Organizations increasingly call for teamwork when working on challenges such as implementing new technologies or creating innovations. Teams require team leaders who analyze the situations at hand. This study explores team leaders’ mental representations of such situations and their decisions on how to act.
To study such team leaders’ cognitions, four types of mental representations were explored – team leaders’ mental representations of team leadership, self-view as team leaders, understanding of teams and team tasks and team leadership behavior repertoires – and any alignment between these mental representations was analyzed. Various elicitation techniques were used in interviews with 15 team leaders.
The analysis showed that team leaders thought differently about leadership and teams and did not necessarily present a collective leadership perspective or a broad view of teams. Furthermore, those with more varied mental representations of leadership and situations in teams mentioned a greater variety of leadership behaviors in their repertoires that they would apply in different situations.
The inclusion of these cognitive properties in “team” leadership advances leader cognition research, which predominantly takes a leader–follower perspective and contributes to research that strongly focuses on the mental representations of team members. Combinations of methods were used (e.g. survey data and vignette-driven interviews), adding empirical depth and representing methodological rigor and novelty. This study reveals the diversity and particularity of team leader cognitions and their alignment, showing the importance of a cognitive approach to complement team leadership based on behavioral research traditions.
To tackle many of today’s challenges, organizations are increasingly implementing teamwork, which requires staff to collaborate across functions and disciplines. These organizations aim to accomplish innovation through teamwork in matters such as new product development, technology implementation, management strategy exploration, interprofessional course creation and quality assessment reform. As they do so, team members become task-interdependent and are required to share responsibility for outcomes (Cohen and Bailey, 1997). Bringing different experts together in teams enables the utilization and integration of members’ unique expertise in solving complex problems (Van den Bossche et al., 2006).
Previous research has demonstrated the indispensable role of team leaders in their teams (Koeslag-Kreunen et al., 2018). For example, Burke et al. (2006) summarized the functions of team leaders as coordinating team actions, being a linking pin between teams and networks, guiding the formulation of a team vision, coaching team interventions, facilitating teams in choosing strategies and promoting conditions for team creativity, problem-solving and adaptation. Traditionally, leadership research has focused on identifying leadership behaviors to understand leader effectiveness (e.g. Gottfredson and Reina, 2020). However, recent work has suggested that a deeper understanding of leader cognition – the mental processes underlying leader behavior – is essential for understanding how leaders act in complex, dynamic contexts (Mumford et al., 2015; Paoletti et al., 2020; Toader and Martin, 2023). Knowing how leaders think about the challenges they face is essential to understanding their behaviors. This is in line with contemporary cognitive research showing that leaders’ actions depend on their mental representations of the problems to be addressed (Johnson et al., 2012; Marcy and Mumford, 2010; Mumford et al., 2015). Mental representations are defined as cognitive representations of a particular situation that one applies to reasoning (Johnson-Laird, 1999). To be clear, we refer to (leader) cognition as an overarching term for mental processes or thoughts and focus on mental representations to study particularly forms of (team leader) cognition. Mental representations have been found to guide people’s decision-making, coordination and communication and are particularly important in situations that are complex, unpredictable and dynamic (Cannon-Bowers et al., 1993). Mental representations serve as advanced organizers or “mechanisms whereby humans are able to generate descriptions of system purpose and form, explanations of system functioning and observed system states, and predictions of future states” (Rouse and Morris, 1986, p. 7). Cognitive psychology has developed an extensive tradition of describing, predicting and explaining behavior by studying how behavior is driven by mental representations (e.g. Cannon-Bowers et al., 1993; Endsley, 2000; Harper and Dorton, 2019). In cognitive leadership science, Marcy (2015) exemplified how mental representations guide the behavior of leaders. He showed that the richer their thoughts are (e.g. understanding the social relationships and the problem at hand), the more likely leaders are to promote fundamental change in organizations (in contrast to leaders with poor mental representations leading them to make minor organizational adjustments). However, leadership researchers have repeatedly argued that an understanding of the role of cognitions needs to go beyond a (more surface) mental representation of tasks; it needs to include how they are integrated with a personal identity as a leader (Lord and Hall, 2005). Recently, Zaar et al. (2020) showed how mental representations of what leadership is and who leaders are can collide with one’s self-view as a leader.
Despite these insights, most leadership research has examined leader cognition from a predominantly dyadic leader–follower perspective, focusing on one-on-one interactions. This overlooks the particularities of team leadership (Toader and Martin, 2023). Team leaders need to deal with the fact that team situations vary (Klonek et al., 2020), and they need to consider dynamic interactions between team members who depend on and influence each other and to support them in building shared visions (Toader and Martin, 2023). In contrast to one-on-one interactions in leader-follower perspectives, team leaders need to support the team as a whole (Toader and Martin, 2023). For example, interpretations of a team’s task are not only shaped by the team leader but also by how team members interact upon their views on what needs to be done (Koeslag-Kreunen et al., 2021). Kozlowski et al. (2016) argued to take such social influence processes and contextual conditions into account in team leadership research to advance theory on how to stimulate collaboration, learning and performance in specific team situations.
To comprehend the significance of leader cognition in a team context, it is crucial to understand the distinctive mental representations of team leaders. In terms of team leader cognition, this prompts investigation of the mental representations of team leaders, especially in relation to team leadership. The body of research on the role of mental representations (e.g. Endsley, 2000) and leader cognition (Lord and Hall, 2005; Zaar et al., 2020) offers valuable frameworks that can potentially deepen our understanding of team leader cognition, specifically by identifying four key types of mental representations that may shape team leaders’ thinking. Figure 1 represents these types as a combination of top-down, more abstract principles (i.e. team leaders’ general understanding of team leadership and self-view as team leaders) and bottom-up, more surface- and situation-bound representations (i.e. team leaders’ understanding of teams and tasks), activating intentions for behavior grasped in the mental representation of a leadership behavior repertoire. The latter refers to the set of behavioral options that a leader sees at their disposal to address a variety of issues in a suitable fashion (Van der Hoek et al., 2021). Top-down-driven information can be considered a conceptual understanding of a certain system or domain, is fairly static and supports noticing essential information rapidly (Endsley, 2000; Hodgkinson, 2003). Bottom-up-driven information can be considered a situational understanding of the specific situation at hand and contains a momentary observation that supports the detection of blind spots and challenging routines (Cooke et al., 2001b). Hodgkinson (2003) argued that both types of information processing are needed reciprocally to yield a representation of the current situation and to decide how to handle it. For instance, depending solely on top-down information overlooks the specific situation at hand and what kind of action may particularly be needed (Hodgkinson, 2003; Mumford et al., 2017).
