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Patrick Lencioni

In his book, The Five Dysfucntions of a Team, Lencioni writes: "The foundation [of a great team] must be built with these five ideals layering upon each other: demonstrating trust, engaging in conflict, commit to group decisions, hold peer accountable, and focus on team results" (Lencioni, 2006). I believe this philosophy to be in line with transformational leadership, with the culminating and most important focus on the long-term results and goals of the team.

Lencioni, P. (2006). The five dysfunctions of a team. John Wiley & Sons.

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Linking Teamwork to Team Performance with Transformational Leadership

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Linking Teamwork to Team Performance with Transformational Leadership

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Akhavan Tabassi, A., Roufechaei, K. M., Bakar, A. H. A., & Nor'Aini, Y. (2017). Linking Team Condition and Team Performance: A Transformational Leadership Approach. Project Management Journal, 48(2), 22–38.

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Amin Akhavan Tabassi, School of Housing, Building and Planning, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia

Kamand M. Roufechaei, School of Housing, Building and Planning, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia

Abu Hassan Abu Bakar, School of Housing, Building and Planning, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia

Nor'Aini Yusof, School of Housing, Building and Planning, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia

Because project teams in the construction industry shape the primary focus of the industry's project life cycle, a high-performance construction workplace facilitates employees' technical and innovation skills through team development. Drawing on the current research in general teamwork and leadership, this study, from a theoretical perspective, extends the team condition as a hierarchical construct, incorporating six associated components. This article argues that team building and team development can be studied as ongoing processes that are crucial to project success. In order to reduce the risk of common method variance, the research analysis was completed using 94 construction teams from three different sources, within which team members rated their leader's transformational leadership behavior. The team leaders evaluated the team's conditions, and, lastly, the supervisor of each team rated the team's performance. The model shows that the team condition, which is defined as the factors that contribute to making a great team, has significant direct and indirect impacts on team performance. Furthermore, the transformational leadership behavior of team leaders showed a mediating role between the team condition and the performance.

KEYWORDS: team condition; team performance; transformational leadership; construction industry.

Project Management Journal, Vol. 48, No. 2, 22-38
© 2017 by the Project Management Institute
Published online at www.pmi.org/PMJ

INTRODUCTION

S ince the early 1980s, human capital has played an increasingly important role in an organization's success (Hollenbeck, DeRue, & Guzzo, 2004). Particularly in a project-based organization, human capital acts together to perform the work of the organization's projects to achieve the set objectives (Guzzo & Dickson, 1996; Stott & Walker, 1995; Levenson, 2012). Consequently, productive project-based organizations are those that are able to manage the personnel in groups; as a result, organizations need to be able to manage and develop teams and coordinate the individuals' skills and competencies in line with project objectives. With that in mind, organizing, managing, and leading project teams are, therefore, necessary to the success of human resource management (HRM) strategies.

In the context of human resource management, team building and team development have been viewed by A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) - Fifth Edition (Project Management Institute, 2013) as on-going processes that are vital to project success. Thus, robust team building and team development practices tend to be essential parts of a project's life cycle and also affect a company's overall project performance. Alternatively, team working in the construction industry, as a project-based industry, mostly forms the main focus throughout the project life cycle. The changing demands of construction work, on the other hand, require companies to establish different teams each and every time a new project is performed (Raiden & Dainty, 2006). Consequently, a large percentage of managers in this industry devote much of their time to some form of teamwork activities.

The evidence to date indicates that teams are capable of remarkable performance; hence, they should be given serious consideration by industry management (Geoghegan & Dulewicz, 2008). Schutz (1989) claims that the team "holds all the cachet of a corporate 'Aladdin's Lamp.' With it, anything is possible." While executive managers focus more on teamwork and its attitudes than on individuals, many organizations have indeed realized the immense benefit of teams and have both advanced their scope of operations and integrated programs to enhance their performance. Because teams are considered to be the backbone of an organization and able to produce more and better solutions to problems than individuals can (Blanchard, 1988, p. 6), teamwork accomplished via joint work and interaction among individual team members (Sundstrom, DeMeuse, & Futrell, 1990) should be developed by team leaders. In this regard, a team leader is perceived to be a powerful means for team development and performance (Dionne, Yammarino, Atwater, & Spangler, 2004).

Although team building has been explored in many studies (Anantaraman, 1984; Moe, Dingsoyr, & Dyba, 2010; Molyneux, 2001; Parboteeah, Hoegl, & Muethel, 2015), to date, little research has disentangled how the team condition, as a consequence of team development, and the leadership style of the team leader enhance team performance in construction companies. This study, therefore, evaluates the condition of the team, which is defined as the factors that contribute to making a great team, the leadership styles of the leaders, and their effects on team performance.

