. Seven items began with the stem How
effective was this team in . . . and included meeting your expectations in terms of the quality of the
1225
final deliverables, providing a quality presentation of the final deliverables, and overall, meeting your needs and goals for this project. Respondents rated these items on a scale ranging from 1,
extremely ineffective, to 7, extremely effective.
Principal components analysis yielded a single factor ( .93).
Shared leadership. We measured shared leadership following a social network approach (Mayo,
Meindl, & Pastor, 2003) by using density, which is
a measure of the total amount of leadership displayed by team members as perceived by others on
a team (x 3.16, median 3.15, and range
2.40 3.90). Every team member rated each of his/
her peers (1, not at all, to 5, to a very great
extent) on the following question: To what degree does your team rely on this individual for
leadership? To calculate density, we followed the
measurement approach for valued relations set
forth by Sparrowe and colleagues (2001) by summing all values (here, the team members ratings of
each others leadership) and then dividing that sum
by the total number of possible ties, or relationships, among team members. Thus, following our
definition of shared leadership as a team property
reflecting the distribution of leadership among
multiple team members, teams in which many
team members are rating many of their peers as
leaders will appropriately yield higher density
scores than will teams in which only one member
or a few members are perceived as exerting leadership. Agreement across the respondents ratings of
their team members was assessed and demonstrated adequate interrater reliability (median rwg
.65, ICC[1] .34, and ICC[2] .78).
To illustrate the density measure visually, we
created leadership sociograms for each team (Mayo
et al., 2003). Leadership network ratings were first
dichotomized: values of 4 (to a great extent) or 5 (to
a very great extent) were assigned a value of 1, and
values of 3 or less were assigned a 0.2 Figure 1
presents the sociograms for the lowest-, middle-,
and highest-scoring teams on the shared leadership
measure. The circles are nodes representing team
members. Arrows represent leadership relations:
An arrow pointing from one member (A) to another
(B) means that member B is perceived as a source of
leadership by member A. Two-headed arrows mean
It is important to note that the dichotomous (0, 1)

data set was used only for the purpose of creating these
graphic depictions of the leadership relations within the
team. All substantive analyses in the paper used the fully
valued ratings (15) for calculation of the density score
which was our measure of shared leadership.
1226
FIGURE 1
Leadership Sociograms
that two individuals perceive one another as a

source of leadership.
Internal team environment. Members rated
their teams internal environment using ten items
(1, strongly disagree, to 5 strongly agree) consisting of three separate, theoretically derived subscales: shared purpose, social support, and voice.
Voice was measured using four items based on
previous work by VanDyne and LePine (1998) and
DeDreu and West (2001), and the shared purpose
and social support scales were developed to specifically fit the context of our sample. The Appendix
lists all items. To test for discriminant validity, we
performed a confirmatory factor analysis using EQS
(Bentler & Wu, 2005), specifying a higher-order factor with three dimensions (indicated by the ten
items) that yielded a good fit to the data (232
67.87; AIC 3.87; CFI .98; GFI .96; AGFI
.94; SRMR .04; RMSEA .06), thus demonstrating support for the hypothesized structure.3, 4 To
investigate the convergent validity of the structure
for internal team environment, we examined the
correlations among the three subscales. The zeroorder correlations were high, ranging from .72 to
.80 (p .001), which provided evidence that the
3
We also examined the fit statistics for a one-factor

