Navigating the complexity of team leadership: Skippers of a global sailing race as a microcosm of organisational team leadership

Sue Fontannaz, Oxford, UK.

Contact: sue@argo.org.za

Tel: 07557 111 666

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Navigating the complexity of team leadership: Skippers of a global sailing race as a microcosm of organisational team leadership

Key words: team leadership, relational leadership, shared leadership

Abstract

Team leadership is recognised as distinct from organisational leadership and relevant in addressing

the global HR challenge of shifting towards team based organisational design, yet there is no clarity

on where leadership resides in the context of teams. To address this knowledge gap, an instrumental

case study of skippers in a global sailing race is offered as a microcosm of organisational team

leadership, to offer a simplified, amplified context for studying team leadership. A multi-stakeholder,

temporal perspective is offered, which recognises both hierarchical and shared leadership and that

team leadership is a dynamic relational process that emerges over time.

Introduction

There appears to be no consensus on what constitutes leadership in the context of teams.

This challenge is becoming more crucial with the shift towards team-based organisational

structures, which is recognised as the leading global human resource challenge for both

2016 and 2017 (Malley, 2017). The conceptualisation of leadership appears to extend

beyond the individualistic, leader centric perspective, which dominates the leadership

literature. Day, Zaccaro and Halpin (2004) contended that the broader, extant leadership

literature focuses on how leaders manage individual subordinates, without describing the

social dynamics that impact on the relationship between the leader and the team. Further,

they confirmed that traditional leadership theory assumes team member roles and linkages

are loosely connected, whereas team leadership is characterised by tight interdependencies

and subsequent coordination requirements of team members. Day, Harrison and Halpin

(2009:159) proposed that “leadership exists in the connections between individuals and is a

function of the quantity and quality of relationships among a networked group of individuals”.

McLaughlin and Cox (2016) also recognised that there has been a shift in leadership

towards a relational perspective and claimed that there is insufficient emphasis on

developing this perspective in the literature at present.

Leadership can be defined as “the dynamic, enabling-constraining process that occurs

between people rather than the sole function of the individual leader” (Kartoch, 2013:164).

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Day and Dragoni (2015:135) supported this perspective and recognised that leadership, at

its most fundamental level, is a “social influence process”. According to Salas, Stagl and

Burke (2004:343), the focus is shifting to team leadership, which has emerged as a form of

“social problem solving that promotes coordinated, adaptive team performance by facilitating

goal definition and attainment”. Leaders and followers play important and interdependent

roles in generating leadership. Leadership can be described as a mutually influencing

process (DeRue, 2011; DeRue & Ashford, 2010, McCauley, Van Velsor & Ruderman, 2010)

that enables teams and organisations to “navigate the complexity of their internal and

external environments” (Day & Dragoni, 2015:146). Further, leadership is a system of

adaptation and coordination, which emerges through harnessing the dynamic tensions within

the team to forge broader capacity for direction, alignment and commitment (Ancona,

Backman & Isaacs, 2015).

Teams are defined as “intact social systems that perform one or more tasks within an

organizational context” (Clutterbuck, 2007:38). Kozlowski and Bell (2003:5) suggested that

teams consist of “individuals who share common goals and accomplish tasks in an

interdependent way”. McGrath, Arrow and Berdahl (2000) recognised teams as complex,

adaptive, dynamic systems, which draws attention to the social dynamics of team

leadership. For the context of this paper, a team is defined as the sailing team, led by a

professional race skipper.

Team leadership has emerged as an important competency for managers in contemporary

organisations. Scholars (Day et al., 2004; Kozlowski, Mak & Chao, 2016) have recognised

the distinctiveness of team leadership from organisational leadership and there has been a

consistent increase in research on team-centric leadership over the past two decades (Day,

2012). Although teams are a common structure required in workplaces today, many leaders

are unaware of how best to lead their teams to high performance (Wageman, Nunes,

Burruss & Hackman, 2008). Tannenbaum, Mathieu, Salas and Cohen (2012:20) recognised

that the research on team dynamics has developed, but they raised the question of whether

research and practice are evolving fast enough to address the changes in teams, relating to

more fluid, dynamic and complex environments than in the past. They advocated for rich

case studies where teams are examined “in the wild”, under extreme conditions, as this

places heightened pressures on their strengths and vulnerabilities.