Since the construction industry has been evaluated as one of the most active, complex, and dynamic environments (Bresnen, 1990; Loosemore, Dainty, & Lingard, 2003), it raises interesting managerial issues and presents a challenging context for leadership phenomena (Bresnen, 1990; Fellows, Langford, Newcombe, & Urry, 2002). From this point of view, the importance of effectual leadership and management techniques is notably apparent among larger contractors, who, in turn, need to place emphasis on managing the construction teams en route for project accomplishment (Druker & White, 1995). Despite the fact that leadership is among the most significant topics in management studies, many authors have not been able to articulate the concept of leadership even with the multitude of research and literature in this discipline (Geoghegan & Dulewicz, 2008; Giritli & Oraz, 2004; Tyssen, Wald, & Spieth, 2013). In the construction industry, especially, a limited amount of research has been carried out on leadership trends (Odusami, Iyagba, & Omirin, 2003; Toor & Ofori, 2007). Dulaimi and Langford (1999) asserted that most research and scientific studies on leadership in the industry focus on looking into the personal characteristics of project managers; there aren't many studies that target the transformational leadership behavior of team leaders in the industry (Toor & Ofori, 2007; Limsila & Ogunlana, 2008; Tabassi, Ramli, & Bakar, 2012). Therefore, evaluating the transformational leadership behavior of team leaders in the industry has shaped one of the main objectives of the study.

Even though prior work on team research has stated that there is no sole standard determinant of performance effectiveness for groups (Guzzo & Dickson, 1996; Hackman, 1990; Keller, 1986; Chi & Huang, 2014), based on a broad literature review, nonetheless, five features for team performance evaluation were extracted and developed to apply as a scale to measuring team performance in this study. In addition, a fit between the condition of the team and the transformational leadership behavior of the team leader appears to be an important factor in teamwork success. In this study, transformational leadership represents one of the few important variables by which a team leader can directly influence team members toward better goal achievement (Chi & Huang, 2014; Dionne et al., 2004; Toor & Ofori, 2007). As a result, transformational leadership may act as a variable that affects the relationship between the condition of the team, which is defined as existence or absence of the factors that contribute to making a great team, and team performance.

This study structures team condition as an independent factor model and adopts Partial Least Squares (PLS) path modeling to determine the hierarchical model (Chin, 2010; Petter, Straub, & Rai, 2007), leading to greater theoretical parsimony and lower model complexity (Akter, D'Ambra, & Ray, 2011; Law, Wong, & Mobley, 1998). Furthermore, with the help of PLS path modeling, this study aims to explore a hierarchical team condition with the mediating effects of transformational leadership on the relationship between team condition and team performance under a nomological network.

Effective Team Conditions

The nature of a team is determined to be a group of people who are mutually accountable to performing a task, dynamically involved, and compete with each other. A team has also been identified as being a small or large number of people with complementary skills, whose members are committed to a set target and an approach for which they are mutually responsible (Katzenbach & Smith, 2005; Parboteeah et al., 2015). This explanation indicates that teams must be of a manageable size and that all individuals in a team must be committed to achieving the team's objectives. Although it is not an easy task to arrive at a single definition of a team and teamwork, they are considered to be critical factors for project success, particularly in a project-based environment. In a projectized organization, the terms "team" and "teamwork" can refer to a wide range of possibilities, including quality circles, cross-functional teams, self-managing teams, virtual teams, or co-located teams. Developing effective teams is one of the primary responsibilities of every project manager who may be provided with varying degrees of autonomy; however, the form of teamwork depends on the task specificity. For instance, a distinctive feature of teamwork on the construction line is that it features successive work actions to assemble and erect different parts of a building structure. Alternatively, where the goal is to improve the project process, teamwork is much more about complexity, communication, and integrative work (Mitropoulos & Cupido, 2009; O'Leary-Kelly, Martocchio, & Frink, 994; Project Management Institute, 2013; Geoghegan & Dulewicz, 2008).

It is difficult figuring out the precise conditions for effective teamwork, primarily because different types of teamwork activities are considered to be effective or ineffective based on the work requirements and situations within which the tasks are placed (Stott & Walker, 1995). Despite this variety, there are particular general conditions that continually arise from the literature on teamwork. In this regard, Anantaraman (1984, p. 220) offered a condition for teamwork effectiveness and states that "an effective team would have clear, cooperative goals to which every member is committed; accurate and effective communication of ideas and feelings; distributed participation and leadership; appropriate and effective decision-making procedures; productive controversies; a high level of trust; constructive management power and conflict; and adequate problem-solving procedures."