The present study addresses these research gaps by focusing on the cognitions of team leaders in the context of innovative, complex tasks. Specifically, it explores four types of mental representations held by team leaders:
their understanding of team leadership;
their self-view as team leaders;
their understanding of teams and tasks; and
their team leadership behavior repertoires.
Moreover, we explore how these four mental representations are aligned. We propose that exploring these different mental representations of team leaders is pivotal to deepening our understanding of team leadership from a cognitive perspective. In doing so, our research builds on recent frameworks such as that of Toader and Martin (2023), which highlight the critical role of leader cognition in teams. However, it goes beyond their work by offering theoretical refinement and empirical insights into this construct, thereby contributing to the further development of the field. To conduct this study, we focus on leaders of teams that deal with innovative tasks. In such complex environments, tasks are ambiguous and expertise is highly diverse, which suggests a particular need for a rich understanding of what is going on and what is needed, making team leaders’ mental representations salient (Marcy, 2015; Marcy and Mumford, 2010).
By focusing on the cognition of team leaders, this study makes two key contributions to the leadership literature. First, it shifts the focus from the traditional leader–follower perspective to the specific cognitive processes that guide team leadership, thereby filling a gap in research that has largely overlooked this area. Second, it introduces a framework for understanding the interplay between different types of mental representations to understand how team leaders give meaning to their leadership, which is currently lacking in research.
Mental representations of team leaders
Team leaders’ mental representations of team leadership and self-view as team leaders
Mental representations of leadership concern top-down, conceptually driven leadership perspectives. Research has specifically pointed to how these thoughts – such as how team leaders give meaning to leadership, interpret leadership, or perceive themselves and others as leaders – impact how leaders engage in (and/or share) leadership processes (DeRue and Ashford, 2010; Johnson et al., 2012; Lord and Hall, 2005; Strange and Mumford, 2005; Zaar et al., 2020). For example, viewing leadership as something that can (also) be shared among team members may support team members in taking the lead themselves (DeRue and Ashford, 2010).
Specifically, this study explores team leaders’ (1) understanding of team leadership (i.e. what team leadership is to you) and (2) self-view as team leaders (i.e. describe your own team leadership). Understanding team leadership is defined as leadership perspectives that refer to a prototypical view of leadership, representing a mental model of how leaders give meaning to leadership (Drath, 2001; Zaar et al., 2020). Self-view as a team leader is defined as leadership perspectives that refer to how leaders see themselves as leaders, representing the leader’s identity (Lord and Hall, 2005). Drath (2001) conceptualized leadership perspectives as leadership principles. Leadership principles denote the sources of leadership, which vary from a single hierarchical (formal leader) source to multiple sources (multiple leaders); they also determine whether leadership behaviors will be displayed in a limited way by a single leader or will also be shared among others (Drath, 2001). To explore whether team leaders are aware of this broad variety, we explore which leadership principles they hold for leadership in general and in their self-view as team leaders, because their general understanding of leadership may be related to how leaders view themselves as leaders (DeRue and Ashford, 2010). Drath (2001) distinguished between three leadership principles – personal dominance, interpersonal influence and relational dialog – which increase in terms of complexity and interaction levels. Defined in the context of teams, personal dominance implies viewing leadership as something that belongs to the leader, who provides direction, instructions and comments to the team (Drath, 2001); interpersonal influence develops from personal dominance and involves viewing leadership as reciprocal interactions between the leader and the team, meaning that the leader takes the team’s input into account in their own actions (Drath, 2001); and relational dialog represents leadership as a process that emerges within a team, building on the former leadership perspectives and adding that all team members can be leaders and that formal leaders participate in processes as team members (Sessa et al., 2016). As such, these leadership principles increase in terms of complexity as interaction levels increase.
Therefore, this study explores team leaders’ understandings of leadership and self-view in the context of teamwork:
Which mental representations do team leaders have about (a) team leadership and (b) themselves as team leaders?
Team leaders’ mental representations of teams and tasks
In addition to top-down-driven information, bottom-up-driven information is needed to fully understand the situation at hand and decide what particular kind of action may be needed (Hodgkinson, 2003; Mumford et al., 2017). We argue that it is needed particularly for leaders of teams dealing with tasks requiring innovation, as these tasks are dynamic because they deal with changing information, uncommon methods and unpredictable outcomes (Burke et al., 2006; Klonek et al., 2020). Eliciting team leaders’ mental representations can reveal how they view their teams and tasks. These thoughts or models of team situations represent “the human’s knowledge and understanding of the present state of the system” (Endsley, 2000, p. 62). Such a momentary observation of a situation is built upon detected cues in the specific team context at hand, such as the current task or interactions that occur (Cooke et al., 2001b; Marlow et al., 2017).
These mental representations can be explored by identifying which cues individuals in a specific situation recognize and interpret (Endsley, 2000; Rauthmann et al., 2015). Examples of cues include social interactions, activities and objects in situations, which can be measured by asking individuals how they perceive or experience specific situations (Rauthmann et al., 2015). Recognizing critical cues in team situations helps individuals quickly understand, make sense of, give meaning to and guide actions related to the situation at hand (Cooke et al., 2001b) and may guide decisions about what kind of leadership support is needed (Marcy, 2015).
Building on team research in the context of innovative tasks, this study focuses on the following team cues: team learning behaviors as key team processes used to work on a specific team task for which interpersonal factors are essential conditions (Decuyper et al., 2010; Edmondson, 1999; Koeslag-Kreunen et al., 2018).
First, team learning behavior is defined as team members’ interactive and reflective discourse behaviors performed at the team level (Edmondson, 1999). Decuyper et al.’s (2010) review distinguished six team learning behaviors:
sharing knowledge and ideas with each other;
coconstruction by building on what is shared;
engaging in constructive conflicts, such as discussing differences;
team reflection (reflexivity) on processes and goals;
team activity (e.g. experimentation); and
boundary crossing by seeking external information.
These behaviors can build new or shared meanings, enabling new knowledge development. Research has shown that team leaders play a significant role in fostering team-learning behavior (Koeslag-Kreunen et al., 2018).
Second, task features describe the types of tasks teams deal with. A task can be defined by its interdependency (i.e. whether team members need each other’s input; Johnson and Johnson, 2003), novelty (i.e. the number of unknown elements; Hoegl et al., 2003), structure (i.e. whether goals and methods are prescribed in detail or open to interpretation; Ellström, 2001) and complexity (i.e. level of difficulty and the absence of standard solutions; Cooke et al., 2001a). It is necessary to identify which tasks a team faces and recognize how team members interpret their tasks to decide what type of leadership behavior is supportive, such as empowering team members when dealing with innovative tasks (Koeslag-Kreunen et al., 2021).
