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Perceived influence in groups over time: How associations with personality and cognitive ability can change over time
Abstract
The ability of personality and cognitive ability to predict perceptions of group influence in small work groups are assessed both in initial and advanced stages of group formation. Extraversion is found important to initial perceptions of intra-group influence, which is partially mediated by peer-perceived social-emotional usefulness. After a few months, reputations are established and everyone has met; now work needs to get done efficiently and accurately and cognitive ability predicts increases in perceived group influence, which is partially mediated by perceived intelligence. After even more time, other Big Five personality traits become important to changes in perceived group influence, with positive associations with openness to experience, and negative associations with neuroticism and conscientiousness. The study findings and implications are discussed.
... We did not develop theoretical predictions for emotional stability, because earlier research did not suggest any relationships between team emotional stability and innovation (Mathisen, Martinsen, & Einarsen, 2008). Earlier work also suggests that effects of team emotional stability typically only appear over long periods of time (Deuling, Denissen, van Zalk, Meeus, & van Aken, 2011;Mathieu, Tannenbaum, Donsbach, & Alliger, 2014) that exceed the six weeks covered in the present study. ...
... T. Bell, 2007;Mathieu et al., 2014). Recently, team researchers have reacted to these calls by developing more theory on dynamic effects (Mathieu et al., 2014) and by conducting more longitudinal studies on team functioning (Cheng, Chua, Morris, & Lee, 2012;Deuling et al., 2011;Harrison, Mohammed, McGrath, Florey, & Vanderstoep, 2003). ...
Researchers have suggested that some personality traits are associated with better team functioning when team members are homogeneous, whereas other personality traits improve team functioning when team members are heterogeneous. This article extends these ideas to team innovation and examines (a) how team variance in extraversion, agreeableness, openness, and conscientiousness relates to innovation in teams; and (b) how these relationships dynamically evolve over time. Our study included 704 surveys completed by 243 team members in 32 teams, at three time points. Results revealed that teams with less variance in extraversion showed higher levels of team innovation. For agreeableness and openness, we did not find main effects of team heterogeneity on team innovation. For teams with low heterogeneity in agreeableness, however, team innovation decreased over time. Team variance in conscientiousness was negatively associated with team innovation. Our findings provide support that team personality plays a role for innovation.
... Regarding the first possibility, future researchers should integrate time-varying and time-invariant covariates to predict the variables modeled in dual change score models (i.e., the intercept, constant change, and latent change components). For example, research suggests that extraversion is predictive of team member-rated influence early in the team's lifecycle, but not late in the team's lifecycle (Deuling, Denissen, van Zalk, Meeus, & van Aken, 2011). Assuming that we are interested in how extraversion affects fluctuations in influence as the team operates over time, we could apply a dual change score model to team member-rated influence, regress each latent change segment (or "factor"; Clark et al., 2018) on extraversion, and allow this effect to be freely estimated for each individual segment. ...
... These results fit work by Watson, Johnson, and Merritt (1998), who demonstrated that team cultural diversity had an immediate positive impact on performance, but led to lower performance over time (relative to teams that were non-culturally diverse). Deuling, Denissen, van Zalk, Meeus, and Aken (2011) focused specifically on personality and cognitive ability over time. In their study, they found that whereas extraversion was valuable for influence throughout the lifespan of a team, other personality characteristics (openness to experience, neuroticism, and conscientiousness) increased in relative impact on influence later in the lifespan. ...
... In general, it can be concluded that the importance of the Big Five for leadership is moderated by many contextual and methodological factors. Extraversion, for instance, is supposed to be particularly important at the beginning of a leader-coworker relationship (Cavazotte, Moreno, & Hickmann, 2012) while the importance of emotional stability, openness, and conscientiousness increases with longlasting relationships (Deuling, Denissen, van Zalkc, Meeus, & van Aken, 2011). In addition, personality seems to be more important for lower-level leaders compared to upperlevel leaders (Hoffman, Woehr, Maldagen-Youngjohn, & Lyons, 2011) and the Big Five's validity further depends on whether the success is measured by looking at the leader's individual performance or the performance of the group that is led by the particular leader (DeRue, Nahrgang, Wellman, & Humphrey, 2011). ...
Self-awareness is an important aspect of successful management careers. The current study investigated the link between self-awareness and personality. Special attention was drawn to the question as to whether managers with certain personality aspects are more prone to over-rate or, respectively under-rate their performance and thus differ regarding their self-awareness. Self-awareness was assesses by measuring self-other rating agreement. Overall, 158 managers completed a multisource feedback and at the same time provided personality data on the Myers- Briggs Type Indicator. It was found that managers' self-awareness is linked to their extraversion/introversion, sensing/intuition, and judging/feeling preferences. Managers over-rating their performance are more extraverted, have higher thinking preferences, and report clearer intuition preferences. The extent to which they over-rate their performance depends on whether self-ratings of performance are compared to supervisor-, peer-, or subordinate-rating. Findings help to understand how misjudgment of one owns performance might appear. Furthermore, they equip practitioners to handle sensitive conversations when coaching managers.