In addition, attributes such as initiative, trust, openness, helpfulness, flexibility, and supportiveness have been stated to be effective characteristics in teamwork environments (Kinlaw, 1991; Stevens & Campion, 1994; Lundin & Soderholm 1995). Other research on teamwork effectiveness found that different teams are more productive when the team members accept and get along with different personalities (Culp & Smith, 2001), possess a high level of self-awareness (Moriarty & Buckley, 2003), and attain productive teamwork direction and cohesiveness (Williams & Duray, 2006). In temporary organizations, such as those in the construction industry, however, teams are mainly set up around the task or around some features of it and also restricted by a finite length of time. Accordingly, legitimizing the team membership for a specific duration and forming a commitment based upon the project or task objectives are two approaches whereby an effective team is formed (Lundin & Soderholm, 1995). In addition, Lundin and Soderholm discussed that a team in temporary organizations has two angles: first, the relationships among individuals and the team and, second, the relationship between the team and its environment. In this particular study, we placed our focus more on the former angle, because the study primarily aims to assess those variables that may come up with better relationships between individuals and the team for competent performance.

Since the team condition for effective teamwork has been observed to be a multi-dimensional construct in different studies (Anantaraman, 1984; Lundin & Soderholm, 1995; Molyneux, 2001; Stott & Walker, 1995; Thamhain, 1990; Williams & Duray, 2006; Parboteeah et al., 2015), Table 1 summarizes some of the criteria used to evaluate effective team conditions, within which the existence or absence of them contributes to making a great team, and have routinely emerged from other studies. However, most leaders acknowledge that the conditions of a team can affect overall group performance (Wang, Rode, Shi, Luo, & Chen, 2013). Therefore:

Hypothesis 1: The team condition of the construction teams is positively related to team performance.

Currently, due to rapid technological changes and the competitive global marketplace, organizations are required to accommodate different growing factors in service and production development. These underlying conditions are based on developing a teamwork environment with strong interpersonal relationships (Cordery, 2004). Accordingly, managers are required to adopt an effective set of roles and responsibilities (Arnold, Arad, Rhoades, & Drasgow, 2000) to lead teams. In this regard, a successful team leader combines the members' knowledge, skills, and abilities to obtain outputs that are superior to the individual outcomes (Milia & Birdi, 2010). Consequently, the team leader faces a range of challenges to balancing team actions and providing conditions within which the desired teamwork can be achieved (Hoegl & Gemuenden, 2001). In the Asian ethnical framework, there are few studies that have evaluated the influences of different types of leadership behavior in a team climate (Ishikawa, 2012; Li, Chun, Ashkanasy, & Ahlstrom, 2012). In this study, Ishikawa (2012) highlighted a positive relationship between transformational leadership and team conditions. Therefore:

Hypothesis 2: The team condition is positively related to the transformational leadership quality of the leader.

Leadership and the Construction Industry

The construction industry is one of the most dynamic and complex environments (Bresnen, 1990; Loosemore et al., 2003). The characteristics of this industry increase managerial concerns and present a challenging context for leadership trends (Bresnen, 1990; Fellows et al., 2002). From this perspective, a need for effective leadership and management practices is particularly apparent in the larger construction companies, where the focus is on managing the execution process and leading different teams throughout construction (Druker & White, 1995). Although leadership has long been recognized to be a success factor for many organizations, there aren't enough empirical studies to support an association between leadership behavior and overall success in project-based environments (Kissi, Dainty, & Tuuli, 2013; Müller, Geraldi, & Turner, 2012). More specifically, in the construction industry, management confronts major leadership challenges such as those relating to the workforce and addressing issues such as teamwork transition, communication, conflict, and interpersonal relationships (Toor & Ofori, 2007). According to Nixon, Harrington, and Parker (2012), one of the fundamental aspects of the leadership process in the industry is to delineate how people are working together in the form of teams. Leadership is, therefore, expected to be a supportive mechanism to influence the teams' abilities in objective achievements. Therefore, it appears to be important to evaluate aspects of leadership in terms of managing project teams. In this regard, leadership behavior, as a managerial competence, is considered to be a factor that influences individual and team performance in the workplace (Yang, Huang, & Wu, 2011). Although the leadership process-like all management studies-must be flexible to suit the situation, in most team settings, the leader must show integrity, enthusiasm, and consistency (Fryer, Ellis, Egbu, & Gorse, 2004). Surprisingly, Turner and Müller (2005) conducted a review on the leadership literature and asserted that due to the unique, novel, and transient nature of projects, leadership has been shown to have no impact on performance. In contrast, many other studies have been conducted on the roles of leadership behavior and their effects on the quality and success of construction projects (Naoum, 2011; Murphy & Ledwith, 2007; Yang 2011). For example, Naoum (2011) identified a number of situational and contextual factors that influence leadership and team behavior in the industry; consequently, there is some degree of controversy surrounding this topic in the literature. For that reason, this study is intended to develop further investigation to find if leadership has a considerable influence on work performance as well as the overall project outcomes in the industry. From the literature review, it also appears that appropriate leadership behavior can shape subordinates' performance in a desirable way and facilitate the smooth running of construction projects. Hence, even more research on the concept of leadership, the team condition, and team performance in the construction industry seems to be necessary.