Leadership does not exist in a vacuum and any theory development requires

contextualisation (Holton & Lowe, 2007; Geier, 2016). Johns (2006:386) defined context as

the “situational opportunities and constraints that affect the occurrence and meaning of

organisational behaviour as well as the functional relationship between the variables”. Kihl,

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Leberman and Schull (2010:243) suggested that leadership should be “considered in the

context within which it occurs and take into account the socially constructed meanings

associated with leadership”. Porter and McLaughlin (2006) also found that while there has

been greater recognition of the importance of context in leadership research in the past 15

years, context has continued to be neglected as a major factor in empirical leadership

research. A global sailing race was considered relevant to the study of team leadership as

this context offered a clearly bounded context where the central themes have been simplified

and amplified.

This paper addresses the call to study team leadership “in the wild” and is considered

relevant in addressing Kegan and Lahey’s (2009) assertion that leaders are in “over our

heads”, as the growing demands placed on leaders are beyond the current understanding of

leadership practice. This perspective is also supported by other scholars (McLaughlin & Cox,

2016; Tourish, 2012; Hawkins, 2014; Kellerman, 2012; Kolb, 2015). It can be argued that the

shift towards team leadership has contributed to the conceptual crises in the field of

leadership, which is undermining the practice of leadership and leader development. The

purpose of the paper is to contribute to understanding where leadership resides in a team

context, which can then be used to inform the fields of team leadership, leadership

development and coaching.

Methodology

The main aim of the research was to explore the multiple perspectives on leadership within a

team context. The research was designed from an interpretivist, social constructionist

theoretical perspective to explore the perceptions and experiences of the different

stakeholders embedded within a socially dynamic team context. This perspective was

informed by Ospina and Sorenson (2006:201), who suggested that a constructionist lens

offers the opportunity to “look at the same territory of leadership that we all share by virtue of

our membership in contemporary society, in a way that will help reveal aspects of leadership

that we have missed before”. These authors argued for a more grounded constructionist

approach to studying leadership, with the focus on the “culturally derived and historically

situated interpretations of leadership in context, in contrast to the universal traits, fixed

contingent styles, or disembodied cognitive structures” (Ospina & Sorenson, 2006:193).

An instrumental case study design (Stake, 1995) was chosen, to enable rich data collection

from multiple stakeholders to understand the interplay between perceptions and the lived

experience of team leadership. The research context was an 11-month global sailing race,

where 12 amateur teams were each led by a professional skipper on evenly matched boats.

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The leadership challenge was complicated by the fact that the race skippers had

professional sailing experience and their key challenge was to manage a dynamic, diverse

crew of amateur sailors, who were paying customers of the race organiser.

Researchers (Day, Harrison & Halpin, 2012, Wolfe, Weick, Usher, Terborg, Poppo et al.,

2005; Kiedl, 1987) view sport as a simplified, microcosm of larger society. Day et al. (2012)

identified over 40 empirical studies situated in the sports context, which have been published

in the organisation sciences from 1963-2011. Day et al. (2012) contended that sport offers a

type of controlled “living laboratory” to study individuals and groups, as sports contexts are

defined by explicit and agreed-upon rules, clearly defined boundaries where the action

occurs and clear performance indicators. The sports context thus provides a relevant

microcosm for researching team leadership development and performance. The research

design was informed by my experience as a crew member on the previous race, which

contributed to an awareness of the multiple perspectives on leadership and how these

perspectives are socially constructed, temporally dynamic and influenced by team

performance.