... In general, it can be concluded that the importance of the Big Five for leadership is moderated by many contextual and methodological factors. Extraversion, for instance, is supposed to be particularly important at the beginning of a leader-coworker relationship (Cavazotte, Moreno, & Hickmann, 2012) while the importance of emotional stability, openness, and conscientiousness increases with longlasting relationships (Deuling, Denissen, van Zalkc, Meeus, & van Aken, 2011). In addition, personality seems to be more important for lower-level leaders compared to upperlevel leaders (Hoffman, Woehr, Maldagen-Youngjohn, & Lyons, 2011) and the Big Five's validity further depends on whether the success is measured by looking at the leader's individual performance or the performance of the group that is led by the particular leader (DeRue, Nahrgang, Wellman, & Humphrey, 2011). ...
The study investigated if personality can explain why certain managers are prone to overrate or underrate their own effectiveness. Thus, the relationship between self–other agreement of effectiveness and personality was studied. In total, 214 managers completed a multisource feedback and provided personality data on the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator. Results show that more extraverted leaders overrated their effectiveness in relation to their supervisors but had more accurate perceptions when self–peer and self–subordinate ratings were compared. Leaders with an intuition preference had more accurate perceptions when comparing self and supervisor or subordinate ratings while leaders with judging preferences received lower subordinate than self-ratings. Findings show that personality partly explains why leaders overrate or underrate their effectiveness and thus can be used for understanding leaders’ careers.
... These results fit work by Watson, Johnson, and Merritt (1998), who demonstrated that team cultural diversity had an immediate positive impact on performance, but led to lower performance over time (relative to teams that were non-culturally diverse). Deuling, Denissen, van Zalk, Meeus, and Aken (2011) focused specifically on personality and cognitive ability over time. In their study, they found that whereas extraversion was valuable for influence throughout the lifespan of a team, other personality characteristics (openness to experience, neuroticism, and conscientiousness) increased in relative impact on influence later in the lifespan. ...
Team researchers in the field of organizational behavior (OB) seem to be increasingly aware of the need to embrace the organizing nature of teams. In this article, we outline the limitations of the prevailing static collectivist expla-nations in team research and suggest how an increased emphasis on a micro-dynamics-oriented approach that takes into account the essentially relational and organizing nature of teams can provide new insights to our understanding of teamwork. We argue that a multilevel, multi-theoretical, and multi-period framework may help enhance our understanding of teams. To show the advancements of the field in this sense, we review the OB literature on teams and highlight exemplars of research that have started to emphasize the microdynamic nature of teams consistent with this general framework, and their contributions to our understanding of team phenomena. We conclude by outlining the opportunities and needs for a microdynamic insight into team and teamwork, providing guidance for scholars who are interested in adding a microdynamic perspective into their models of teamwork.
... Future research should seek to further explore this timedependent notion of status-examining whether there may be certain times during which status mobility is higher or lower and whether the status consequences of various traits and behaviors may vary along the life of groups (Deuling, Denissen, van Zalk, Meeus, & van Aken, 2011). Furthermore, building on the idea that status is path dependent, it would be interesting to explore whether the timing and order in which certain characteristics are revealed, or certain behaviors exhibited, affects status attainment. ...
We propose that the psychological states individuals bring into newly formed groups can produce meaningful differences in status attainment. Three experiments explored whether experimentally created approach-oriented mindsets affected status attainment in groups, both immediately and over time. We predicted that approach-oriented states would lead to greater status attainment by increasing proactive behavior. Furthermore, we hypothesized that these status gains would persist longitudinally, days after the original mindsets had dissipated, due to the self-reinforcing behavioral cycles the approach-oriented states initiated. In Experiment 1, individuals primed with a promotion focus achieved higher status in their newly formed groups, and this was mediated by proactive behavior as rated by themselves and their teammates. Experiment 2 was a longitudinal experiment and revealed that individuals primed with power achieved higher status, both immediately following the prime and when the groups were reassembled 2 days later to work on new tasks. These effects were mediated by independent coders’ ratings of proactive behavior during the first few minutes of group interaction. Experiment 3 was another longitudinal experiment and revealed that priming happiness led to greater status as well as greater acquisition of material resources. Importantly, these immediate and longitudinal effects were independent of the effects of a number of stable dispositional traits. Our results establish that approach-oriented psychological states affect status attainment, over and above the more stable characteristics emphasized in prior research, and provide the most direct test yet of the self-reinforcing nature of status hierarchies. These findings depict a dynamic view of status organization in which the same group may organize itself differently depending on members’ incoming psychological states.
