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Leadership is a crucial driver of project performance. While traditionally, the project leader was considered as the exclusive source of leadership behavior, recent research indicates that particularly dispersed projects may profit from joint leadership efforts by all project members. However, leadership functions in dispersed projects are likely to differ from those in a face-to-face context. In this chapter, we specify shared leadership functions for the domain of geographically dispersed project teams with high levels of task uncertainty. Arguing that shared leadership in dispersed teams occurs through interrelation of individual and team actions, we specify a dispersed screening function as well as self-, other-, and team-directed interrelation functions and develop propositions on how these functions are related to project performance. Furthermore, we point to motivational aspects of shared leadership and discuss the role of the vertical leader in developing and facilitating shared leadership.

Our aim is to catalog how the functional behaviors that leaders engage in should change over time based on the needs of the team – thereby presenting a functional view of team leadership over time.

A critical review of the literature on team leadership, team development, and teams was conducted. This information was critically analyzed and integrated to produce a framework serving to depict how team needs change over time, and based on this, highlight the leadership behaviors which should be most critical at particular points in time. Based on the limited amount of literature that explicitly focused on team leadership over time, a series of propositions which flow from the framework are also put forth.

Great strides have been made in understanding team leadership; however, little work was uncovered that directly focused on how leadership dynamics change over time within the context of the team. Leveraging the limited work that existed, we developed a framework (and propositions) that serves to delineate how team leadership functions change over time. In doing so, we have integrated work delineating leadership functions within transition and action phases of team task cycles along with that highlighting how the role of the leader may vary based on team developmental needs.

The originality of this chapter lies in its using a functional approach to leadership to argue how the efficacy of particular leadership functions change over time based on team task cycles and development needs. This, in turn, can be used to focus training efforts.

The purpose of this paper is to compare leadership functions from different team contexts considering context characteristics that contribute to team effectiveness.

A qualitative study was conducted. Seven leaders of multidisciplinary child protection teams (MDTs) and nine managers of an information technology (IT) company took part in semi-structured interviews. The data were analyzed using content analysis with ATLAS.ti.

Results showed that the two types of teams used different performance criteria, with teams from non-profit contexts lacking defined performance criteria. The results also showed that transition leadership functions are more frequently mentioned by IT than by MDT leaders. Moreover, interpersonal leadership functions emerged as independent functions that may occur in both the transition and action phases.

Context is paramount for performance criteria definition and for the relevance of certain team leadership functions over others. It also presents some suggestions for improvement to the model of Morgeson et al. (2010a).

The results support the idea that there are differences in the leadership functions that are most valued by leaders, depending on the specific team’s context. Results also showed that some non-profit and less task-structured teams lack the specific performance criteria that could help them make more successful interventions.

This paper reviews context literature, it shows that the emphasis on team leadership functions can vary across contexts and to the knowledge it is the first that compares the model of Morgeson et al. (2010a) in different contexts.

Previous studies show that sharing leadership in teams offers potential performance benefits across various contexts. This paper aims to investigate moderators of the effectiveness of shared leadership. In particular, it seeks to explore the moderating effects of team work function – manufacturing versus knowledge team work – and team autonomy.

In order to test the hypotheses, the authors conducted hierarchical regression analyses and ran moderated two‐way regression analyses using a field sample of 552 employees comprising 81 teams in a Danish manufacturing company.

Contrary to expectations, the results demonstrated a non‐significant relationship between shared leadership and team performance. However, as expected, work function significantly moderated this relationship such that shared leadership exhibited a negative relationship with manufacturing team performance and a positive relationship with knowledge team performance. Moreover, team autonomy was positively related to performance, and it significantly moderated the relationship between shared leadership and team performance.

The study provides a potentially useful framework for understanding boundary conditions for the effectiveness of shared leadership. However, since the design of the study is cross‐sectional, direct causation cannot be inferred. Moreover, the study took place within a single organization in a Danish context and, therefore, care must be taken in generalizing the findings without additional evidence from further research.

To the authors' knowledge, the study is the first to obtain evidence which indicates that the success of shared leadership may depend on the team work function and the level of team autonomy.

This paper aims to present a two-decade effort to improve team functioning and patient outcomes in inpatient stroke rehabilitation settings.

The principal improvement effort was conducted over a nine-year period in 50 Veterans Administration Hospitals in the USA. A comprehensive team-based model was developed and tested in a series of empirical studies. A leadership development intervention was used to improve team functioning, and a follow-up cluster-randomized trial documented patient outcome improvements associated with the leadership training.

Iterative team and leadership improvements are presented in summary form, and a set of practice-proven development observations are derived from the results. Details are also provided on the leadership training intervention that improved teamwork processes and resulted in improvements in patient outcomes that could be linked to the intervention itself.

The practice-proven development observations are connected to leadership development theory and applied in the form of suggestions to improve leadership development and teamwork in a broad array of medical treatment settings.

This paper includes suggestions for leadership improvement in medical treatment settings using interdisciplinary teams to meet the customized needs of the patient populations they serve.

The success of the team effectiveness model and the team-functioning domains provides a framework and best practice for other health care organizations seeking to improve teamwork effectiveness.

Scrum, an agile software development method, has gained major interest among software development organizations. The scrum master should be well equipped with specific leadership traits and exhibit leadership behavior to effectively manage his/her team. However, in a distributed team, which is spread across geographies, having scrum master to lead the project team at each location is not viable. Therefore, every member in the team is expected to have the capability to become one. This paper aims to explore the leadership mechanisms desired for effective functioning of distributed self-organized scrum team members, leading to project success and overall customer satisfaction.

A qualitative research methodology with an open-ended questionnaire is followed by semi-structured in-depth interviews. The unit of analysis is a scrum master.

The qualitative findings unearth the kind of leadership mechanisms required for scrum masters and the team members in a self-organizing scrum team, leading to their project success and customer satisfaction. It includes a set of leadership approaches and behaviors explicitly related to the role of scrum masters. Both inductive and deductive approaches are used to develop a leadership framework applicable for distributed self-organized scrum teams.

The proposed framework can be empirically tested with a large number of teams and more software organizations.

Organizations can use these identified specific leadership approaches and behaviors as parameters for identifying and selecting the potential scrum masters. They can be further trained on them to be an effective scrum master.

There is scant literature on the leadership mechanisms necessary for distributed scrum teams and their impact on project performance. This paper addresses this gap.

To date, empirical research on shared leadership (SL) has been dominated by quantitative studies of antecedents and outcomes, frequently in simulated environments. Consequently, there have been few authentic accounts of how SL is practiced within organisational teams. Underpinned by shared leadership theory and leadership behaviour theory, this paper aims to provide a fine-grained view of the SL behaviours exhibited by team members over time, in five organisational teams in Ireland.

This longitudinal qualitative study uses critical incident technique, semi-structured interviews and participant diaries to explore SL behaviours emerging in five teams over time.

SL became widespread over time in each team, with almost all (96%) team members exhibiting SL behaviours. Ten different leadership behaviours were exhibited, indicating that SL permits a wide variety of leadership behaviours to be expressed. Some leadership functions were rarely or never fulfilled by team members (team composition, performance monitoring and resource allocation), suggesting that these leadership behaviours are not amenable to sharing.

This paper provides an insight into how SL could be used to increase the leadership capacity in team-based organisations.

This paper adds depth to the understanding of SL, revealing the specific behaviours underlying this approach, expanding our understanding of the micro-dynamics at play in SL processes.