Third, interpersonal factors are important. Two exemplary conditions are team psychological safety (i.e. mutual trust and respect; Edmondson, 1999) and team efficacy (i.e. shared belief in the team’s capability; Lee et al., 2010). Team leaders play an important role in developing a supportive team climate by ensuring team members experience a sense of safety when making mistakes (Edmondson, 1999; Lee et al., 2010).
These team and task cues cover a wide variety of critical factors for effective teamwork. We argue that the ability to detect such a rich variety may support team leaders in deciding on their specific actions. Team leaders may support teams in recognizing the urgency to work toward change (Koeslag-Kreunen et al., 2021) and in interacting, discussing and integrating each other’s expertise to develop new knowledge in a safe climate together (Edmondson, 1999). Particularly concerning the dynamics within teams, to act appropriately, a quick understanding of a specific situation can be helpful (Endsley, 2015). However, there is an absence of empirical insights into team leaders’ awareness of situations in teams, as team cues have mainly been elicited in the situation models of team members (not leaders), such as by reflecting on situations in teams (Cooke et al., 2001b; DeChurch and Mesmer-Magnus, 2010). Likewise, cognitive leadership research has traditionally focused on top-down-driven information processing and has tended to overlook the influence of bottom-up dynamics and specific team processes on leadership in teams (Day and Harrison, 2007). Therefore, this study aims to explore team leaders’ mental representations of teams and tasks by exploring the following research question:
Which mental representations do team leaders have of teams and tasks?
Team leaders’ mental representations of team leadership behavior repertoires
To yield even deeper insights into team leaders’ cognitive actions in certain team situations, we explore team leadership styles as mental decision outputs that entail what team leaders think they would do. Holding many different behavioral styles may offer team leaders alternatives to choose from when deciding what to do in a specific situation (e.g. Marcy, 2015; Wofford et al., 1998; Van der Hoek et al., 2021). Van der Hoek et al. (2021) conceptualized this as a “leadership behavior repertoire,” which is the set of behavioral options at a leader’s disposal to address a variety of issues in a suitable fashion. To be clear, we focus on team leadership behaviors that influence interaction processes at the team level. In this study, we investigate the team leadership behavior repertoire by identifying the various team leadership styles team leaders intend to use in certain situations in team settings (Casimir and Ngee Keith Ng, 2010; Endsley, 2000; Gioia and Poole, 1984). Thus, team leaders may have a wide variety of behavioral styles, enabling them to shift between styles depending on the situation at hand (e.g. Marcy, 2015; Wofford et al., 1998). For instance, for teams facing innovative tasks, person-focused styles may be supportive (Koeslag-Kreunen et al., 2018). Exemplary are transformational team leadership behavior (i.e. moving teams beyond their known practices by expressing a challenging vision, stimulating members to seek alternatives and handling concerns; Burke et al., 2006) and empowering team leadership (i.e. encouraging teams to develop self-leadership skills; Burke et al., 2006). For teams facing highly structured tasks, a task-focused style, such as initiating structure (i.e. structuring team processes by specifying team methods and objectives; Burke et al., 2006), may be appropriate (Koeslag-Kreunen et al., 2018). Team leaders need to consider the specific team situation before deciding how to act, because team situations are dynamic and differ from team to team (Klonek et al., 2020; Koeslag-Kreunen et al., 2018, 2021). So, where in one team transformational leadership behavior may be helpful, another team is supported by empowering behaviors. However, to date, it is unknown how team leaders think they will act in certain situations, as team leadership research has predominantly focused on actual behavior, not the thoughts that drive this behavior (e.g. Morgeson et al., 2010). To understand team leaders’ potential actions in certain team situations, we explore the following research question:
Which team leadership repertoire do team leaders mentally represent when confronted with specific team situations?
Alignment between mental representations of team leaders
In sum, the present study considers four types of team leaders’ mental representations:
team leadership;
self-view as team leaders;
teams and tasks; and
team leadership behavior repertoire.
Figure 1 illustrates how these mental representations interact. Within an environment, team leaders’ mental representations, including (top-down) domain-specific information about leadership (i.e. team leaders’ general understanding of team leadership and self-view as team leaders), (bottom-up) context-specific information about team situations (i.e. team leaders’ understanding of teams and tasks) and mental decision outputs (i.e. team leadership behavior repertoires) that entail what team leaders think they would do in certain situations, are interrelated. Moreover, it is argued that this interrelationship triggers alignment; that is, mental representations of leadership (in general and self-view) may provide an organizational structure that is activated when observing what the (team) situation is at hand (Mumford et al., 2017) and may filter how team cues are interpreted (e.g. Endsley, 2000). Also, observing the (team) situation at hand may specify or activate team leaders’ mental representations of leadership. These suggested reciprocal top-down and bottom-up types of information processing may in turn filter deciding what kind of leadership style is needed (e.g. Marcy, 2015). A similar argument was made by Lord and Hall (2005), who stated that “leadership skills and knowledge become inextricably integrated with the development of one’s self-concept as a leader” (p. 592). Lord and Hall (2005) suggested that the development of deeper mental representations, such as the leader’s self-view, interacts with more surface structures as the leader’s actions. Eliciting team leaders’ general understanding of leadership, self-view as team leaders and awareness of situations in teams reveals insights into which mental representations drive their behavior. Gioia and Poole (1984) argued that mentally deciding how to act as a leader can be evoked when considering situations and can vary in terms of holding more or less variation (e.g. different types of actions) or sequential details of actions (e.g. knowing what to do in a specific order). Therefore, understanding specific (team) situations may guide leaders to choose a certain behavior for a specific situation (Jordan and Lindebaum, 2015). Wofford et al. (1998) showed that leaders can hold different behavioral leadership styles in memory that influence their behavior and performance.
However, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, these different mental representations have mostly been studied separately and not in the context of team leaders. Therefore, we explore the following research question:
How is there an alignment between a team leader’s mental representations?
Methods
Setting and sample
We collected data from a Western European higher education institute dedicated to preparing graduates for professional practice whose research programs are conducted in co-creation with professional practice. We selected this organization for this study because it deliberately uses a team-based approach to innovate its teaching and research practices. This institute faces many ambiguous challenges, such as responding to evolving professional demands and increasing quality standards. In such complex environments, expertise is highly diverse and information changes constantly, which requires team leaders to detect specifically what is going on and what is needed (Cannon-Bowers et al., 1993; Marcy, 2015). This setting offered a wide variety of support for our explorative aim, in part because this institute does not formally train its leaders or use protocols for teamwork; team leaders are simply assigned to lead their teams without providing further instructions or narrowly specified objectives.