Multiperspective frameworks, such as the social relations model, socioanalytic theory, the realistic accuracy model, the self–other knowledge asymmetry model, and the trait-reputation-identity model, have advanced understanding of personality over the last 40 years. Due to a resurgence of interest in multiperspective research on personality and other constructs in organizational psychology, we conducted an integrative conceptual review of these specific multirater frameworks and their application in work settings. Our review identifies similarities and differences in these frameworks and suggests that they collectively represent an invaluable resource for personality researchers and the broader field of organizational psychology. Through our review, we distinguish multiperspective frameworks from similar approaches (e.g., multirater designs), track the evolution of these frameworks, and leverage current applications of these frameworks to craft a future research agenda. Our review serves as a roadmap to help scholars apply multiperspective logic more thoroughly and systematically in personality research and beyond. We close with a discussion of practical implications.
Theories have proposed diverse reasons for why individual differences such as personality traits lead to social status attainment in face-to-face groups. We integrated these different theoretical standpoints into a model with four paths from individual differences to status: a dominance, a competence, a virtue, and a micropolitics path. To investigate these paths, we meta-analyzed over 100 years of research on bivariate associations of personality traits, cognitive abilities, and physical size with the attainment of status-related outcomes in face-to-face groups (1,064 effects from 276 samples including 56,153 participants). The status-related outcome variables were admiring respect, social influence, popularity (i.e., being liked by others), leadership emergence, and a mixture of outcome variables. The meta-analytic correlations we found were largely in line with the micropolitics path, tentatively in line with the competence and virtue paths, and only partly in line with the dominance path. These findings suggest that status attainment depends not only on the competence and virtue of an individual but also on how individuals can enhance their apparent competence or virtue by behaving assertively, by being extraverted, or through self-monitoring. We also investigated how the relations between individual differences and status-related outcomes were moderated by kind of status-related outcome, nature of the group task, culture (collectivism/individualism), and length of acquaintance. The moderation analysis yielded mixed and inconclusive results. The review ends with directions for research, such as the need to separately assess and study the different status-related outcomes.
In diesem Hauptkapitel werden mögliche Risiken und Problemzonen einer hohen Gewissenhaftigkeit von Mitarbeitern in Organisationen ausführlich beleuchtet. Dies geschieht auf der Basis von konkreten empirischen Studien. Thematisiert wird z. B. unter welchen Voraussetzungen Gewissenhaftigkeit zu einem Leistungshemmnis werden kann, wann sie die Agilität und Flexibilität einer Organisation negativ beeinträchtigen oder sich ungünstig auf das Innovationsgeschehen auswirken kann. Potenziell kann Gewissenhaftigkeit auch zum Treiber für Stress, Burnout oder eine suboptimale Work–Life-Balance werden. Beleuchtet wird zudem die Rolle dieses Persönlichkeitsmerkmals im Kontext von Mitarbeiterführung, Zusammenarbeit auf kollegialer Ebene und innerhalb von Teamstrukturen. In Summe ergibt sich für den Unternehmenspraktiker eine Sensibilisierung für die „dunkle Seite der Gewissenhaftigkeit“.
The empirical study of change has proven to be one of the most vexing challenges in organizational science. Fortunately, contemporary methodologies originating from developmental psychology may provide a potential solution and are consequently working their way into the literature. In particular, organizational researchers are increasingly employing variations of latent change score (LCS) models to address questions regarding change, development, and dynamics. Although these models may indeed be used to reliably study change, development, and dynamics, many studies utilizing these models—and published in premier outlets—are characterized by questionable methodological choices, improper modeling procedures, and suboptimal research designs. Thus, the purpose of the present article is to (a) provide a critical review of LCS models, (b) outline appropriate modeling procedures (with corresponding Mplus and R syntax), (c) compare and contrast LCS modeling with other analytical techniques, and (d) delineate best practices. Ultimately, we endorse the use of LCS models by organizational researchers interested in studying longitudinal phenomena. However, we also heed researchers to do so judiciously as their misuse may lead to their unwarranted rejection by the field.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of grit, which is the tendency to pursue long-term goals with perseverance and continuing passion, on leaders’ self-reported behavior in terms of role modeling and innovating, as well as inspiring, empowering and supporting followers.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected from an international sample of 3,702 leaders in work and non-work contexts. They reported their level of grit and how frequently they engaged in five leadership practices. Moderation analysis was used to test the influence of grit on leadership behaviors across contexts.
Findings
High grit leaders reported more frequent role modeling and innovating behaviors, but less inspiring behavior. Grit’s effect on empowering behaviors depended on the context; grit caused leaders to empower followers more in non-work contexts, but not in work-related ones.
Research limitations/implications
That grit is an important predictor of leadership behavior yields both practical and theoretical implications. For practice, the results suggest that grit is a desirable trait in managers, corresponding with their greater use of various leadership behaviors. For theory, the results suggest that part of the effect of traits in leadership arises from influencing the frequency with which leaders engage in particular behaviors.