A purposive sample was drawn from the different stakeholder groups to provide multiple

perspectives on team leadership. Fifty semi-structured interviews were conducted across

multiple levels, including four race directors and one manager (representing the sponsoring

organisation); three coaches from the external coaching team; 11 skippers and 25 crew

members. A sample of both the Round the World (RTW) crew members and those

participating in one or more stages of the race (LEG) were used. The balance of the

interviews consisted of five pilot interviews and follow-up interviews with the external

coaching team. Daily skipper blogs and additional documents including a crew survey (166

respondents) conducted by the race organisers, the coaching manual and race data were

collected. Thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) was used to develop themes from the

data and Nvivo software was used to manage the volume of data generated. Thematic

network analysis diagrams (Attride-Stirling, 2001) were used to analyse the latent themes

and compare and contrast the data from the high-performing teams (coded as HP and

identified as the top four teams, which were closely matched throughout the race), the lower-

performing teams (LP) and the teams where there had been a change of skipper during the

race (CHANGE).

Findings

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The findings illustrate the multiple, temporal perceptions and experiences of team leadership

to contribute to understanding the complexity of team leadership as a relational, dynamic

process that influences and is influenced by team performance.

Perceptions of leadership in a team context

As the literature on leadership is diverse and fragmented, the participants were asked to

share their perceptions of the skippers, so that a multi-level perspective on team leadership

could be constructed. Within the data, I identified three basic themes relating to team

leadership: the leader ‘sets the tone’ at the top; the construction of leadership perceptions;

and the influence of performance on leadership perceptions.

The leader ‘sets the tone’ at the top

A significant theme was the perception that the leader sets the tone at the top of the team.

For example, high-performing crew members commented:

“the leader always sets the tone” – HPRTW7.

“the fish rots from the head and the alternative to that is – the leader sets the tone” –

HPRTW1.

“The skipper to a certain extent sets the tone for the boat, and if he lets things fly or she

lets things fly, then that will permeate through the crew” – HPLEG1.

“building the team and the team norms […] helps to develop peer pressure that maintain

those norms” – HPLEG2.

The skipper sets the tone for the team, effectively using peer pressure to impact team

behaviour by establishing team norms to develop a collective culture, which permeates

through the crew. A director expanded on this theme:

“I think the most important aspect of the race, if you look at the feedback that we’ve had,

even since when I did it in 2002, the single thing that has the biggest impact on the crew

experience is the skipper” – DIRECTOR1.

One of the managers was asked about the factors that influence the crew experience and

feedback from the crew survey was offered:

“The skipper comes through a lot, in terms of negativity, creating negativity, a lot of skippers do”

– MANAGER1.

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The influence of the skipper is recognised as significant and can be both positive and

negative. There is a risk that conflictual, social dynamics can arise if this team leadership

function is not present. For example, a crew member commented:

“if you don’t establish what the objectives are, it means people are going in with their own

objectives […] that may not coincide with the rest of the group and they only find that out

when it’s a challenging environment so having that conversation with the team at the

beginning is important” – HPLEG2.

It is interesting to note that there are more mentions of the skipper’s role in influencing the

high-performing teams. Lower-performing teams focused more on the social dynamics

between crew members and some crew perceived their skipper as part of the team:

“he would genuinely pitch in and join in with you […] I think he did the right thing by

turning the boat over to the crew” – LPLEG1.

It appears that the skipper delegated the leadership to the crew and that the hierarchical

structure was less evident, with the skipper being considered as part of the team. A

contrasting perspective was offered by a director, who drew on a business analogy to

explain the influence of the skipper:

“I think that’s the same in business and it’s the same in most teams, you look at the top

of the team. The culture comes from the top. The culture of any organisation comes from

the top […] I think the culture and the mood of the boat always comes from the skipper” –

DIRECTOR1.

The perception that the skipper sets the tone for the team appears common in both the

sports and organisational context, where a hierarchical structure represents the relationship

between the skipper and the crew. These perceptions are more developed in the high-

performing teams, suggesting a relationship between leadership and team performance.