Transformational Leadership

Based on the above statements, it is determined that leadership behavior continually plays an important role in team effectiveness and productivity (Amos & Klimoski, 2014). Leaders help the team breach boundaries to build relationships and support one another, scouting for the necessary information to accomplish objectives and achieve success (Murphy & Ensher, 2008). West et al. (2003) revealed that the leaders who clarify the purpose of the project to their team members increased the performance of the team. In particular, some scholars specified that features of the leadership style affect team performance (Bish & Kabanoff, 2014; Geoghegan & Dulewicz, 2008; Murphy & Ensher, 2008). In this regard, a transformational leader has been found to promote team effectiveness (Chi & Huang, 2014; Wang, Oh, Courtright, & Colbert, 2011). Transformational leaders are those who exhibit individualized consideration behavior and have the ability to influence the subordinate's favorable reaction, which accordingly results in the employee's high performance (Geoghegan & Dulewicz, 2008). Transformational leaders aim at transforming individuals to exceed beyond the status quo with the purpose of improving the ability to innovate and adapt in the team environment. Transformational leaders may also develop particular aspects of the teamwork process, such as conflict resolution, team communication, and cohesion (Dionne et al., 2004). For example, a leader with consideration behavior promotes both the official and non-official communication routes among team members, whereas a leader with transactional behavior develops only tight and official communication (Northouse, 2007). Therefore, transformational leadership may improve interpersonal relationships among team members and create better performance achievement (Geoghegan & Dulewicz, 2008). In this regard, preceding research has proposed that transformational leadership has a constructive influence on team performance (Chi & Huang, 2014). Therefore:

Hypothesis 3: The transformational leadership behavior of the team leader is positively related to team performance of the construction teams.

Numerous studies conducted in the domain of transformational leadership (Avolio, Bass, Jung, 1999; Bass & Avolio, 1997; Daft, 2005; Northouse, 2007) have addressed different aspects of measuring the quality of transformational leaders. In this study, the quality of transformational leadership from the team leaders was assessed using both the English and Malay translations of the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire-Form 5X (MLQ-Form 5X) (Bass & Avolio, 1997, Avolio et al., 1999). Twenty items extracted from the MLQ-Form 5X were used to evaluate transformational leadership, including Idealized Attributes (IA) (charisma), Idealized Behaviors (IB), Inspirational Motivation (IM), Intellectual Stimulation (IS), and Individualized Consideration (IC). The MLQ is a popular instrument, broadly applied to evaluate transformational leadership quality and "is considered the best validated measure of transformational and transactional leadership" (Ozaralli, 2003). Because there was no a priori expectation that the individual components of transformational leadership would differentially influence the relationship between team condition and team performance, the five single components of transformational leadership, which usually show high inter-correlations (Fu, Tsui, Liu, & Li, 2010; Yukl, 2002), were combined into one higher-order construct (Hambley, O'Neill, & Kline, 2007). A five-point Likert scale (ranging from "not at all" to "a very great extent") was also used to measure the quality of transformational leadership using the team members' perceptions.

This study, however, is based on Woodworth's (1928, cited in Baron & Kenny, 1986) S-O-R model, which identifies that an active organism intervenes between the stimulus and response, formulated the following mediation hypothesis.

Hypothesis 4: Transformational leadership has a mediating effect on the relationship between team condition and team performance.

