Exploring the Sequential Relationship of a Leader’s Collective Leadership Style and the Team’s Shared Leadership: The Moderating Role of Gender

Abstract

In this study, we explore the relationship between a team’s shared leadership and a formal leader’s collective leadership style, and their joint impact on team performance. We draw upon identity theory to examine how shared leadership in the team influences formal leaders’ leadership identity claims. We also examine how a formal leader’s use of a collective leadership style facilitates the claiming and granting of leadership identities by other team members. We also draw on role congruity theory and the social categorization perspective to examine the moderating role of gender, a critical component of identity. Our findings suggest that there is a mutual relationship between the formal leader’s collective leadership style and the team’s shared leadership, and that they jointly influence team performance, but these effects are contingent on the formal leader’s gender and the gender composition of the team. This study addresses several calls in the leadership field for examining the more nuanced ways shared leadership and the actions of a formal leader may influence each other, as well as the contextual conditions in which shared leadership is enacted.