Individual and social construction of leadership perceptions

The participants offered multiple perspectives on the skippers. For example, a director

commented:

“I think everyone has a really different view about their skipper” – DIRECTOR1.

Crew members from a high-performing team shared perceptions of the skipper, which

ranged from:

“A bit of a crazed, sociopathic personality, bit of a loner” – HPRTW8

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to:

“He’s a genius, all said and done, that man is a genius” – HPRTW4.

These contrasting perspectives relate to the same skipper, which illustrates how the team

leader is perceived by different team members. Individuals draw on their existing

conceptualisations of leadership to construct perceptions of a skipper’s leadership identity.

For example:

“he was never ever a leader, because he didn’t have the drive and the enthusiasm to be

a leader. You have to lead from the front” – LPLEG1.

This crew member cited drive, work ethic and leading from the front as factors in

constructing the skipper’s leadership identity. A different perspective was offered by another

crew member:

“when everyone met the skipper, we all knew by just looking each other in the eye, we

weren’t going to be a winning team. We had an eager skipper, but we also had a […]

quite a messy skipper, a young skipper as well. So, I think everyone thought, he’s not up

to the task yet, but he can get there” – LPRTW1.

The perception of the skipper was socially constructed within the team. This finding is

interesting in the context of leadership theory, which often prescribes a specific leadership

style as preferable. A director commented:

“if you look at the three winning skippers from past races, they are not skippers who

would inspire you on first sight. All three are quite similar. They are focused, introvert,

they almost come across as uncomfortable communicators to me, but I think because of

the amount of effort they put in, all their crews follow them into hell” – DIRECTOR1.

Static personality traits traditionally associated with leadership were not perceived in these

winning skippers. Director 1 offered an example of a socially constructed leadership

perception that shifted over time:

“I spoke to three or four different crew to get a balanced view and they all said a similar

thing but not as far down the scale […] they all felt that there was a lack of engagement

and leadership and communication. At crew allocation their view was different. But I think

that’s completely normal because on dry land the crew are different as well” –

DIRECTOR1.

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Multiple, shifting perceptions of leadership suggest that leadership extends beyond static

personality traits and behaviours, and encompasses the relationship between the leader and

the team and is influenced by multiple perceptions of leadership.

Influence of performance on the perceptions of leadership

Another basic theme that emerged from the data was how performance influences the

perceptions of leadership. For example, a director commented:

“If the boat’s doing badly, then the skipper loses all his influence because the crew will in

many cases see that the skipper is the reason why they are not doing well. Which is not

fair but that’s what they will see. In a successful team, you can paper over lots of cracks –

and if you’re not doing well then everything is an issue” – DIRECTOR1.

One of the coaches identified the underlying tensions within a crew and explained how

performance contained the social dynamics:

“whilst […] they are winning, those symptoms are bubbling underneath the surface – it

would take them coming last for them to erupt – but at the moment the lid’s on it because

they are winning” – COACH4.

These extracts illustrate how performance influences leadership and the social dynamics

within the teams. Further, the director suggested:

“the skipper’s job is easier when they are in the lead. And they are more motivated, and

have more energy and up and about on deck and interacting a lot more. I think when

things start to go wrong, the skippers take that personally, because they are the leader

making the tactical decisions, and if something doesn’t go right I think very often they will

believe it’s their fault that it’s not going right and it may be, or may be something very

different […] there are lots of cases where their default position is to hide a little bit, so

they are less visible, on deck less. Some of that is about how much energy they have, as

they get tired as well, but some of it is about results and mentally how tired they are” –

DIRECTOR1.

These extracts offer insight into the skippers’ perception of self, the role of the skipper in

influencing the team, the socially constructed perceptions of leadership and the

interrelationship between performance and team leadership.

A temporal perspective on team leadership

This section describes the basic themes of delegation and the emergence of team

leadership, to offer a temporal perspective on how team leadership perceptions emerged

and shifted over the duration of the race.