model, which was not a very good fit to the data. A
chi-square difference test also indicated that our theoretical model was a significantly better fit.
4
AIC is the Akaike Information Criterion and is
calculated as 2 2df (Bentler & Wu, 2005).
October
three subscales represented highly interrelated dimensions. Given the overall support for the hypothesized model, we first aggregated these three
subscales to the team level and then averaged the
scores to produce a single variable representing
internal team environment ( .94). We tested for
whether aggregation was appropriate using the
within-team agreement statistic (rwg; James, Demaree, & Wolf, 1993) and used intraclass correlation
coefficients (ICC[1] and ICC[2]) to assess the extent
to which team responses differed among teams and
the reliability of the team-level means (Bliese,
2000). The mean rwg of .96 indicated a high level of
agreement among members of teams on rating their
internal team environment; the ICC(1) of .14 demonstrated that team membership accounted for significant variance; and the ICC(2) of .71 suggested
that the team-level means were reliable.
Coaching. Team members were asked to rate the
level of supportive coaching (Morgeson, 2005) provided by their external leader (faculty advisor) using a three-item scale. Items included expresses
his/her confidence in the capabilities of our team,
effectively motivates and guides our team toward
accomplishing challenging goals for this project,
and is sensitive to the needs of our team and tries
to help us however he/she can. These items captured the motivational and consultative functions
of external leaders that have been suggested as
particularly important for fostering both commitment to a team and independence (Hackman &
Wageman, 2005; Morgeson, 2005). Items were rated
on a scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to
5 (strongly agree) ( .92), and responses were
aggregated to the team level and demonstrated
strong levels of within-team agreement, betweenteam differences, and reliable team-level means
(mean rwg .83; ICC[1] .51; ICC[2] .80).
Control variables. We included controls for the
effects of team size, project demands, gender diversity, and race diversity in order to address these
possible alternate explanations for shared leadership and team performance. Differences in team
size may influence resources and workload requirements that may influence team performance and
therefore team size was included as a control variable (Kirkman & Rosen, 1999). Environmental factors can impact team outcomes (e.g., Tesluk &
Mathieu, 1999), and more demanding projects may
thus have a detrimental impact on shared leadership and team performance. Previous research has
also shown significant effects for demographic heterogeneity on team outcomes (Williams & OReilly,
1998), and we therefore included it as a control.
Team size was measured as the actual number of
team members on each consulting team. Project
2007
1227
TABLE 2
Descriptive Statistics and Correlationsa
Variable
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Team performanceb
Shared leadership
Internal team environment
Coaching
Team Size
Project demandsb
Gender diversity
Race diversity
Mean
s.d.
5.81
3.16
4.08
3.76
5.93
4.38
0.55
0.74
1.02
0.35
0.41
0.64
0.72
1.19
0.18
0.27
(.93)
.46*
.19
.03
.10
.26
.20
.03
.33*
.37*
.28*
.20
.22
.03
(.94)
.24
.42*
.22
.14
.02
(.92)
.15
.22
.15
.24
.04
.00
.02
(.75)
.05
.14
.05
n 59 for most variables (n 51 for variable 6 and 56 for variable 1, because of missing data). Scale reliabilities are in parentheses
along the diagonal.
b
These variables were measured using seven-point Likert scales. All other scales were measured using five-point Likert scales.
* p .05
a
demands was measured by a seven-item Likert

scale that captured faculty advisor ratings of the
degree to which the team had to manage difficult
project challenges. Sample items include changing client demands during the course of the
project, difficulties in accessing data or information necessary for completing the work, and
problems or changes in the project timeline that
were outside the teams direct control. Items were
rated on a scale ranging from 1 (not at all present)
to 7 (very much present) ( .75). Gender diversity and race diversity were measured using Teachmans index,5 which captures how team members
are distributed among the possible categories of a
variable (Teachman, 1980).
one-tailed), as did external coaching ( 0.26, p

.05, one-tailed), supporting Hypotheses 1 and 2. In
step 3, we found the interaction effect between
coaching and internal team environment to be significant ( 4.06, p .05) and explaining an
additional 5 percent of the variance. Following
Aiken and Wests (1991) methods for plotting interactions, we graphed these relationships; Figure 2
presents this graph. It shows that internal team
environment was significantly and positively related to shared leadership for teams that had low
TABLE 3
Results of Regression Analyses
Variable
RESULTS
Table 2 gives means, standard deviations, and
zero-order correlations. To test Hypotheses 1
through 3, we used moderated regression analysis.
In step 1, we entered all of the control variables. In
step 2, we entered the two main effect variables,
internal team environment and coaching. In step 3,
we tested for interactions by entering the product of
internal team environment and coaching. Table 3
presents these results. Team size was the only control variable with a significant relationship with
shared leadership ( 0.37, p .01). In step 2,
internal team environment had a direct relationship with shared leadership ( 0.25, p .05,
5
Although the current tendency is to use Blaus index