Team Performance as the Ultimate Outcome Variable

Traditionally, an optimum performance environment seeks to elevate the individuals' impact on the business as well as the influence of inputs, procedures, methods, the physical environment, and tools and techniques that enhance the teams' triumphs (Ahadzie, Proverbs, & Olomolaiy et al., 2008). The American Heritage College Dictionary (2007) defines the term "perform" as "to fulfill an obligation or requirement; accomplish something as promised or expected." Although the true use of the term "performance" is firmly defined in the general project management body of knowledge, the terminology typically has several connotations relying on the context wherein it is implemented. Traditionally, the term has been used to depict the activities' outcomes and to determine an individual and/or a group that is being productive (Ahadzie et al., 2008). In the construction industry, as previously mentioned, the project teams shape the focus of project execution in the industry. Therefore, the dynamic evolving nature of construction activities necessitates that organizations acquire and/or develop different teams whenever a new project is carried out (Raiden & Dainty, 2006). Consequently, any procedures and practices that are appointed by the organization as a way to improve teamwork activities may deliver constructive effects on overall project performance. Nonetheless, the preceding research on teamwork has revealed that, typically, there is no specific standard measurement of performance effectiveness for team activities (Guzzo & Dickson, 1996). Hackman (1990) determined team performance based on three criteria: (1) the achievements of the team in connection with the quality of the task, the quantity, or amount of work and customer satisfaction; (2) the implications a team has on its members, relating to the specific team member's satisfaction with belonging to the team; and (3) the potential capability of members to interact with each other in forthcoming projects and the advancement of this capability. In 1999, based on the work of Hackman (1990), Hirst developed a set of questions to evaluate team performance in an R&D context. Consequently, his team performance-structured questionnaire scored features of team performance within a scale comprised of four items. Two items addressed whether or not the team had picked the appropriate course of action and strategies to fulfill project goals, and the other two items included whether or not the team had achieved goals and/or milestones and furnished guaranteed services to the stakeholders. The current study further developed the Hirst questionnaire by adding another item-team cohesiveness (Project Management Institute, 2013)-to evaluate team performance in construction companies. Accordingly, the team performance questionnaire consisted of 15 questions evaluating five items, which were adopted from Hirst (1999) and the PMBOK® Guide) - Fifth Edition (Project Management Institute, 2013). Sample items for this variable are:

"The teamwork has met the required standards."

"The team has chosen appropriate courses of action to meet project requirements."

"The team has developed innovative solutions to problems."

"The output of the team meets the required standard."

"The team has made sound technical decisions."

"The output of the team has met project expectations."

Since the study aims to find the relationship between team condition (which are the variables that could contribute to making a great team) and team performance, teams that have been selected were in the performing and/or adjourning stages (Rickards & Moger, 2000).

Research Methodology

This study proposes that the transformational leadership approach can be a useful intervening construct to understanding how the condition of a team influences team performance (Figure 1). The preceding research on transformational leadership in different industries outlined that the leader's ability to foster cooperative goals and motivate followers to attain such goals highly influences team performance (Bass, 1985). Alternatively, Hersey and Blanchard's situational theory (1974) emphasizes the different leadership styles of a leader based on a combination of task and relationship behaviors. Likewise, Northouse (2007) stated that "effective leaders are those who can change their own style based on the task requirements and the subordinates' needs, even in the middle of a project." Consequently, different team conditions may affect the transformational leadership behavior of the leader; that is, the leaders may show different leadership qualities through the different conditions of their teams. In projectized organizations, however, the condition of a team influences the team efficiency along with the overall project performance (O'Leary-Kelly et al., 1994; Mitropoulos & Cupido, 2009; Stott & Walker, 1995). Nevertheless, there is not enough work on the effect of transformational leadership on the relationship between the condition of the team and team performance, particularly in the construction industry. Hence, this study evaluates the theorized model by acquiring data from three different sources: Team members rated five aspects of their leader's transformational leadership behavior, including idealized attributes (charisma), idealized behaviors, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration; the team leaders evaluated the teams' conditions, and lastly, the supervisor of each team rated the team's performance based on the five items mentioned in the previous section. According to Zhang, Cao, and Tjosvold (2011), this data gathering method minimizes the threat of common method variance as an alternative explanation of results.

Figure 1: Hypothesized model.

The research applies PLS path modeling to assessing the hierarchical hypothesized model in Malaysian construction companies. For the purpose of data collection, three different sets of survey questionnaires were distributed among the respondents. The questionnaires were primarily based on the Likert Scale of five ordinal measures, ranging from one (1) to five (5) according to the level of importance. The team member questionnaire was comprised of three sections and assessed the respondents' backgrounds, the leadership styles of the leaders (adopted from Daft, 2005, and Northouse, 2007), and the transformational leadership qualities of the team director (MLF-Form 5X, Bass & Avolio, 1997 and Avolio et al., 1999). The team leader questionnaire consisted of two sections and evaluated the respondents' backgrounds and the attributes of team conditions (adopted from prior research such as Anantaraman, 1984; Stott & Walker, 1995; and Zhang et al., 2011). Lastly, the upper-level administration office questionnaire evaluated the team's performance, which was primarily adopted from Hirst (1999).