Originality/value
This is the first study to examine grit’s role in leadership, and it has practical and theoretical implications. For practice, the results suggest that grit is a desirable trait in leaders, but one which requires unique supports from the leader’s environment. For theory, the results begin to fill an important gap. It is well-established that personality influences leadership outcomes, but it remains uncertain how and when. The current study suggests how, since traits influence the frequency with which leaders engage in particular behaviors, and begins to define when, highlighting differences between work and non-work contexts.
In the current chapter, we review research on personality and status attainment. We find that extraversion, trait dominance, neuroticism, and self-monitoring consistently predict status attainment across diverse contexts. Conscientiousness and narcissism can also facilitate status attainment, but their effects appear to be more context dependent. Some evidence suggested openness to experience could predict status, though this evidence was somewhat weaker. Agreeableness was found not to predict status attainment. To explain these findings, we use a recently proposed Micropolitics theory of status-organizing processes (Anderson and Kennedy, Research on managing groups and teams, Vol. 15, pp. 49-80, 2012), which argues that an individual's status is a product of both a group's judgments of which individuals deserve higher status, and of the individual's motivation and ability to seek higher status. That is, individuals jockey for status by striving to enhance their value to the group in the eyes of others. © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014. All rights are reserved.
Although teams are considered to be the building blocks of modern organizational designs and numerous theoretical models, and narrative and meta-analytic reviews of the literature exist, there is a lack of coherence, integration, and understanding of how team composition effects relate to important team outcomes. Accordingly we have five primary goals for this article. First, we categorize team composition models into four types and highlight theory and research associated with each one. Second, we offer an integrative framework that represents members' attributes as simultaneously contributing variance to each of the four model types. Third, we overlay temporal considerations that suggest different team compositional mixes will be more or less salient at different periods of performance episodes or stages of team development. Fourth, we integrate membership dynamics into our model. And fifth, we advance an integrative optimization algorithm that incorporates implications from all for the four previous approaches, as well as temporal dynamics and membership change. In so doing, we provide a synthesis of previous work and theories and outline a research agenda for both research and practice.
In this article, we attempt to distinguish between the properties of moderator and mediator variables at a number of levels. First, we seek to make theorists and researchers aware of the importance of not using the terms moderator and mediator interchangeably by carefully elaborating, both conceptually and strategically, the many ways in which moderators and mediators differ. We then go beyond this largely pedagogical function and delineate the conceptual and strategic implications of making use of such distinctions with regard to a wide range of phenomena, including control and stress, attitudes, and personality traits. We also provide a specific compendium of analytic procedures appropriate for making the most effective use of the moderator and mediator distinction, both separately and in terms of a broader causal system that includes both moderators and mediators. (46 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The study of leader traits has a long and controversial history. While research shows that the possession of certain traits alone does not guarantee leadership success, there is evidence that effective leaders are different from other people in certain key respects. Key leader traits include: drive (a broad term which includes achievement, motivation, ambition, energy, tenacity, and initiative); leadership motivation (the desire to lead but not to seek power as an end in itself); honesty and integrity; self-confidence (which is associated with emotional stability); cognitive ability; and knowledge of the business. There is less clear evidence for traits such as charisma, creativity and flexibility. We believe that the key leader traits help the leader acquire necessary skills; formulate an organizational vision and an effective plan for pursuing it; and take the necessary steps to implement the vision in reality.
Five hundred and six first-year university students completed Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices. Scores on Set II ranged from 6 to 35 (M= 22.17, SD = 5.60). The first 12 items of Set II were found to add little to the discriminative power of the test. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses failed to confirm Dillon et al.'s two-factor solution and suggested that a single-factor best represented performance on Set II. A short-form of Set II, consisting of 12 items extracted from the original 36, was developed and found to possess acceptable psychometric properties. Although this short form differed considerably in content from the short form previously devised by Arthur and Day, the two short forms did not differ with respect to concurrent validity and predictive power.
Given the overwhelming research evidence showing the strong link between general cognitive ability (GCA) and job performance, it is not logically possible for industrial -organizational (I/O) psychologists to have a serious debate over whether GCA is important for job performance. However, even if none of this evidence existed in I/O psychology, research findings in differential psychology on the nature and correlates of GCA provide a sufficient basis for the conclusion that GCA is strongly related to job performance. In I/O psychology, the theoretical basis for the empirical evidence linking GCA and job performance is rarely presented, but is critical to understanding and acceptance of these findings. The theory explains the why behind the empirical findings. From the viewpoint of the kind of world we would like to live in - and would like to believe we live in - the research findings on GCA are not what most people would hope for and are not welcome. However, if we want to remain a science-based field, we cannot reject what we know to be true in favor of what we would like to be true.
Both intelligence (Bass, 1990) and self-monitoring (Cronshaw & Ellis, 1991) have been shown to be strong individual predictors of leadership emergence in small groups. The present study proposed a potential mediator in the leadership emergence process. Specifically, it was hypothesized that perceived intellectual competence would mediate the emergent leadership process. Undergraduate business students (N = 347) from a large mid-western university participated in an academic assessment center in conjunction with an organizational behavior course. Findings indicated that the proposed model fits the data quite well and mediator analysis demonstrated that the perception of intellectual competence might be an important mechanism for leadership attainment in small groups.