Board members from different schools at the institute (i.e. arts, business and economics, education, health care, law and management, research and development, social studies and technology) were asked to identify team leaders who met the following three criteria: those who had been formally appointed to lead a team, corresponding to Cohen and Bailey’s (1997) team definition; had led teams with a minimum tenure of two months that consisted of 3–20 members, providing a minimum number of interaction experiences; and had led teams of professionals with high levels of expertise in dealing with an innovative task that prompted team members to combine their specific knowledge and backgrounds (e.g. Ellström, 2001).
The board members identified 15 team leaders who met these criteria, and the first author contacted them. The team leaders verified that they met the selection criteria and were all willing to participate. Their teams’ tasks included starting a new bachelor’s program for professionals, developing new curricula; redesigning bachelor’s programs; conducting new multidisciplinary research; and developing and implementing a new management strategy, new (digital) course material, or novel assessment forms. Table 1 shows the descriptive statistics of the sample.
Elicitation techniques
Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the 15 team leaders. An overview of the interview questions shows the interview questions.
Team leaders’ mental representations of leadership (RQ1)
General understanding of leadership
What is leadership to you? Can you elaborate on this?
Self-view as a team leader
What metaphor represents your leadership? Can you elaborate on this?
Team leaders’ representations of teams and tasks? (RQ2)
Team cues
Thoughts about team members’ observations of team leader’s behavior were evoked by:
What do you think about this team observation? Can you explain this?
Two cases were introduced in the following text:
These teams shared the responsibility to develop and teach a subject to students. These teams were all teaching large first-year courses, and the teams comprised lecturers, tutors and a subject coordinator (Benjamin, 2000, p. 194).
Each team leader was asked:
What do you think about this team? Can you elaborate on this?
Team leaders’ behavior repertoires (RQ3)
Each team leader was asked:
What do you think you would do in this situation if you were a team leader? Can you elaborate on this?
Source: By the authors
In the interviews, five different elicitation techniques were applied to encourage the disclosure of perceptions and interpretations that were difficult to express or had not been made explicit (Cooke et al., 2001b; Eraut, 2000). Addressing RQ1a, the team leaders’ understanding of leadership was evoked by asking, What is leadership to you? (e.g. Zaar et al., 2020). Such an open elicitation technique prevents hinting or guiding responses (Cooke et al., 2001b). Addressing RQ1b, the team leaders’ self-view as team leaders was evoked by asking them to describe a metaphor that best captured what their team leadership meant to them. This elicitation technique followed Cairns-Lee (2015) and enhanced the explication of implicit knowledge of self-view (Eraut, 2000). For RQ2, we applied two different elicitation techniques to elicit which team cues the team leaders used when considering team situations. First, we asked them to (retrospectively) share their thoughts on and explanations of team members’ observations of their leadership behavior to help retrieve personal stored cues based on their own teams without hinting in a certain direction (Cooke et al., 2001b; Rauthmann et al., 2015). The team members’ observations were gathered beforehand through an online survey of their team leaders’ behaviors, for which informed consent was obtained, no personal data were collected and data were stored safely on a protected research drive. At least two-thirds of the members of each team completed the questionnaire, which contained questions on empowering (e.g. “My team leader encourages me to work together with other individuals who are part of the team”), transformational (e.g. “My team leader questions the traditional way of doing things”) and initiating structure (e.g. “My team leader sets goals for my performance”) and team leadership behavioral styles but not team leader performance. Each team member’s individual observations were aggregated at the team level. The observations from each team (i.e. mean scores and standard deviations) were presented to their respective team leaders in the interviews to serve as trigger points to evoke retrospective thoughts on situations in their team, guided by the question “What do you think about this team observation? Can you explain this?” The information shared by the team leaders was used to analyze which team cues they used when reflecting on (current) team situations.
Second, we applied another elicitation technique to evoke team leaders’ team cues, using two new and standardized situational vignettes (see Cappel, 2008). Specifically, two vignettes were adopted from Benjamin (2000), which had a wide variety of team cues. In Vignette A (“Biology Teaching Team,” pp. 196–197), there was hardly any collaboration in the team. For example, this team distributed tasks among individual team members who rarely worked and learned together to develop education. In Vignette B (“Law Teaching Team,” pp. 199–200), teamwork was evident. For example, these team members worked and learned interdependently and critically to improve their education as a collective. These vignettes, which had been translated from English into Dutch via a translation-back translation procedure, represented standardized and recognizable situations to help evoke team leaders’ team and task cues. The team leaders received the cases during the interviews. After they had read each vignette, they were asked to share and elaborate on their thoughts. The information the team leaders shared was used to analyze which team cues they used when reflecting on (new) team situations. In addressing RQ3, the team leaders were asked to indicate from each vignette what they thought they would do if they led that team. This final elicitation technique was used to evoke the team leaders’ mental representations of their team leadership behavior repertoires.
Procedure
A week before their interview took place, each team leader was given the task of identifying a metaphor that was representative of their team leadership. The interviews were performed in Dutch with native Dutch speakers. They began with an introduction to the topic and procedure, and we obtained permission for audiotaping. Each interview took 1 h and was transcribed verbatim. At the end of each interview, the participant was invited to reflect briefly on how they experienced the interview. The participants checked their interview transcripts for accuracy. Finally, they were invited to reflect on a summary of their interviews (resulting in no comments).
Our study can be considered noninterventional. All authors were trained to apply ethical guidelines before, during and after data collection. We followed the department’s ethical protocol in alignment with the school’s protocols on research ethics and data protection. No additional advice or approval was needed. Informed consent was collected before the data were collected. After data collection, all participants checked and approved their interview manuscripts. Next, the data were anonymized; no personal data were obtained, and the data were stored at a special, protected research drive.
Information power
In our design, we made several decisions to ensure information power, as related to items proposed by Malterud et al. (2016). A clear theoretical framework guided our design and analysis. Our study was based on a well-directed aim that resulted in purposive sampling. We sought a relatively homogenous group of team leaders. In conducting the interviews, we relied on an extensive set of elicitation techniques to ensure high-quality dialog. The reflection on these items (use of theory, aim, sample specificity and quality of dialog) left us confident that our sample size was sufficient. Moreover, we benchmarked our study with similar studies in the field of leadership in teamwork/learning. Exemplary is the meta-analysis of Koeslag-Kreunen et al. (2018), which identified seven qualitative studies on this topic, with a sample size ranging from 1 to 16.