for diversity, the only difference between Blau and
Teachman is standardization, and there is no conceptual
or empirical reason to favor one over the other. We are
grateful to David Harrison for noting this point in a
posting to the Academy of Management Research Methods Division listserv group (RMNet).
Step 1
Team size
Project demands
Gender diversity
Race diversity
R2
Step 2
Coaching
R2
R2
Step 3
coaching
Shared leadership
2
R
R2
Adjusted R2
a
b
Shared
Leadershipa
Team
Performanceb
0.37*
0.22
0.24
0.04
0.11
0.25
0.21
0.02
0.23*
0.12
0.25*
0.26*
0.25
0.14
0.39*
0.16*
0.16
0.04
4.06*
0.65*
.44*
.05*
.42*
.26*
.32
Estimates are standardized regression coefficients; n 51.

Estimates are standardized regression coefficients; n 49.
* p .05
1228
October
FIGURE 2
The Moderating Effect of Coaching on the Relationship between
Internal Team Environment and Shared Leadership
coaching support and was not related to shared

leadership for teams that had high coaching support. Teams with an unsupportive internal team
environment were still able to develop high levels
of shared leadership, so long as they received a
high level of coaching. Thus, Hypothesis 3 was
also supported.
To test Hypothesis 4, we used hierarchical regression, regressing team performance on shared
leadership after controlling for team size, project
demands, gender diversity, and race diversity, as
well as the main effects of internal team environment and coaching, to determine whether there
was significant additional explained variance. The
results, presented in Table 3, indicate that shared
leadership is a strongly positive predictor of a
teams performance as rated by the end users of the
teams work ( 0.65, p .001) and accounts for
significant variance in team performance exceeding
that accounted for by the control variables, internal
team environment, and coaching (R2 .26, p
.001). Thus, Hypothesis 4 received strong support.
DISCUSSION
Our study makes three key contributions to the
literature on team leadership. First, we examined
antecedent conditions for shared leadership and
found that a teams internal environment and
coaching by an external leader are important precursors for shared leadership. Second, our findings
show that coaching provided by an external team
leader is particularly important for the develop-
ment of shared leadership when teams lack a strong

internal team environment. Third, the findings extend previous research suggesting positive effects
of shared leadership on team performance using a
network-based measure of shared leadership that
better captures the patterns of mutual influence
inherent in the construct and a measure of performance that is less subject to common source variance and rating biases.
Theoretical Implications
Despite early suggestions by scholars that shared
internal leadership is important (e.g., Gibb, 1954;
Katz & Kahn, 1978), team leadership theory has
continued to focus primarily on the role of external
leaders and to use existing models of dyadic leadership extrapolated to the team level (Kozlowski &
Bell, 2003). Our findings suggest that a promising
future direction is to move the lens inward to investigate how team members themselves share
leadership responsibilities. Indeed, we found that
teams relying on multiple members for leadership
performed better than those in which internal leadership was relatively scarce. Importantly, this finding is based on performance ratings provided by
clients who focused on the quality of a teams final
product rather than on its process and functioning.
This argument suggests that shared leadership has
benefits for work teams beyond just improved team
processes. Shared leadership can occur in a team
with a designated formal leader or in a team without one. The results of this study do not mean that
2007
vertical leadership needs to be abandoned in favor