Sampling

The participants included 282 members from 94 construction project teams and their corresponding 94 team leaders, as well as 94 supervisors from the upper-level administrative office for each company at the headquarters level. The invitation letter to participate in this investigation was sent out to 800 (out of 3,000) large-sized construction companies registered as grade G7 contractors under the CIDB classification of Malaysia. At the end of a six-month period, 94 companies agreed to be investigated by the research officers. Five research officers were sent to companies in different locations in large cities in Malaysia-such as Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Terengganu, Johor Bahru, and Ipoh-to deliver the three sets of questionnaires to the relevant respondents and collect them for the purpose of data analysis. Three individuals were randomly selected from each team to evaluate the leadership style of the team leader/director to minimize bias in the evaluation. It is worth pointing out that the team was in the performing/adjourning stage and located at the headquarters of the companies. The size of each team ranged from 4 to 12, with an average size of 5.97 (SD = 2.11), and mainly consisted of the main professionals engaged in the management and administrative tasks of the projects. For all of the team members (excluding directors), 65.5% were female and 34.5% were male. The percentages of different races were Malay, 42.9; Chinese, 52.0; Indian, 4.4; and other races, 0.7%, respectively. In addition, the level of experience of team members in the construction industry shows that 45.5% had 1 to 5 years of experience and 39% had 6 to 10 years of experience in the industry. Regarding educational level, 70.2% had a bachelor's degree or higher, 25.4% had acquired a diploma from junior colleges, and 4.4% graduated from technical secondary schools. In contrast, 64.9% of the team leaders were male and 70.2% had 11 years or more experience in the industry. The percentages of different races for team leaders were as follows: Malay was 37.2%; Chinese, 59.6%; Indian, 1.1%; and other races were 2.1%, respectively. Regarding educational level: 85.2% had a bachelor's degree or higher, and the rest had graduated from junior colleges. The minimum sample size was checked and a reactive Monte Carlo analysis was performed (Chin, 1998). Accordingly, our sample size of 94 exceeded the recommended minimum of 54 deemed adequate for model testing (Green, 1991).

Addressing Endogeneity in the Model

It has been asserted that the problem of endogeneity can be caused by two reasons in a research model: (1) it may happen when any bidirectional relationship is predicted among some of the constructs in the model (Abdallah, Goergen, & O'Sullivan, 2015) and (2) there may be a few disregarded variables that could be also included in the controlled model in that the effect of x on y cannot be interpreted because it consists of omitted causes (Antonakis, Bendahan, Jacquart, & Lalive, 2010). Nonetheless, there are only limited studies that explicitly deal with endogeneity in PLS models (Lovaglio & Vittadini, 2013). Based on this limited research and the assertion on probable correlations among predictors and outcomes in the explanatory equations of the PLS model that can be affected by unmodeled components in the predictor blocks, this study removed those extra factors from the predictor blocks. Accordingly, extra factors have been fully incorporated into the proposed model, within which endogeneity bias has been eliminated (Lovaglio & Vittadini, 2013).

Data Analysis

To assess the hierarchical hypothesized model, Smart PLS was applied to determine the parameters of the model. In this case, PLS path modeling was used with a path-weighting scheme for inside approximation (Chin, 2010; Tenenhaus, Vinzi, Chatelin, & Lauro, 2005; Wetzels, Schroder, & Oppen, 2009). Afterward, nonparametric bootstrapping was applied with 500 replications to obtain the standard estimate errors (Chin, 2010). To evaluate the higher order latent variable, the method of repeated indicators was used as directed by Wold (1985), Lohmöller (1989), and Efron and Tibshirani (1993).

Team Condition Assessment

The study extends the existing research by conceptualizing the team condition as a hierarchical, reflective construct (Hulland, 1999) and examining its relationship with the quality of transformational leadership of the team leaders and team performance. It is proposed that the team condition-determined by evaluating how the six extracted attributes, including contribution, communication, responsibility and accountability, experimentation and creativity, conflict and competition, and interpersonal relationships (see Table 1)-affect team performance. Some sample questions were: "The team is prepared to air differences of opinion," "The team likes to dream up new ways of doing things," "Each team member is brought into discussions," "Conflicts are defused and difference reconciled," "Members communicate effectively with one another," "Members are open enough to deal with sensitive issues," "Members are open and honest with one another," "Members don't rest on their laurels, but constantly review the team's operation," and "Members work well together."