Coding process
The coding process was performed in Dutch. The initial codebook was developed based on the definitions outlined in the theoretical framework concerning understanding leadership in terms of leadership principles; self-view of team leaders’ own team leadership in terms of metaphors and leadership principles; task and team cues (i.e. team learning behavior, task features and interpersonal factors); and team leadership repertoire (i.e. transformational, empowering and initiating structure). The interview transcripts and the codebook were imported into Atlas.ti™ to detect and code meaningful segments. A meaningful segment was defined as an interviewee’s response related to one of this study’s topics; it could be a sentence, part of a sentence, or a set of related sentences.
Hsieh and Shannon’s (2005) directive content analysis technique was applied to code the transcripts in two rounds. First, to detect meaningful segments, the main codes were assigned, and the codebook was tested. Second, subcodes were assigned using the refined codebook. For the first round, an independent coder was trained to use the codebook. For the independent coder, a member of our research department was chosen who was proficient in selecting meaningful segments and codes in a more general sense. The coder was very experienced in qualitative data analysis and instrument validation and had a background in social psychology. This independent coder and the first author detected meaningful segments in six transcripts and assigned the main codes to those segments independently. Differences regarding the detected meaningful segments and codes were discussed until consensus was reached. This round of double-blind coding addressed 40% of the total data set and resulted in a sufficient Cohen’s kappa (0.72). Revisions were made to the codebook.
In the second round, the first author detected meaningful segments in all transcripts and coded them based on the revised codebook. Another independent coder, who was not previously involved in our research, was trained to use the codebook. This coder, an external member of our research department with a background in medicine and who conducted research on teams and team leadership, was selected to code in more detail. She independently assigned subcodes to the meaningful segments in seven transcripts that were not involved in the first round. Differences regarding the codes were discussed until consensus was reached. This process of double-blind coding involved another 47% of the total data set and resulted in a substantial Cohen’s kappa (0.68).
Data analysis
In total, 503 meaningful segments were deductively coded, and 67 segments were inductively assigned to new codes. The inductive codes were mostly context-specific (e.g. student- or teacher-centered) and not team-specific (Cooke et al., 2001b). The deductive and inductive codes are presented in the Results section and in Table 2. We analyzed the coded segments in three steps.
In Step 1, we analyzed which leadership principles the team leaders held in general (RQ1a) and in their self-view (RQ1b). These principles appeared to vary greatly among the team leaders. The main differences involved whether a relational dialog principle was present. The analysis indicated distinct responses to the interview questions, revealing a pattern that allowed us to distinguish three different groups of team leaders. Table 1 presents the descriptive statistics of each group. These groups consisted of team leaders who held no relational dialog (n = 3); a relational dialog in their general understanding of leadership or in their self-view (n = 7); and a relational dialog in both their general understanding of leadership and their self-view (n = 5). Next, for each group, we analyzed the content of each coded segment for leadership principles and metaphors. Based on this content analysis, we labeled the three groups of team leaders in terms of leadership views that typically summarized their thoughts:
positional;
interactive; or
collective leadership perspectives.
In Step 2, we analyzed which team cues (RQ2) and team leadership styles (RQ3) the team leaders in each group used. In Step 3, we compared the specific content of all the coded segments for each group to detect differences and similarities between the three groups. This comparison allowed us to analyze the alignment between the four mental representations of team leaders (RQ4).
Results
The analyses uncovered three groups of team leaders – thTable_T_TPM-03-2024-0030001Table_T_TPM-03-2024-0030001at is, those with (a) a positional, (b) an interactive, or (c) a collective leadership perspective. Table 2 shows the main findings per group. Table 3 presents the metaphors per group of team leaders used to describe what their team leadership meant to them.
The three groups of team leaders were used to present the results for each research question. The results are illustrated by example quotes that are labeled with an ID code (i.e. the first number refers to the particular participant and the second to the coded segment). The quotes were selected and translated by the first author (facilitated by Google Translate). This process was peer reviewed by the other three authors.
Which mental representations do team leaders have about (RQ1a) team leadership and (RQ1b) themselves as team leaders?
Team leaders with a positional leadership perspective appeared to place a somewhat strong emphasis on their position as leaders. They had only the leadership principles of personal dominance and interpersonal influence, and relational dialog was absent. Within their understanding of leadership, they typically saw a leader as a highly motivated person who wants to get the best out of the people in their team. For example:
When I think about leadership, the first thing that comes to mind is someone with full conviction […] who wants to invest based on some sort of idealism and on goals that are very clear to them. This is related to strong social empathy and communication skills, as well as conviction and strong motivation (10:1).
I think that you should have a content-related message and a content-related drive. (15:1). And to see how you can get the best out of someone and how you see opportunities to do so. And that is an added value, seeing that too (15:3).
These team leaders described their own leadership using metaphors, such as “a provocateur,” who tries to shape their thoughts into something that challenges followers, or “a buzzard,” who watches over their nest and decides whether they need to intervene to make sure the buzzard chicks remain on track. These team leaders delegated outcome responsibility to team members, monitored team members’ actions and intervened by telling them what to do next or when to make decisions. For example:
I know that I don’t have to be a very active leader but more of a controlling leader, so to speak (10:8).
When a decision needs to be made, I usually do so in consultation. At the moment, this takes too long, but when a decision needs to be made, I cut the Gordian knot (3:3)
Team leaders in this group also described how they adapted their behavior to their team members’ needs and skills:
I am trying to adapt to or align with the kind of people at the table (3:1).
I think that you need to cope with diversity, which interests me greatly – to deal with very different people and to discover how I can facilitate their talent in such a way that it fits the content-related things I do (15:2).
Team leaders with an interactive leadership perspective emphasized the position of a leader; however, compared to the above-mentioned group, they placed more emphasis on the interaction between leader and team. They viewed leadership as personal dominance and interpersonal influence and held some relational dialog principles, either in their understanding of leadership or in their self-views. They stated that leadership is about inspiring team members, being an expert, setting frameworks, making informed decisions, coaching team members and knowing team members’ skills:
For good leadership, I think that the important thing is to empower people and motivate them, as well as to offer a sense of safety (9:1).
I think that the best thing is to let the team or the people you lead sometimes make decisions – at least let them know what is going on in our team. Everyone has good ideas. Then you have support when decisions need to be made (13:1).