Reexamines, via meta-analysis, the relation between personality traits and leadership perceptions or extent of leader emergence, arguing that prior research on trait theories and leadership has been misinterpreted as applying to a leader's effect on performance when it actually pertains to the relation of leadership traits to leadership emergence. Further, based on current theories of social perceptions, several traits were expected to be strongly related to leadership perceptions. The meta-analytic technique of validity generalization was used with the 15 articles identified by R. D. Mann (see record
1960-04194-001) as investigating the relationship between personality traits and leadership. These studies were then pooled with 9 subsequent studies in an additional set of meta-analyses. Results support the expectation in that intelligence, masculinity–femininity, and dominance were significantly related to leadership perceptions. Findings show that variability across studies in the relation of these traits to leadership perceptions could be explained largely by methodological factors, indicating that contingency theories of leadership perceptions may not be needed. Both of these results contrast with the conclusions of earlier nonquantitative literature reviews on traits and leadership perceptions and with conventional thinking in the leadership area. (62 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Recent recognition that the dominance and nurturance dimensions of the interpersonal circumplex correspond closely to the surgency/extraversion and agreeableness dimensions of the five-factor model of personality provides an occasion for the closer integration of these two traditions. We describe the procedures whereby we extended our adjectival measure of the circumplex Revised Interpersonal Adjective Scales (IAS-R) to include the additional Big Five dimensions of conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience. The resultant five-scale instrument (IASR-B5) was found to have excellent structure on the item level, internally consistent scales, and promising convergent and discriminant properties when compared with the NEO Personality Inventory and the Hogan Personality Inventory. The unique feature of the IASR-B5 is that it provides a highly efficient instrument for combined circumplex and five-factor assessment. We provide an example of such combined assessment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Presents a new multivariate statistical technique that includes both individual and group effects and allows for nonindependence between group members in hierarchically nested designs in small-group research. In the present statistical technique, the estimated correlation matrices for the individual and for the group can be used as input into multivariate procedures (e.g., multiple regression, factor analysis). The application of the technique is illustrated for data on crowding in university residential environments. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Levels of analysis issues have attracted a lot of attention in group psychology research. Despite assertions pertaining to the value of multilevel models, most researchers focus on either the individual within groups or the group as a whole, but seldom on both. A multilevel approach may be helpful to group psychologists. This article addresses levels of analysis issues that are an inherent part of group research, and a number of methods that can be used to analyze multilevel data are presented. The methods fall into 3 categories: (a) assessing the extent of agreement within a single group, (b) contrasting within-group and between-groups variance, and (c) conducting multiple-level analyses. Finally, recommendations are offered for future multilevel research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Personality influences on social relationships and vice versa were longitudinally studied. Personality affected relationships, but not vice versa. After entry to university, 132 students participated for 18 month in a study in which the Big Five factors of personality, the subfactors Sociability and Shyness, and all significant social relationships were repeatedly assessed. A subsample kept diaries of all significant social interactions. After the initial correlation between personality and relationship quality was controlled for, Extraversion and its subfactors, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness predicted aspects of relationships such as number of peer relationships, conflict with peers, and falling in love. In contrast, relationship qualities did not predict personality traits, and changes in relationship qualities were unrelated to changes in personality traits. Consequences for dynamic-interactionistic views of personality and relationships are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The Five Factor Model (FFM) traits of agreeableness and extraversion are rotational equivalents of the interpersonal circumplex (IPC) dimensions of affiliation and control. Given that the NEO-PI-R is a widely used measure of the FFM, availability of IPC dimension scales within this inventory could facilitate integration of FFM and interpersonal perspectives. In a study of 301 married couples, we evaluated an IPC scoring system for the NEO-PI-R (Wiggins & Trobst, 1998) comprising 6-item octant scales and composites representing control and affiliation. The octant scales demonstrated expected circular structure. Octant and dimension scales demonstrated convergent and discriminant validity, in analyses of self-report and spouse-rating versions of this IPC measure and the Impact Message Inventory. Further, extraversion corresponded to friendly dominance in the IPC and agreeableness to submissive friendliness.
Scales were developed to assess 10 specific facet traits within the broad Big Five personality domains from the item pool of the Big Five Inventory (BFI). In two independent samples, the BFI facet scales dem-onstrated substantial (a) reliability, (b) convergence with self-reports on the Revised NEO Personality Inventory and peer-reports on the BFI, and (c) discriminant validity. These brief scales offer new oppor-tunities for researchers who wish to assess specific personality characteristics within an overarching Big Five framework. for serving as judges for the correlate-matching task.