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The delegation of leadership

The delegation of leadership emerged as a basic theme and two high-performing skippers

commented specifically on this aspect:

“I think that probably the most important part of my job, looking back was delegation, and

putting the right people in the right places” – HPSKIPPER1.

“I realised that if I couldn’t trust them, I wasn’t going to manage […] give them the

opportunity, give them a bit and then let them get on with it” – HPSKIPPER2.

These high-performing skippers were aware of the need to share leadership and delegate

tasks, to ensure that the boat could operate effectively. A crew member confirmed that

HPSKIPPER1 “delegated a lot through the team coordinator. He was there to support”. This

crew member expanded on the role of the skipper in delegating leadership:

“I think the successful skippers, like successful business leaders, don’t try to do

everything themselves […] we had a good cadre of watch leaders and assistant watch

leaders, the team co-ordinator and a few other of the mature people on board that kind of

made a peak of the leadership pyramid, which I think really made a good culture on the

boat. But if (HPSKIPPER1) wasn’t the way he was, that wouldn’t have survived. It

wouldn’t have flourished” – HPRTW1.

This crew member recognised that delegation was essential for successful skippers, in both

the sailing and the organisational context. The role of the skipper was also recognised in

developing the leadership structure from the formally delegated roles assigned by the

skipper and informal leadership from mature people who did not hold any formal leadership

roles on the boat. A crew member on another high-performing team also focused on the

team leadership structure:

“We had a very clear leadership structure – there was never any doubt on what was

expected, what you were doing, whether that was from my watch or from (the skipper).

Everybody knew what was expected, what their roles were. There was never any

vacuum there – you knew the leadership” – HPLEG1.

A clear leadership structure existed, which contributed to clarifying crew expectations of

team leadership. A contrasting perspective on delegation was offered by a director:

“I have an example again from Vietnam where one of the watch leaders was saying to

the crew you need to do this and the crew just said no, you’re a watch leader not the

skipper. So the guy went to the skipper to say you need to explain to your crew the

authority you’ve handed to your watch leaders and the skipper didn’t do that and they

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never got to that. In effect, it came to where the skipper was the leader and everyone

else was equal so there’s no point in having a watch leader” – DIRECTOR1.

These perspectives highlight that the appointment of watch leaders does not automatically

result in the delegation of leadership. Leadership exists within the relationships between the

skipper, the watch leaders and the crew members. Some crew members explained the

reluctance to become a watch leader:

“preferred not to be watch leader as I didn’t want to be between the skipper and the

crew” – HPRTW3.

“I was asked if I wanted to be watch leader, I said no, because I don’t really want a) his

nose is going to be so far out of joint, he’s not going to co-operate, the one who’s just

been ousted, and he’s going to […] how many of the others are going to […] because

he’s just going to say he’s not a sailor, he’s not doing this right and that right, hang on

that’s not the job of the watch leader […] we have a lot of friction in the crew and I always

thought the crew never bonded, never gelled and they weren’t – the watch leaders

weren’t leaders at all” – HPRTW7.

These extracts highlight the social dynamics which influence the leadership roles and the

relationships within the crew. This crew member expanded on the influence:

“I‘ve got as much influence with the skipper doing what I’m doing below, than I ever

could have as a watch leader, without any of the drudgery and tedium of actually doing

the job […] I’m getting more than enough say doing what I do and influence over him” –

HPRTW7.

Mutual influencing patterns exist, which contributes to the complexity of distributing

leadership within a socially dynamic team context. A coach also highlighted how the theme

of delegation was present when coaching the skippers. This coach focused on engaging the

skippers to explore:

“how to push power and influence downwards – how to give them more control without

feeling like they were abdicating […] utilising their watch leaders and the relationship that

they had with their watch leaders […] how they could make more effective use of them” –

COACH4.