of shared leadership; rather, these two important
sources of team leadership should be studied in
combination (Kozlowski & Bell, 2003).
Building on previous work that has advocated
the use of social network methodology to understand relationships in teams (Mayo et al., 2003;
Sparrowe et al., 2001), we advocate a network approach to conceptualizing and measuring shared
leadership as an important step forward. Rather
than capturing a teams overall central tendency by
taking the mean of a Likert scale, this approach
incorporates the pattern of leadership present
throughout the team. By examining all possible
relationships in the team, this density measure captures the degree to which the team as a whole relies
heavily on most of its members for leadership. It
thus allows for a closer approximation to the theoretically rich concept of shared leadership.
This study also presents an initial understanding
of the antecedent conditions, both internal and external to teams, that enable shared leadership to
develop. We found that when a team has an internal environment characterized by a clear and unifying direction that is well understood within the
team, a strong sense of interpersonal support
whereby team members feel recognized and encouraged, and a high level of voice and involvement within the team, it is able to develop a leadership network characterized by high levels of
mutual influence and sharing of leadership responsibilities. Our findings also demonstrate the importance of coaching by an external leader for supporting the emergence of shared leadership, as well as
when this coaching support is most necessary
(Hackman & Wageman, 2005). When an internal
team environment is supportive, coaching by the
external leader is less critical for the emergence of
shared leadership; however, when an internal team
environment is unsupportive, coaching interventions are important for filling a role that is not being
filled by the team (cf. Hackman & Walton, 1986).
Managerial Implications
This study has important implications for team
leaders and managers. First, the findings suggest
that organizations should help develop strong internal leadership patterns within their teams to
bolster effectiveness. Organizations can promote
internal leadership by setting expectations and encouraging members when teams initially form to
view themselves and their fellow team members as
leaders and to engage in shared, mutual leadership.
Organizations can also provide training that fosters
a shared leadership perspective and disseminates
1229
best practices. Second, our results point to specific dimensions of internal team environments
shared purpose, social support, and voicethat
support the development of shared leadership in
teams. Managers should therefore ensure that each
team has a clear and shared sense of direction and
purpose, promote and establish norms of participation and input into the teams activities and strategies, and seek to foster a positive environment
where team members encourage one another and
actively recognize each others contributions. Organizations may further support these conditions
by institutionalizing a team charter process
whereby teams, upon their formation, collectively
identify and agree upon a common goal and set of
priorities, team roles and responsibilities, and team
norms. Third, our findings suggest that external
leaders should engage in supportive coaching of
teams to facilitate the development of shared leadership. This coaching can be in the form of encouraging, reinforcing, and rewarding instances in
which team members demonstrate leadership, assisting teams when internal conflicts arise (e.g.,
over sharing leadership responsibilities), providing
general encouragement to a team as a whole, and
being available for suggestions or input into the
teams task strategies as needed (Hackman & Wageman, 2005). Team leaders should pay particular
attention to teams that may have weaker internal
environments in order to provide additional motivation, guidance, and support. However, for teams
with supportive internal environments, stronger
coaching may not provide much additional assistance in developing shared leadership.
Limitations and Future Research
Our study has several limitations that need to be
addressed in future research. First, the partially
cross-sectional design did not allow for testing causality. Although we did measure shared leadership
after it had been given time to develop and collected outcome data from third parties after team
projects were complete, shared leadership is an
emergent phenomenon, and longitudinal designs
are needed to understand how shared leadership
develops over time by looking at changes in a leadership network over stages of team development.
Second, although the teams we studied performed
real consulting engagements and were responsible
to their clients for delivering completed projects,
team members were MBA students, not full-time
employees. For team members who are full-time
employees working in different organizational settings, shared leadership may operate differently.
Third, common source variance may have influ-
1230
enced the relationship between internal team environment and shared leadership, since both measures were taken from team members. However, it
is important to note that internal team environment
was a perceptual measure of an entire teams behavior and actions, whereas shared leadership was
a network measure compiled from ratings of each
individual team member. This distinction helps
mitigate the likelihood that common source bias
influenced the relationship.
Additionally, both the strengths and weaknesses
of our measurement approach for shared leadership
should be highlighted. Our measurement of shared
leadership as network density represents an improvement in this research field, notably by capturing the overall patterns of shared influence within
teams and overcoming a primary limitation of behavioral scales that restrict influence to a set of
prescribed behaviors. Operationally, by broadly
asking respondents the extent to which team members exerted leadership rather than detailing specific leadership behaviors, our measure of shared
leadership captured the respondents personal and
implicit theories of leadership, and was consistent
with the approach others have used in similar contexts (e.g., Mehra et al., 2006). However, the notable
limitations to such an approach should also be
highlighted. Because it neither specified the meaning of leadership nor primed specific behaviors for
respondents, it is possible that our measure tapped
something other than leadership influence, such as
participation and engagement, helping and cooperation, or respect and listening among team members. Thus, future research along these lines should
include efforts to provide leadership definitions
and/or behavioral examples to minimize the influence of differences in respondents attributions.
Further, a richer conceptualization and operationalization might be developed that, in addition to
identifying leadership sources, captures the quality
and nature of leadership offered by each team
member.
Future work should focus on a more detailed
understanding of the nature of shared leadership,
its development, and boundary conditions on its
effectiveness. It seems clear that relying on many
team members for leadership can be an effective
approach to team leadership, yet there are many
leadership styles that team members might employ,
such as directive, transactional, transformational,
and empowering leadership, as well as varying
leadership roles that team members may adopt.
Future research is needed to address both how
different leadership styles and roles interrelate and
complement one another when they are shared in
teams and the relationship between shared leader-
October
ship and external leadership beyond the effects of