The leadership literature suffers from a lack of theoretical integration (Avolio, 2007, American Psychologist, 62, 25–33). This article addresses that lack of integration by developing an integrative trait-behavioral model of leadership effectiveness and then examining the relative validity of leader traits (gender, intelligence, personality) and behaviors (transformational-transactional, initiating structure-consideration) across 4 leadership effectiveness criteria (leader effectiveness, group performance, follower job satisfaction, satisfaction with leader). Combined, leader traits and behaviors explain a minimum of 31% of the variance in leadership effectiveness criteria. Leader behaviors tend to explain more variance in leadership effectiveness than leader traits, but results indicate that an integrative model where leader behaviors mediate the relationship between leader traits and effectiveness is warranted.
We present and test a theory on leader emergence in self-managing teams that highlights the emotional and cognitive skills underlying selection as an informal team leader. Existing theory and research reveals that informal leaders are selected because they display constructive task and team management behavior. We contribute to existing theory in two ways. First, by proposing that specific cognitive processes and skills precede the appropriate enactment of those behaviors by facilitating an accurate analysis of the task situation. Second, by proposing that empathy, an aspect of emotional intelligence, precedes and enables those cognitive processes and skills by providing an accurate understanding of team and member emotions and needs. We test our theory in a longitudinal study of 382 team members comprising 48 self-managing teams. Our theory is partially supported and implications are discussed.
Good team players are often defined in trait terms; that is, they are described as dependable, flexible, or cooperative. Our goal is to examine the relationship between team member personality traits and team effectiveness. However, to understand the effects of personality on team performance requires greater specificity in how personality is described and in how team effectiveness is described. A hierarchical model of team member personality is presented that defines higher-level personality traits and specific facets relevant to team performance. Next, a classification of the core teamwork dimensions underlying effective team performance is presented. Finally, predictions are derived linking team member personality facets to specific teamwork requirements.
After completing a decision task electronically or face to face, 105 students rated their own and other group members' contribution to the task completion and their degree of liking for group members. Actual contributions were the number of task relevant remarks each person contributed. Results indicated that self-ratings of contribution were more inflated and less accurate in electronic communication than in face-to-face communication. Liking accounted for significant variance in ratings of others' contributions in face-to-face groups, whereas actual contribution accounted for significant variance in ratings of others in electronic groups. Results suggest that rating biases stemming from liking are evident in ratings of others in face-to-face groups but not in electronic. Implications for online performance evaluations are discussed.
Personnel selection research provides much evidence that intelligence (g) is an important predictor of performance in training and on the job, especially in higher level work. This article provides evidence that g has pervasive utility in work settings because it is essentially the ability to deal with cognitive complexity, in particular, with complex information processing. The more complex a work task, the greater the advantages that higher g confers in performing it well. Everyday tasks, like job duties, also differ in their level of complexity. The importance of intelligence therefore differs systematically across different arenas of social life as well as economic endeavor. Data from the National Adult Literacy Survey are used to show how higher levels of cognitive ability systematically improve individual's odds of dealing successfully with the ordinary demands of modern life (such as banking, using maps and transportation schedules, reading and understanding forms, interpreting news articles). These and other data are summarized to illustrate how the advantages of higher g, even when they are small, cumulate to affect the overall life chances of individuals at different ranges of the IQ bell curve. The article concludes by suggesting ways to reduce the risks for low-IQ individuals of being left behind by an increasingly complex postindustrial economy.
This study examines the Nemeth (1986) model of minority influence in a field study of natural work-groups. Confederates (who were also permanent members of the ongoing, interacting groups) served as designated minority influence agents during the 10-week study. Results demonstrated that experimental groups engaged in more divergent thinking and developed more original products than control groups. Minority influence groups did not experience more social conflict than control groups. Contrary to expectations, minority influence agents received higher peer ratings than other group members. Exploratory analysis of qualitative data, however, indicates that the role of a minority influence agent is stressful. Results are discussed in terms of managing the minority influence process in organizations in order to facilitate divergent thinking and originality while protecting agents from excessive personal strain.
The purpose of this research was to investigate the relationship between the length of time that work groups had been meeting and the verbal behavior patterns and perceptions of group members about their groups. The verbal behavior patterns and perceptions of 180 members of 26 work groups were examined. Perceptions of 639 people in 88 work groups also were explored. Significant relationships and differences were noted between the length of time that work groups had been meeting and the verbal behavior patterns and perceptions of group members. Specifically, members of groups that had been meeting longer made significantly less dependency and fight statements and significantly more work statements. They also perceived their groups to be functioning at higher stages of group development. The results of this study lent further support to traditional models of group development. Verbal behavior patterns of members vary significantly in groups of different durations. Member perceptions of their group’s development also vary significantly in groups of different durations.
A study was conducted to explore whether the influence of physical appearance on leader emergence is mediated by appearance-related social skills. College student subjects performed a leadership simulation task in which they were videotaped giving a standard campaign speech. Canonical analysis revealed that the quality of their performance, as measured by observers' judgments and behavioral indicators, was related to their appearance and to appearance-related leadership skills. The implications of these findings for both attribution theories of leadership and applied efforts to improve leaders' performance are discussed.