The relational and hierarchical nature of leadership is reflected in the extract, as skippers

pushed power and influence downwards. The delegation of leadership was more evident in

the high-performing teams, with skippers pro-actively delegating leadership to the watch

leaders and other experienced team members.

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The emergence of leadership within the team

The review of the daily skipper blogs created an awareness of a collective, team leadership

perspective. In analysing the word frequency of the daily skipper blogs, the words “we”, “our”

and similar words accounted for 5.39% of the total word count, whilst words such as “I”

(1.1%) and “crew” (0.90%) accounted for 2% of the total word count, as illustrated in the

word map in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Word map depicting the centrality of “we” in the skippers’ blogs

Building on the collective theme of team leadership, a crew member recognised the role of

the skipper in influencing the collective culture:

“I think the skipper needs to have a view of what they consider the norm but how it’s

established is through the Round the World crew and just through the leadership that this

is the way we do it on this boat” – HPLEG2.

This crew member identified how both the skipper and the Round the World crew influenced

the collective culture. A particularly illuminating example of leadership emergence was

provided by a Round the World crew member, who was also a watch leader. The description

highlights how the crew were confronted with the challenge of managing the boat, whilst

their skipper was ill for more than a week:

“we had to manage to sail our boat ourselves, without the skipper basically and we took

all the decisions ourselves and for the first two or three days, people were amazed that

we could actually do that [...] after that, it’s the typical build up […] we started to argue

with each other, and struggle, not having one skipper on deck, but having four or five

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people who thought they knew what to do […] and at some point, we just had to drag our

skipper on deck, because it went so childish after a while, between some crew, because

most crew were doing really well and some crew just couldn’t do with missing that leader,

well they thought they could do it, but they couldn’t” – LPRTW1.

This description is considered significant as it illustrates the contested, micro-process of

shared leadership emergence, and also highlights that leadership is not necessarily

“distributed” by the team leader; nor does it always emerge from the formal leadership

structure. This crew member continued describing how the shared leadership became

established as the race progressed:

“around leg six, seven and eight, we knew who the leaders were in the group, and within

that some hierarchy and I think in the beginning of the race that was still something to

figure out amongst certain people and especially in stressful situations […] actually in

stressful situations, those are the easiest because the strong sailors and the strong

leaders stand up and other people might be scared and just willing to follow because

otherwise it might be dangerous. But in situations where it’s easy and everyone is bored,

that’s where the actual leadership role is being fought out” – LPRTW1.

This extract highlights how shared leadership is socially constructed and becomes

established in a hierarchical structure. Further, it illustrates how crew members are willing to

follow others in stressful situations and how leadership becomes more contested in

situations of relative calm conditions. A contrasting example was offered by a crew member

of a high-performing team, who was not a watch leader:

“It was quite difficult because of how he (skipper) handles things. Relationship with him

was difficult. The team decided to survive him. The dynamics of the group were run by

the group and not by him” – HPRTW3.

In this example, the relationship between the skipper and crew was conflictual. The extract

illustrates how the group bypassed the skipper and influenced the social dynamics.

In summary, the data reflected the emergence of different leadership structures over the

duration of the race. Leadership is delegated through the formal structure of watch leaders

and the appointment of a team co-ordinator and influenced by the skipper and the social

dynamics within the team context. Tensions exist in distributing leadership as leadership

roles are contested and influence patterns extend beyond the formal leadership structures.

Further, shared leadership emerged as a separate, contested process which does not

necessarily follow the formal leadership structure; nor is it always delegated by the team

leader.

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Discussion and conclusion

Team leadership is perceived as a unique type of social, meaning-making where leadership

attributions are constructed within the relational process and influenced by the context.