coaching.
Additional predictors of shared leadership development should also be examined, such as team
empowerment (e.g., Kirkman & Rosen, 1997), team
composition (e.g., Cohen & Bailey, 1997), and contextual factors (e.g., Gladstein, 1984). Teams that
are highly empowered should be more likely to
develop shared leadership as a result of the autonomy and meaningfulness of the work they are doing
as well as strong collective beliefs about their potency and impact (Kirkman & Rosen, 1997). The
composition of a team in terms of its size and
characteristics such as experience, expertise, and
personality, as well as demographic compositional
patterns such as the existence of faultlines (Lau &
Murnighan, 1998), may also play a role in the development of shared leadership. Finally, in addition to external coaching, other contextual factors
may also impact shared leadership, such as reward
and recognition systems, training in important
teamwork and leadership skills, and the nature of a
teams task itself (e.g., Hackman, 1987).
Potential mediating mechanisms linking shared
leadership to performance and other effectiveness
criteria should be explored as well. For instance,
the reciprocal interactions and influential exchanges between team members may facilitate development of team knowledge structures such as
transactive memory systems or shared mental models. In addition to serving as a potential antecedent,
team empowerment may be another mediating
mechanism through which leadership becomes
shared among team members (Kirkman & Rosen,
1997).
A number of important boundary conditions for
the effectiveness of shared leadership should be
examined, such as the distribution of task competence, task interdependence, task complexity, team
life cycle, and cultural values (Pearce & Conger,
2003). Shared leadership is likely to be more effective when team members have a high level of task
competence, when a task is relatively complex,
when task interdependence is high, and when the
team life cycle allows for the development of
shared leadership. It is also likely to be affected by
cultural values, particularly power distance and
collectivism (Gibson & Zellmer-Bruhn, 2001; Kirkman & Shapiro, 1997), and it may be more likely to
develop and thrive in cultures that are low in
power distance and in cultures that are high in
collectivism (Carson, 2005).
Finally, team size was found to have a strongly
positive relationship with shared leadership. Our
interpretation of this finding is that teams with
more members have greater potential leadership
2007
resources available for sharing. However, there may