Each component of the team condition assessment, however, reflects a unique belief, whereas the set provides a solid foundation for hierarchical team condition modeling in a nomological network. Figure 2 illustrates the team condition assessment as a second order hierarchical-reflective latent variable-which is formed by connecting it to the block of underlying first order latent variables.

The degree of explained variance in this hierarchical construct was reflected in its components: Communication (57.3%), Conflict (63.7%), Contribution (32.5%), Creativity (59.1%), Interpersonal Relationships (52.7%), and Responsibility (38.9%, see Table 2). All of the path coefficients from the team condition assessment to its components were significant at P < 0.01. Here, the Composite Reliability (CR) and Average Variance Extracted (AVE) of the team condition were 0.895 and 0.554, respectively, which are above the cut-off values.

Figure 2: Team condition assessment as a second-order hierarchical model.

Transformational Leadership Quality

As noted earlier, Bass and Avolio (1997) and Avolio et al. (1999) identified five dimensions of transformational leadership: Idealized Attributes (IA) (charisma), Idealized Behaviors (IB), Inspirational Motivation (IM), Intellectual Stimulation (IS), and Individualized Consideration (IC). This research used both the English and Malay versions of the MLQ scale to measure transformational leadership. Sample items for this variable are: "My team leader shows conviction in the values"; "My team leader has a clear understanding of where we are going"; "My team leader listens carefully to the team members' concerns"; "My team leader provides appealing images about what we can do"; and, "My team leader provides coaching advice for the team members' development." The team members were asked to rate, on a five-point Likert scale (ranging from 1 = "Not at all" to 5 = "To a very great extent") the transformational leadership quality of the leaders. The data on transformational leadership were obtained at the individual team member's level and hence required aggregating, as the team shaped the unit of evaluation in this study. However, the aggregation needs to be validated by theoretical as well as empirical justifications (Rousseau, 1985). Whether leadership, as understood through team members, may be aggregated and used to rate transformational leadership qualities is a controversial question (Yammarino & Dansereau, 2008). According to Yammarino and Dansereau, although some schools of thought have contended that leadership perceptions are probably not shared among individual team members, other scholars have declared that the homogeneous perception of leadership quality could occur because a leader is likely to treat subordinates consistently. Moreover, interaction among team members facilitates the sharing and processing of information about the team director, which is likely to lead to the individuals' homogeneous perceptions of leadership quality within the team (Zhang et al., 2011). James, Demaree, and Wolf (1984) suggest the multi-item rWG(j), which is calculated as follows:

The r WG(j) index applies the Spear man-Brown prophecy formula to include the number of items in the calculation of within group agreement. Thus, J is the number of items in a measure and S ² k is the average variance of the J items in a group of k ratters. r WG(j) for transformational leadership is 0.971. Although there is some argument related to the 'cut-off' value r WG (Lance et al., 2006), these values are greater than the generally agreed upon 0.70 value. In addition, the percentage of r WG> 0.70 for the aggregated variable was computed and is 84%. Further analysis was performed, and there were no teams with a r WG lower than 0.50 across the construct.

Measurement Model Results

In order to examine the attributes of the measurement scales, a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was carried out as outlined by Chin (2010), to evaluate the reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity of the scales (Tables 3 and 4). Table 3 demonstrates the results of Common Method Variance (CMV). As shown in Table 3, the average variance extracted (AVE) for all constructs was more than 0.5 (Fornell & Larcker, 1981), and the composite reliability (CR) of the constructs was above 0.7 (Gefen, Straub, & Boudreau, 2000). As a result, CMV was not regarded to be a major concern in this research. As revealed in Table 3, the majority of the item loadings were greater than 0.7 and significant at 0.01. The communication items, however, showed the lowest CR of 0.795; nevertheless, all of the values were greater than the recommended standard thresholds. The results also confirmed the convergent validity due to the fact that all indicators loaded significantly greater on their hypothesized component compared with other factors (own construct loadings were greater than cross loadings; Chin, 2010). In addition, the square root of the AVE was computed and exhibited in Table 4 to assure that the discriminant validity was greater than the inter-correlations of the construct with the other constructs in the model (Chin, 2010; Fornell & Larcker, 1981); however, there was no correlation above 0.9 observed among the constructs (Chin, 2010). Thereby, the proposed model was identified to be satisfactory, with proof of sufficient reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity and authorized for testing the hypotheses and validating the research model.

Assessment of the Structural Model

The results in Table 5 present a standardized beta of 0.479 from the team condition to team performance, 0.414 from the team condition to transformational leadership, and 0.405 from transformational leadership to team performance. Therefore, support can be located for H1, H2, and H3.