Contrasting perceptions of team leadership exist, including an entity perspective on the

leader who sets the tone at the top, the relational process of leadership and the emergence

of shared leadership within the team. The leader is considered influential in influencing the

collective culture, distributing leadership within the team and contributing to team

performance. The perceptions of leadership are also dynamic, socially constructed and

influenced by team performance. In deciding where to study leadership within the team, the

research emphasis shifted from the team leader to the leadership processes and

relationships within the team, which aligns with the perspectives offered by constructionist

scholars (Fairhurst & Grant, 2010; Cunliffe & Erikesen, 2011; Uhl-Bien, 2006; and Ospina &

Sorenson, 2006). The team interaction with the leader is considered dynamic with temporal

shifts occurring as the race progressed and it is assumed that there is a range of leader-

team patterns of engagement. This perspective aligns with the categorisation by Kets de

Vries, Florent-Treacy and Korotov (2015), who identified

dependency/independency/interdependency as three different patterns of engagement

between the team leader and the group.

The findings contribute to the theory that recognises that leadership is co-constructed and

“negotiated on an ongoing basis through a complex interplay among leadership actors, be

they designated or emergent leaders” (Fairhurst & Grant, 2010:172). A distinction was drawn

between the construction of social reality, which foregrounds the individual perceptions of

leadership and the social construction of reality, which foregrounds the social interactions

and how this action influences leadership perceptions (Pearce, 1995). Both perspectives on

team leadership were shared, which highlights the complexity of understanding leadership,

socially embedded in a team context. The social construction of leadership eschews a

leader-centric approach where the leader’s “personality, style, and/or behaviour are the

primary (read only) determining influences on follower’s thoughts and actions” (Fairhurst &

Grant, 2010:175). The case study offers a microcosm of socially constructed team

leadership and recognises that a linear, cause and effect perspective on leadership and

team performance does not sufficiently capture the complexity associated with researching

team leadership.

The findings triggered a further review of the literature on relational leadership to explore the

“intersubjective view of the world to offer a way of thinking about who leaders are in relation

to others […] and how they might work with others within the complexity of experience”

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(Cunliffe & Eriksen,2011:1434). This perspective illuminated the emergence of team

leadership as a collective process, distinct from the practices designated leaders engage in.

This interpretation aligns with social constructionist scholars (Ospina & Sorenson, 2006; Uhl-

Bien, 2006), who suggest that the entity perspective of ‘the leader’, while relevant for action,

represents a different phenomenon from that of the relational orientation of ‘leadership’, and

that each needs to be treated distinctly. The example of team leadership emergence

illustrated how leadership becomes a reality when one or more individuals in the team

succeed in framing and defining how the demands of the group will be achieved and who will

address the need for direction in collective action. Through a process of attribution, the team

agreed to assign each other different roles and functions, including the role of leader, for

purposive action and to support team well-being.

Team leadership is relational and systemic, emerging and manifesting itself through the

dynamic relationships within the team. These relationships are grounded in wider systems of

interdependence and constrained by social structure. A social constructionist lens allowed

for the exploration of multiple perspectives on leadership to understand how stakeholders

understand and attribute leadership within a team context. The meaning-making processes

that helped construct leadership and the attributions of leadership did not just occur in

people’s minds, nor were they disembodied from the context. These processes were rooted

in social interaction and influenced by contextual dynamics. The claims that leadership is

relational, systemic, emergent, contextual and socially constructed, do not necessarily lead

to the conclusion that team leadership always takes a collective form; nor does it mean that

it is by nature democratic. The findings highlight that formal and informal leadership take

multiple forms, depending on the attributions that those in relation make about each other in

teams. Further, the tasks that call forth leadership can, in fact, be distributed so that different

individuals take up roles and leadership emerges within the team and shifts over time.

The emergence of shared leadership aligns with recent research that has started to

emphasise the importance of “we” in leadership processes (Barnett & Weidenfeller, 2016;

Yammarino, Salas, Serban, Shirreffs & Shuffler, 2012). These findings differed from the

descriptions of team leadership initially reviewed in the literature. This divergence

necessitated a further review of the literature on shared leadership, which Pearce and

Conger (2003:1) defined as “a dynamic, interactive influence process among individuals for

which the objective is to lead one another to the achievement of group or organizational

goals or both”. Barnett and Weidenfeller (2016:334) found that the interest in shared

leadership has emerged as organisations have moved toward team-based designs. These

scholars concluded that, whilst shared leadership in teams has been the topic of substantial

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research in the last several years, the published literature is “fragmented, complex, and

difficult to navigate”.