be a nonlinear relationship between team size and
shared leadership in teams larger than those in our
study. Beyond a certain team size, either a detrimental or ceiling effect on shared leadership may
occur, perhaps as the result of social loafing or free
riding. Future research should explore these nonlinear possibilities further by sampling teams with
greater range on team size.
Conclusion
As organizations continue to devote vast resources to the use of teams and teamwork, the need
for a better understanding of effective team leadership continues to grow. This study provides an
important contribution by highlighting the importance of leadership input from multiple team members and suggests that shared leadership is a critical
factor that can improve team performance from the
viewpoint of customers or end users of a teams
work. Although not a final statement on the topic,
this study adds to the growing body of evidence
that a team does well when it relies on leadership
provided by the team as a whole rather than looking to a single individual to lead it.
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APPENDIX
Items Assessing Internal Team Environment for
Shared Leadership
Shared Purpose
The members of my team . . .
1. Spent time discussing our teams purpose, goals,
and expectations for the project.
2. Discuss our teams main tasks and objectives to
ensure that we have a fair understanding.
3. Devise action plans and time schedules that allow
for meeting our teams goals.
Social Support
The members of my team . . .
4. Talk enthusiastically about our teams progress.
5. Recognize each others accomplishments and
hard work.
6. Give encouragement to team members who seem
frustrated.
1234
Voice
7. People in this team are encouraged to speak up to
test assumptions about issues under discussion.
8. As a member of this team, I have a real say in how
this team carries out its work.
Jay B. Carson (jcarson@cox.smu.edu) is an assistant

professor at the Edwin L. Cox School of Business,
Southern Methodist University. He received his Ph.D.
from the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland. His research interests are in leadership, teams, and cross-cultural issues, with a current
focus on shared leadership and internal leadership in
teams.
Paul E. Tesluk (ptesluk@rhsmith.umd.edu) is an associate professor at the Robert H. Smith School of
Business at the University of Maryland, College Park.
His research fo-cuses on team effectiveness, leadership
October
9. Everyone on this team has a chance to participate

and provide input.
10. My team supports everyone actively participating
in decision making.
development, and innovation processes in organizations. He received his Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State
University.
Jennifer A. Marrone (marronej@seattleu.edu) is an
assistant professor at the Albers School of Business
and Economics, Seattle University. She received her
Ph.D. from the Robert H. Smith School of Business,
University of Maryland. Her research interests include team processes and performance, leadership,
and strategic human resource management, with an
emphasis on applying multilevel perspectives and
techniques.

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Academy of Management Journal

2007, Vol. 50, No. 5, 12171234.

SHARED LEADERSHIP IN TEAMS:

tures and the pervasive presence of self-managing

Leadership is considered crucial for enabling

We would like to thank Hank Sims, Lisa Dragoni, and

Academy of Management Journal

LITERATURE REVIEW AND HYPOTHESES

Carson, Tesluk, and Marrone

Avolio, Jung, Murry, and

No explicit definition given, but shared

Team Multifactor Leadership

Pearce and Sims (2002)

Distributed influence from within the

Ratings (aggregated to team

Self-reported and manager

Team Multifactor Leadership

Team potency (self-ratings at

Lateral influence among peers (p. 176).

Collective influence of members in a

Pearce and Conger

A dynamic, interactive influence

Pearce, Yoo, and Alavi

Simultaneous, ongoing, mutual

Ratings (aggregated to team

Ensley, Hmieleski, and

Team process where leadership is

Ratings (aggregated to team

Growth index for new

Mehra, Smith, Dixon,

Shared, distributed phenomenon in

Qualitative coding based on

Team sales divided by team

inates with individual members of a team engaging

Academy of Management Journal

focused on multiple sources of influence and refers

individuals such as advice, information, and

Carson, Tesluk, and Marrone

mation and expertise (Wegner, 1986), and team

Academy of Management Journal

Antecedent Conditions: Internal and External

tion, team members are more likely to establish

Carson, Tesluk, and Marrone

These three dimensions are mutually reinforcing

Academy of Management Journal

members. However, for teams that lack a strong

Only a handful of empirical studies have been

Carson, Tesluk, and Marrone

It is important to note that the dichotomous (0, 1)

Academy of Management Journal

that two individuals perceive one another as a

We also examined the fit statistics for a one-factor

Carson, Tesluk, and Marrone

demands was measured by a seven-item Likert

one-tailed), as did external coaching ( 0.26, p

Although the current tendency is to use Blaus index

Estimates are standardized regression coefficients; n 51.

Academy of Management Journal

coaching support and was not related to shared