The limited references to relational dialog reflect an understanding of leadership as something that belongs to all team members. For example:
Simply put, leadership is ownership. Leadership does not belong to me. Leadership is not owned by a team leader. No, leadership belongs to everyone who works here (17:13).
One of the most important goals one should have in a leadership position is to ask yourself, “How effectively can I be invisible?” (11:39).
These team leaders described their own leadership using metaphors, such as a watercolor painter who makes a draft with a pencil, uses the colors of its members and sometimes uses a permanent marker to set boundaries. They saw their own team leadership mainly as personal dominance and interpersonal influence, and they described it as knowing what one wants, being clear about expectations through dialogs and providing space for team members to interpret, discuss and change expectations. For instance:
The hardest part of watercolor painting is that the colors blend. You are not in full control of that process because the water, the paint, and the colors are no longer attached to your paintbrush and make a pattern themselves. […] This also happened on this team. The paint moves in different directions, so you need to make adjustments and set clear boundaries to let the paint move in the right direction (1:2).
This is what I want. This is what I stand for, and these are the kind of leaders I want. So people discuss and debate in dialog with each other, but all have a different role (12:5).
Relational dialog was rarely part of their self-view. These segments represented team leadership as an equal and rotational shared responsibility. For example:
It’s just about exploring together: “What road shall we take?” (7:11).
I think it’s terrible to be above other people or to have the feeling that I must be above others or that I have to say something about someone else (13:4).
Team leaders with a collective leadership perspective mentioned the positional aspect of leaders, emphasized the interaction between leaders and teams, and highlighted the need to operate as a collective. These team leaders’ answers suggest that they held leadership principles related to personal dominance, interpersonal influence and relational dialog in both their understanding of leadership and their self-view. So in their view, all team members can be leaders, and leaders can be team members as well. Personal dominance and interpersonal influence in their understanding of leadership represented leadership as being a role model, inspiring team members and being an initiator, as well as something you can earn or that you have naturally, as reflected by these statements:
You are some kind of generator who starts things, initiates things, or prepares some extra support and skills (18:2).
One should earn leadership in the sense that it is granted to you (16:28).
The segments within relational dialog in their general understanding of leadership reflected leadership as something you do together that is not limited to one person, such as:
Leadership is being part of the collective. I like it if leaders are really part of the team, not from a hierarchical position but in between (8:2).
Leadership is about having a focus on managing that together. This is a characteristic of leadership. Leadership is not just bundled into one person (2:12).
To describe their own team leadership, these team leaders used metaphors such as a hub-and-spokes network that represents thin or thick connections among individuals, teams and the organization. The segments of personal dominance and interpersonal influence within this group’s self-view suggest that they perceived their own leadership as something that adapted to the team’s progress and talents, was focused on connecting individual members to the team and provided space within a certain framework, as mirrored by these quotes:
Everyone has their own expertise, knowledge, and discipline. You should provide autonomy for that. However, the framework needs to be clear to everyone. And that is the role of a team leader. They draw the lines that you determine together, of course, but also check every now and then: “Does everyone still follow these lines, are they clear to everyone, and are the expectations clear for everyone?” But most importantly, it is something collaborative (18:5).
It is about looking at the people on your team. These people just happen to be in this team. What are their strengths and weaknesses? The good thing is, we now have a team of people who complement each other. We have a creative one, we have a finisher, and we have someone in between (14:3).
The relational dialog segments of these team leaders’ self-view reflected leadership as a process of connecting and seeking alignment together and as something that one does together and as a shared responsibility by making shared decisions and exploring together. For example:
Alignment is a formal expression, connecting the wires in numerous ways because, strictly speaking, an organization is just the same as a society of people who are doing things together. Nothing else. So, it is by the grace of the people that they are connected. And if that connection, that interaction, is right, then you can work together. Then you can develop trust that works by having strong discussions, because you know, “This is constructive” (2:11).
Just let me start, and then we will explore together instead of me mapping the terrain beforehand to see what can go wrong. Because that does not bring us anywhere (14:21).
In sum, the team leaders expressed varying mental representations of their understanding of leadership and their self-view as team leaders, thereby distinguishing three groups of team leaders. This suggests a hierarchical categorization: the first group of team leaders started from a positional stance, the second group included these principles but added more interaction, and the third group included working as a collective next to the other principles. The metaphors for each group signified the position of leadership and suggested a similar pattern in terms of attention to interaction and mutual influence – from a buzzard with a positional distance from the team to a watercolor painter using the different colors of the team members but also marking the boundaries and a hub-and-spoke network representing thin or thick connections between individuals, teams and the organization in which leadership occurs as a process.
Which mental representations do team leaders have of teams and tasks? (RQ2)
Team leaders with a positional leadership perspective expressed little variation in team cues, and the contents of these segments were highly centered on their own role. When reflecting on team situations, they rarely used team learning behaviors or interpersonal factors. Retrospectively, some team leaders used co-construction to explain their team leadership behavior, such as adding new subjects to discussions that had not yet been mentioned. Furthermore, one team leader used only team efficacy as an interpersonal factor when reflecting on his own behavior and said that team efficacy was present in his team because he had put together a high-quality team, as reflected in this quote:
Maybe this was my biggest influence: “I want him/her, I want him/her, and I want him/her, and that’s that.” That may have been the best thing I have done. (10:19).
Furthermore, team leaders paid substantial attention to the task features in teams’ situations (e.g. by describing how they structured a task for the team and emphasizing deadlines). When looking at new team situations, they recognized task novelty (e.g. routines) and task interdependence (e.g. alignment between subjects), but they did not use team learning behaviors or interpersonal factors. In response to Vignette B, they only marginally described sharing (i.e. detecting interactions and sharing knowledge) and reflexivity (i.e. identifying what the team reflects). Their use of context-specific cues was also limited (i.e. recognizing teams as teacher-centered and connecting their work to needs in the labor market).
Team leaders with an interactive leadership perspective included a moderate number of team cues, and the content of these segments primarily indicated a focus on their own role and, to some lesser extent, a focus on the team as a whole. These team leaders used team learning behaviors and interpersonal factors moderately when viewing team situations. Team leaders in this group sometimes explained their own team leadership behavior in terms of sharing (e.g. starting with brainstorming sessions), co-construction (e.g. challenging to be creative), constructive conflict (e.g. balancing between discussion and laughter) and/or team efficacy (e.g. the team was a real team that believed in each other’s capabilities). Team leaders in this group also used task structure (e.g. working with open-ended results), novelty (e.g. breaking routines) and interdependence (e.g. coordinating efforts), often as team cues, when explaining their own team leadership behavior retrospectively. They added inductively coded team cues, such as giving ownership to the team and trying to become personally connected to the team, as reflected by this quote:
I attempted to offer “a personal touch” on this team, especially at the beginning. I entered their work space often and joined informal team activities and farewell ceremonies of their [other] colleagues […]. Without this touch, empowering was very difficult (9:10).
