Cognitive and Behavioral Leadership Coordination: Linking Shared Leadership to High Performance in Global Teams

The ability of a single leader to exert direct influence on globally distributed teams diminishes when members are scattered across boundaries. Shared leadership may be necessary to lead such teams more effectively. Earlier research has found contradicting effects of shared leadership on team performance, suggesting the possibility that there may be some interaction effects at play. In this study we use Grounded Theory to explore these effects, such as whether and how shared leadership interacts with global team boundaries and team coordination. We interviewed 58 team members and leaders from 6 teams and found that shared leadership´s influence on team performance is moderated by leadership coordination, such that shared leadership has a stronger effect when the distributed leadership activity is effectively coordinated, both cognitively and behaviorally. We also found that team leadership coordination needs to vary depending on the global boundaries spanned by the team.