This study investigated the relation of the "Big Five" personality di- mensions (Extraversion, Emotional Stability, Agreeableness, Consci- entiousness, and Openness to Experience) to three job performance criteria (job proficiency, training proficiency, and personnel data) for five occupational groups (professionals, police, managers, sales, and skilled/semi-skilled). Results indicated that one dimension of person- ality. Conscientiousness, showed consistent relations with all job per- formance criteria for all occupational groups. For the remaining per- sonality dimensions, the estimated true score correlations varied by occupational group and criterion type. Extraversion was a valid pre- dictor for two occupations involving social interaction, managers and sales (across criterion types). Also, both Openness to Experience and Extraversion were valid predictors of the training proficiency criterion (across occupations). Other personality dimensions were also found to be valid predictors for some occupations and some criterion types, but the magnitude of the estimated true score correlations was small (p < .10). Overall, the results illustrate the benefits of using the 5- factor model of personality to accumulate and communicate empirical findings. The findings have numerous implications for research and practice in personnel psychology, especially in the subfields of person- nel selection, training and development, and performance appraisal.
This research investigated the impact of small and large work groups on developmental processes and group productivity. There were 329 work groups operating in for-profit and nonprofit organizations across the United States in this study. Groups containing 3 to 8 members were significantly more productive and more developmentally advanced than groups with 9 members or more. Groups containing 3 to 6 members were significantly more productive and more developmentally advanced than groups with 7 to 10 members or 11 members or more. The groups with 7 to 10 members or 11 members were not different from each other. Finally, groups containing 3 to 4 members were significantly more productive and more developmentally advanced on a number of measures than groups with 5 to 6 members. Work-group size is a crucial factor in increasing or decreasing both group development and productivity.
The relative contributions of emotional competence and cognitive ability to individual and team performance, team-member attitudes, and leadership perceptions were examined. Focusing on emotional competencies, we predicted that, although both cognitive ability and emotional competence would predict performance, cognitive ability would account for more variance on individual tasks, whereas emotional competence would account for more variance in team performance and attitudes. We also predicted that emotional competence would be positively related to team attitudes and to both leader emergence and effectiveness. Using a sample of undergraduate business majors who completed tasks alone and as members of teams, our results generally supported the hypotheses. Implications for the reach and impact of work relating emotional competencies to performance are offered.
The purpose of this review was to examine published research on small-group development done in the last ten years that would constitute an empirical test of Tuckman's (1965) hypothesis that groups go through the stages of "forming," "storming," "norming," and "performing." Of the twenty-two studies reviewed, only one set out to directly test this hypothesis, although many of the others could be related to it. Following a review of these studies, a fifth stage, "adjourning," was added to the hypothesis, and more empirical work was recommended.
L'auteur discute un modele a cinq facteurs de la personnalite qu'il confronte a d'autres systemes de la personnalite et dont les correlats des dimensions sont analyses ainsi que les problemes methodologiques
In a group each individual perceives and reacts to all others in dynamic interaction. An organization is a group in which members are differentiated as to responsibility for tasks leading to a common goal. Fundamental defining variables of an organization are (1) work one is expected to do; (2) tasks one actually performs; (3) persons with whom one is expected to work; (4) persons with whom one actually works. Leadership is a phenomenon of organizations, not groups as such, and the organization defines and delimits the scope of the leadership. Leadership must be viewed from standpoint of influence on organizational activity, rather than on group members. 16 references. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Part I: Acquiring a Record Containing Information about Group InteractionPart II: Transforming Records of Group Interaction into DataPart III: Techniques for Analysis of Group Interaction DataConcluding Comments: Six Rules for Making Some Strategic Choices
An important issue in personnel selection and test validation has been the nature of performance criteria and more specifically the existence of dynamic criteria. There is a continuing debate regarding the extent to which performance and validity coefficients remain stable over time. We examine research within work, laboratory, and academic settings and evaluate existing models of dynamic criteria. Building on previous models, we propose an integrative model of dynamic criteria that identifies important issues for ability and performance constructs and discusses how variables related to the task, job, and organization can affect the temporal stability of criterion performance and the ability-performance relationship.
The effects of personality traits, motives, and leadership identity claims on the attainment of status in informal, social organizations were assessed in several organizations using multiple indices of status. The power motive Hope for Power was predictive of holding executive offices. Extraversion and Consci-entiousness predicted peer-ratings of social influence. Extraversion, Emotional Stability, and Dominance were related to subjective beliefs of personal power and influence. Seeing oneself as a leader mediated the effects of personality traits and motives on subjective sense of power and attaining social influence, but not achieving formal office. Together, these findings offer an integrated look at the unique relationships between personality and status attainment.