When viewing new team situations (Vignettes A and B), in addition to sharing, co-construction and constructive conflict, some team leaders also recognized a limited amount of absence or the presence of boundary crossing and reflexivity, such as seeking help and connecting theories to their work. Team leaders in this group occasionally used team efficacy when observing Vignette A (i.e. working as islands with a lack of mutual trust in each other’s competence) or team psychological safety for Vignette B, such as having mutual respect and an open attitude toward learning. Task structure (e.g. having a clear direction), novelty (e.g. routines) and interdependence (e.g. alignment between subjects and team members) were mentioned frequently. Inductively coded team- and context-specific cues were teacher-centered, limited knowledge of the framework and a clear vision.
Team leaders with a collective leadership perspective included a great variety of team cues, and these segments focused on the team as a whole. These team leaders used a wide variety of team learning behaviors and interpersonal factors when viewing team situations. Retrospectively, they used sharing (e.g. taking time for openness), co-construction (e.g. building bridges between what was shared), constructive conflict (e.g. supporting the expression of opposing ideas and setting an example) and reflexivity (e.g. encouraging reflection on omissions, progress and conflicts) as team cues to explain their own team leadership behavior. Team psychological safety was also mentioned frequently, such as explaining that it was safe to make mistakes and that there was openness in the team:
I try to be open, and if I sense something, I speak up and try questioning to find out what is going on. When they share things with me, because if people feel safe in a group–and I have the same–they dare more. And then you have the courage to take the risk of making mistakes when you try new things (14:17).
These team leaders paid little attention to task features; only task structure (e.g. giving concise outlines while keeping ownership of the team) and novelty (e.g. encouraging team members to do something new) were present when they reflected on their own team leadership behavior. One team leader also noted that she could have empowered even more “in terms of letting go” (18:11) and making even more use of the team as a whole.
In sum, the data suggested that the team leaders’ mental representations of tasks and teams seemed to increase from a limited variety of team cues that were highly centered on their own role (for team leaders with a positional leadership perspective) to a moderate variety of team cues that were focused on their own role and somewhat on the team as a whole (for team leaders with an interactive leadership perspective) and, finally, to a great variety of team cues that were focused on the team as a whole (for team leaders with a collective leadership perspective).
Which team leadership repertoire do team leaders mentally represent when confronted with specific team situations? (RQ3)
When team leaders with a positional leadership perspective were asked what they would do if they led the teams in Vignettes A and B, their leadership styles were restricted to having no ideas, one idea about initiating structure for Vignette A (i.e. arranging a team meeting to discuss their task), announcing appreciation for Vignette B and sometimes offering transformational behaviors for Vignettes A and B, such as:
I would say, “We have taken care of this [task] for ten years now. Should we pick up this subject to explore what to do with it? Is it still up to date?” […] If I considered the course too outdated, then I would attempt to pick it up like this (15:27, Vignette A).
I would be stimulated to seek reflexivity with the business environment, such as court buildings and ministries (3:34, vignette B).
The leadership styles of team leaders with an interactive leadership perspective contained many different ideas related to transformational and initiating structure leadership styles, such as:
We’re going to frame this. It is project-based education, and you [team members] have not much to say about that because this is the frame we work in. As a leader, you do not decide this on your own, but having heard some others, you will take this responsibility (17:38, coded as initiating structure, Vignette A).
I think that, within this team, you can make an aquarelle painting precisely because of that open attitude. You can challenge yourself by organizing an interesting study day with a speaker to take the next step or to design something (1:36, coded as transformational, Vignette B).
Empowering team leadership behaviors was rarely mentioned by this group of team leaders. However, they expressed some ideas, such as involving students, starting individually, taking small steps, expressing appreciation and using incentives.
The leadership styles of team leaders with a collective leadership perspective reflected highly diverse ideas about leadership behaviors for both vignettes. These team leaders expressed many different ideas that were mostly related to transformational and empowering leadership styles and sometimes initiating structure, such as:
Stimulating awareness in various ways, and through those ways of working, putting people in different work processes, so they need to cooperate (2:24, coded as empowering, Vignette A).
With regard to inductively coded ideas about how to lead Vignettes A and B, these team leaders mentioned many ideas related to involving students, starting individually, taking no formal leadership role, stepping back, creating conditions and preserving the atmosphere. The following is an example of stepping back:
Here, you may increase the span of your control [as a leader]. If you build such teams, you have fewer issues. Then you can raise the span of your control and decrease management or reorganize management and work with a core team that represents the whole team (16:26, Vignette B).
In sum, we detected a variety of leadership behavior repertoires that reflected what team leaders thought they would do in specific situations in teams. The data suggest a pattern indicating increased variation, ranging from using no to a low variation of team leadership styles (for team leaders with a positional leadership perspective); a limited number of styles of team leadership behavior (for team leaders with an interactive leadership perspective); and a great variety of different styles of team leadership behaviors (for team leaders with a collective leadership perspective).
Is there alignment between team leaders’ mental representations? (RQ4)
The four types of representation tended to be in alignment. The first group of team leaders held a positional leadership perspective; their mental representation of the team and task included a low variation in team cues that were highly centered on their own roles and showed a low variation in their leadership behavior repertoires. The second group of team leaders held an interactive leadership perspective that added interaction to the positional perspective. Their mental representation of their teams and tasks included a moderate number of different team cues focused on their own roles and somewhat focused on their teams as a whole and showed a moderate variation in team leadership styles as mental decision outputs. The third group of team leaders held a collective leadership perspective that added operating as a collective to a positional and interactive perspective, reflected a great variety of team cues focused on the team as a whole and showed a great variety of team leadership styles as mental decision outputs.
These findings suggest that team leaders’ mental representations are aligned in such a way that the more conceptual and deeper leadership representations interrelate with the concrete and situated representations of tasks, teams and leadership behavior repertoires. The group of team leaders included principles of relational dialog in their leadership perspectives, thus acknowledging leadership as a process that emerges within the team; showed a more developed representation of teams; and included empowering as a leadership style in their repertoires. Conversely, team leaders with a positional leadership perspective left the “team” out of sight, and this recurred in all types of their mental representations; they did not consider leadership as a relational dialog and also relied strongly on their own roles when understanding teams and their options to act.
