Ruth Wageman

Team Diagnostic Survey: Development of an Instrument

This article describes the development of the Team Diagnostic Survey (TDS), an instrument intended for use both for the diagnosis of the strengths and weaknesses of work teams and for research on team behavior and performance. The TDS is based explicitly on existing research and theory about the conditions that foster team effectiveness. It provides an assessment of how well a team is structured, supported, and led as well as several indicators of members’ work processes and their affective reactions to the team and its work. The psychometric properties of the TDS are satisfactory, based on analyses of data from 2,474 members of 321 teams in a diversity of organizations. Appropriate uses of the instrument are discussed.

When and how team leaders matter

Abstract Team leaders tend to be viewed both by lay observers and by scholars as more influential in shaping team performance than is warranted by research evidence. This chapter identifies the technological, organizational, and contextual constraints that can attenuate the impact of team leader behavior, and explores the behavioral options that remain available to leaders under constraining circumstances. We then address three decisions team leaders make that can spell the difference between team success and failure: (a) what kind of team to create; (b) how to structure the team; and (c) how and when to actively coach the team as it proceeds with its work. We propose that team leaders’ decisions about such matters often are made implicitly rather than deliberately, and that they often are suboptimal. Finally, we explore the implications of our analyses for team leader training and development, with emphasis on developmental activities that can make the implicit explicit and promote continuous learning by team leaders and members.

Asking the Right Questions About Leadership: Discussion and Conclusions

Five questions prompted by the articles in the American Psychologist special issue on leadership (January 2007, Vol. 62, No. 1) suggest some new directions for leadership research: (1) Not do leaders make a difference, but under what conditions does leadership matter? (2) Not what are the traits of leaders, but how do leaders’ personal attributes interact with situational properties to shape outcomes? (3) Not do there exist common dimensions on which all leaders can be arrayed, but are good and poor leadership qualitatively different phenomena? (4) Not how do leaders and followers differ, but how can leadership models be reformulated so they treat all system members as both leaders and followers? (5) Not what should be taught in leadership courses, but how can leaders be helped to learn?

A theory of team coaching

After briefly reviewing the existing literature on team coaching, we propose a new model with three distinguishing features. The model (1) focuses on the functions that coaching serves for a team, rather than on either specific leader behaviors or leadership styles, (2) identifies the specific times in the task performance process when coaching interventions are most likely to have their intended effects, and (3) explicates the conditions under which team-focused coaching is and is not likely to facilitate performance.