A key distinction between shared leadership and more traditional forms of leadership is the

recognition that influence processes require and emphasise peer or lateral influence in

addition to upward and downward hierarchical influence. These authors recognised shared

leadership as a relational phenomenon whereby leadership and influence are distributed and

reciprocated. Further, shared leadership encompasses the ideas of participative decision

making, social exchange theory, self-leadership, self-managed teams, empowerment, and

shared cognition, among other important contributions to management science over the last

four decades (Pearce & Conger, 2003). Shared leadership is positively related to team

performance (Hoch & Kozlowski, 2014, D’Innocenzo, Mathieu & Kukenburger, 2014;

Nicolaides, LaPort, Chen, Tomassetti, Weis et al., 2014; Wang, Waldman & Zhang, 2014),

team effectiveness (Wang et al., 2014), and team proactivity (Erkutlu, 2012). Leadership is

also shared within sports teams (Fransen, Van Puyenbroeck, Loughead, Vanbeselaere, De

Cuyper et al., 2015) with Cotterill and Fransen (2016) proposing a radical shift from the

traditional vertical view to a shared leadership perspective. The findings address the call by

these authors for future research to focus on shared leadership in the team sports context,

by offering a microcosm of how leadership emerges within a team context.

Shared leadership, however, does not always produce positive results. The meta study by

Wang et al. (2014) and Nicolaides et al. (2014) showed that each meta-analysis included

studies where a negative effect size was reported. For example, O’Toole, Galbraith and

Lawler (2003) suggested that shared leadership is counterintuitive, full of pitfalls, and often

greeted with scepticism. Notwithstanding these concerns and criticisms, shared leadership

appears to be a relevant approach to team leadership and performance. Wang et al.

(2014:192) recommended that “team members may need to have requisite expertise,

information, or individual performance potential in order to effectively engage in shared

leadership”. A group of studies has shown that both good vertical and shared leadership are

related to positive outcomes for teams (Burke, Stagl, Klein, Goodwin, Salas et al., 2006;

Ensley, Hmieleski & Pearce, 2006; Hoch, 2013; Nicolaides et al., 2014; Pearce & Sims,

2002). The findings support this perspective and extend the research by attempting to offer a

microcosm on how shared leadership emerged within a team context.

Implications for theory and practice

This exploratory case study offers researchers and practitioners a microcosm, to understand

the complexity and temporal nature of team leadership in challenging contexts. The

16

microcosm is considered relevant as it offers a simplified and amplified context, to

understand where leadership resides within a team. Further, the common themes identified

in the literature from both the organisational and sports contexts align with the empirical

findings, suggesting that this case study offers a relevant microcosm on team leadership.

These findings can inform team leadership development theory and practice as not much is

known about how to develop leaders within a team context and the shift towards team-based

organisational structures has been identified as the leading global human resource

challenge.

Limitations of the study

Whilst the retrospective nature of the study contributed to a temporal perspective on team

leadership, there is the limitation that the retrospective nature can impact on recall. This

limitation was addressed by reviewing the daily skipper blogs in real time and ensuring that

participants were interviewed within three months of the race. It is also recognised that the

results are context specific and cannot be generalised to other contexts. However, the case

study offers researchers a microcosm of team leadership, which can be compared and

contrasted to case studies of team leadership in other contexts, to offer vicarious experience

and provide a contrasting lens to understand the complexity of team leadership in different

contexts.

Suggestions for future research

More research is required to compare and contrast team leadership across different contexts

to understand how context influences the dynamic relational process of team leadership.

There is potential to draw from the sports context, where teams are well established, to

contribute to addressing the organisational challenge of shifting towards team based

structures.

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