Research on Groups in OrganizationsA Reformulation: The Nature of Groups in Organizational ContextsFormation ProcessesCoordination ProcessesAdaptation ProcessesLearning ProcessesTemporal and Contextual IssuesConcluding Comments
ABSTRACT We examined several determinants of interjudge agreement on personality traits. The findings, which were cross-validated in two samples, suggest that agreement is a function of four factors: which Big Five content domain the trait represents, how observable relevant behaviors are, how evaluative the trait is, and whether the self is one of the judges. Agreement was highest for traits related to Extraversion and lowest for traits related to Agreeableness. More observable and less evaluative traits elicited higher interjudge agreement. On average, self-peer agreement was lower than peer-peer agreement. However, this effect was limited to evaluative traits; for neutral traits, self-peer agreement was as high as peer-peer agreement. These findings suggest that self- and peer perception proceed through similar processes for neutral traits but not for highly evaluative traits, raising the possibility that self-perceptions become distorted when the trait is affectively charged.
The aim of this study was to investigate (a) personality attributes and cognitive ability (g) as determinants of leadership emergence in teams, and (b) the impact of leadership that can emerge from the team leader (operationalized as the team member with the highest leadership score) and other team members (staff) on team performance. Autonomous work team members who had been working together for 13 weeks were studied. Participants were 480 undergraduates in 94 initially leaderless teams of 5 or 6. We found that leadership emergence was associated most strongly with g, followed by conscientiousness, extraversion, and emotional stability. Teams performed best when both the team leader and staff were high in leadership. Furthermore, an effective team leader does not ameliorate the negative affects of a staff low in leadership.
The present study investigated the relationship of traits from the 5-factor model of personality (often termed the “Big Five”) and general mental ability with career success. Career success was argued to be comprised of intrinsic success (job satisfaction) and extrinsic success (income and occupational status) dimensions. Data were obtained from the Intergenerational Studies, a set of 3 studies that followed participants from early childhood to retirement. The most general findings were that conscientiousness positively predicted intrinsic and extrinsic career success, neuroticism negatively predicted extrinsic success, and general mental ability positively predicted extrinsic career success. Personality was related to career success controlling for general mental ability and, though adulthood measures of the Big Five traits were more strongly related to career success than were childhood measures, both contributed unique variance in explaining career success.
This study investigated the theoretical underpinnings of individual differences in emergent leadership behaviors and their relationships to teamwork processes and outcomes. Both personality and cognitive ability were utilized to examine behaviors of leadership emergence, team performance, and KSAs. Three hundred and twenty undergraduate psychology students completed personality and cognitive ability tests and then formed sixty-seven mixed-gender teams. Members rated each other on emergent leadership behaviors as well as their team on specific interpersonal and self-management KSAs. Results revealed that extroversion, openness to experience and cognitive ability were predictive of emergent leadership behaviors. Conscientiousness and cognitive ability were associated with team performance. Implications and future directions for research are discussed.
When we perceive someone as a leader, it is often because we are impressed with his/her mental abilities and his/her ability to perform complex tasks. Yet, there is a small but growing body of conceptual work suggesting that our perception of someone as a leader is affected by his/her emotional abilities as well. This article develops a model proposing two distinct behavioral routes that influence perception of an individual as a leader in a small group. One route influences people to perceive leadership from displays of emotional abilities, such as empathy. The other route influences people to perceive leadership from displays of mental abilities, such as complex task performance. Our test of the hypothesized model using structural equation modeling showed a good fit and support for the proposed relationships.
Despite extensive research on leadership, very little is known about the emergence of informal leaders in teams that have worked together over an extended period of time within “real” organizational contexts. These teams are increasingly composed of both men and women, making gender a potentially critical variable in the dynamics of informal leadership emergence. This study examines how gender moderates the relationship between individual characteristics and informal leadership emergence in the context of intact manufacturing teams. Whereas a high level of conscientiousness, emotional stability, and team member network centrality predicted informal leadership more for men than for women, a high level of general mental ability predicted informal leadership more for women than for men. The implications for gender and informal leadership in intact teams are discussed.
In spite of its popularity, the Five-Factor Model (FFM) has been criticized for being too descriptive to provide a theoretical model of personality. The current article conceptualizes the FFM as stable individual differences in people’s motivational reactions to circumscribed classes of environmental stimuli. Specifically, extraversion was conceptualized as individual differences in the activation of reward system in social situations, agreeableness as differences in the motivation to cooperate (vs. acting selfishly) in resource conflicts, conscientiousness as differences in the tenacity of goal pursuit under distracting circumstances, neuroticism as differences in the activation of the punishment system when faced with cues of social exclusion, and openness for experiences as differences in the activation of reward system when engaging in cognitive activity. We devised a questionnaire that is consistent with these motivational conceptualizations. This questionnaire turned out to differ from an established FFM questionnaire in terms of content but it did not interfere with the factorial, structural, and predictive validity of the FFM. The resulting theoretical framework may help to bridge the traditional divide between structure- and process-oriented approaches in personality psychology.