Conclusion and discussion
This research explored four types of mental representations to study team leaders’ cognitions: team leaders’ mental representations of team leadership (RQ1a), self-view as team leaders (RQ1b) and understanding of teams and tasks (RQ2) and team leadership behavior repertoires (RQ4). In addition, we analyzed whether there was alignment between these mental representations (RQ4). We drew the following conclusions.
First, our results indicate that team leaders hold different mental representations of leadership in which their understanding of leadership (RQ1a) and self-view as team leaders (RQ1b) are highly alike. We captured the differences between team leaders by distinguishing three groups: those who held a positional (emphasizing the leader’s position toward the team, such as a buzzard to its nest), an interactive (adding emphasis on leader–team interactions, such as a watercolor painter who uses various colors) or a collective leadership perspective (adding operating as a collective, such as a hub-and-spokes network of various connections). This empirically confirms theoretical notions that leadership perspectives vary and increase in complexity and interaction levels from one way to two ways and then to a dynamic process within a team allowing leadership to be shared (Day and Harrison, 2007; DeRue and Ashford, 2010; Drath, 2001). We explored this in the context of team leaders, which advances the traditional leader–follower perspective in cognitive leadership research (e.g. Day and Harrison, 2007).
Second, in exploring team leaders’ situation awareness (RQ2), we found a similar variation in their leadership perspectives. This finding points to an alignment between leadership perspectives and situation awareness. Team leaders used various critical team cues to interpret situations in teams, but the richer their perspective of leadership, the greater the variety of team cues they used, and the more those cues’ content was focused on their teams as a whole instead of on their own roles. This finding adds to science because we elicited situation awareness from team leaders instead of team members.
Third, our results indicate that team leaders use various leadership styles as mental decision outputs for certain situations (RQ3). This finding confirms earlier conclusions that leaders can hold different leadership styles (Wofford et al., 1998). Moreover, team leaders with more mental representations of leadership and situations in teams also mentioned a greater variety of leadership behaviors in their repertoires that they would apply in different situations.
Overall, our findings provide insights that suggest that mental representations of team leaders are aligned (RQ4). We based our exploration on our conceptual model, which proposed that within an environment, team leaders’ thoughts encompass (1) top-down information about leadership understandings and a self-view of themselves as team leaders and (2) bottom-up context-specific information about teams and tasks that are interrelated to (3) mental representations of the leadership behavior repertoires.
This study makes two important contributions to the field of team leadership research. First, it extends the cognitive approach to team leadership by including the particularities of team leadership. In doing so, this study advances leader cognition research that predominantly takes a leader–follower perspective (Day and Harrison, 2007). Second, it sheds light on the interplay between different types of mental representations. By identifying four key types of mental representations, this study shows how team leaders think differently about leadership and teams and offers a framework for studying the interplay between different types of mental representations. This study paves the way for adding a cognitive approach to complement team leadership research traditions (e.g. Burke et al., 2006; Gottfredson and Reina, 2020; Morgeson et al., 2010; Mumford et al., 2015; Paoletti et al., 2020; Sessa et al., 2016). Our findings underscore the potential of understanding team leaders’ mental representations.
For practice, our findings underscore the importance of team leaders regularly reflecting on their own mental representations of leadership. Leaders should consider how they conceptualize their roles, how they view their teams and tasks and what behaviors they see as available and supportive in different situations. The team leaders in this study indicated that they adapted their behavior to their teams. It may be promising to engage in open discussions with teams about each other’s thoughts on leadership and team situations, fostering a shared understanding of leadership and deciding which interventions may be supportive.
Limitations and directions for future research
This study took a cognitive approach to team leadership research. Building on this explorative study and considering its limitations, we suggest four directions for future research. First, our results suggest an alignment between mental representations based on an exploration of 15 team leaders, but the findings do not allow us to draw firm conclusions. Our promising notion, grounded in the conceptual model presented in Figure 1, requires further testing on more team leaders and different types of teams, as well as validation. Our findings show that the richer team leaders’ leadership perspective, the greater the variety of team cues they used, and the more those cues’ content was focused on their teams as a whole instead of on their own roles. For example, future research may focus on how team leaders’ general and self-views on leadership influence their understanding of teams and tasks, and vice versa, to gain specific insights on reciprocal interrelationships within the different mental representations. Second, we concentrated on four types of mental representations and uncovered team leaders’ potential actions. We recommend that future studies include behavioral measures to explore how alignment is also reflected in the actual behavior of team leaders. Our findings uncovered that team leaders with more mental representations of leadership and situations in teams also mentioned a greater variety of leadership behaviors in their repertoires that they would apply in different situations. Future research may specify how mental representations of leadership and situations in teams interact to shape the leadership behavior repertoire; for example, does the alignment or misalignment of these representations result in distinct patterns of behavior?
Third, we interviewed the team leaders at one point in time. We recommend that future research concentrate on how team leaders develop their thoughts about leadership and teamwork. We applied different techniques that offered strong triangulation. Developmental leadership, as presented by Lord and Hall (2005), proposes that leaders may develop their leadership perspectives by shifting from an individual positional stance to a relational interactive one and ending with a collective dynamic leadership perspective. Longitudinal approaches may offer new empirical insights into these theoretical notions of leadership development and its application to team leaders (e.g. Vogel et al., 2020). Furthermore, our data suggest that team leaders adapt their behavior to their team members’ needs and skills. Thus, in line with the suggestions of Toader and Martin (2023) on reciprocal influences between leader and team cognition, future research using longitudinal approaches may also shed light on how team leader and member cognitions may relate to and influence each other.
In line with the aforementioned directions, the fourth is a call to explore how team leaders’ mental representations may be developed through formal professional development activities. In this respect, Rupprecht et al. (2010) showed that team leaders were outperformed by trained mediators in making sense of situations and using various perspectives to unravel and reflect on a variety of team situations. We particularly recommend that training start by guiding leaders’ reflections on various team situations, as done by Santos et al. (2015), through situation clarification. This may not only be helpful for developing situation models of teams and tasks, but it may even touch upon team leaders’ leadership perspectives as they notice that different situations require different behaviors (e.g. Endsley, 2000). Moreover, eliciting a team leadership behavior repertoire and subsequently discussing alternatives may help team leaders look into different leadership styles.
To conclude, this study opened the black box of team leaders’ thinking. We propose keeping “thoughts” in mind in future team leadership research.
The authors would like to thank Dr Monique Bijker (in Memoriam) and Stephanie Meeuwissen MD for supporting independent coding processes.