Mediating Effects

The mediating influence of transformational leadership on the relationship between the team condition and team performance was analyzed and the results are shown in Figure 3. Prior to the analysis, the criteria for mediation analysis were set up as follows: first, team condition as the independent variable experienced a significant impact on the mediator (transformational leadership; H2); second, the mediator showed a considerable influence on the dependent variable (team performance; H3); and third, the independent variable (team condition) had a significant effect on the dependent variable in the absence of the influence of the mediator (H1).

To be able to establish the mediating effect, the indirect effect of a × b (see Figure 3) must be significant. The z statistic as suggested by Sobel (1982) was calculated, which was significant at p <0.05. According to Hair, Hut, Ringle, and Sarstedt (2014), if the z value exceeds 1.96 (p <0.05), then we will be able to accept H4; in other words, there is an indirect effect from the team condition through transformational leadership on team performance. The z value is formally defined as follows:

As shown in Figure 3, there was a significant effect from the team condition on transformational leadership (0.414, p <0.01) as well as from transformational leadership on team performance (0.405, p <0.01). The z value also surpasses 1.96 (p <0.05); thus, the ultimate result approves the mediating effect of transformational leadership on the relationship between team condition and team performance, which in turn signifies that it has an indirect influence on team performance.

To compute the dimension of the indirect effect, the variance accounted for (VAF) value was used, which signifies the ratio of the indirect effect to the total effect. The VAF value shows that 26% of the total effect of team condition on team performance is defined by the indirect effect of transformational leadership.

Figure 3: Results of H1-H4 testing.

Analysis of Goodness-of-Fit

Goodness-of-fit (GoF) is expected to work in order to figure out the overall fit of the model (Tenanhaus et al., 2005). GoF is the geometric mean of the average communality (outer measurement model) and the average R ² of the endogenous latent variables. GoF suggests an index for validating the PLS model globally and intends to seek a compromise between the performance of the measurement and the structural model (Chin, 2010). Because GoF is contingent mainly on average communality, the GoF index is conceptually appropriate whenever measurement models are reflective (Vinzi et al., 2010). Going after the directions of Chin (2010), Vinzi, Trinchera, and Amato (2010), and Wetzels et al. (2009), the GoF value was estimated. This value acted as a threshold value for the global validation of the PLS models. Accordingly, a GoF value of 0.5520 was obtained for the main model, which exceeded the threshold value of 0.36 for large R ² effect sizes. As a result, the conclusion can be that the model offers better detailing strength compared with the baseline values (= 0.1, = 0.25, = 0.36). This result also gives adequate support to validate the PLS model globally (Vinzi et al., 2010; Wetzels et al., 2009).

Discussion

The construction industry is perceived to be one of the most dynamic and complex industrial environments by expert researchers as well as practitioners. The nature of the industry, the varying demands of construction activities, and the complexity and dynamic nature of most of the procedures as well as the processes, require construction organizations to tackle project processes using teamwork. Accordingly, some of the important parameters of team condition assessment have been collected in this study from the existing literature and have been extended in the context of the construction team. The team condition assessment has been successfully framed as a second-order hierarchical construct, indicating that all dimensions have a significant impact upon the team condition. Thus, this study contributes theoretical support for the Anantaraman (1984), Stott and Walker (1995), Thamhain (1990), and Williams and Duray (2006) studies, which identified the parameters for this study in team condition assessment as a set of practices that lead to better team performance. In other words, contribution, communication, responsibility and accountability, experimentation and creativity, conflict and competition, and interpersonal relationships are the variables that highly contribute to achieving better team performance in the construction industry.

On the flip side, the literature shows that successful team leaders are those who are able to help their team members work cohesively and acquire the necessary support toward satisfying their personal necessities to perform proficiently. The literature also indicates that the industry presents a challenging environment for potent administration and leadership as a result of the dynamic and fast transforming organizational, project, and skill requirements. For that reason, it seems that team leaders will be able to improve the degree of teamwork achievements by implementing a relevant leadership style. In this particular study, transformational leadership has found to be a powerful tool used to promote efficiency in a teamwork environment. As outlined by situational theory, different team conditions may likely call for varying leadership behaviors from team leaders; because of this, the condition or the situation in which a team is performing may well affect the quality of the leadership style-specifically, the transformational leadership behavior of the leader.

In addition, efficacious performance and remarkable work outcomes from team members are always desired, but often fail to happen. Individuals typically react well merely to the most appropriate leadership styles and behavior. The best style, which should be outlined based on the condition whereby a leader manages the team, would lead the members toward being productive at work. As a result, different competencies in leadership style, specifically the transformational leadership behavior of the team leader, could possibly result in varying degrees of team performance in the industry. Referring to the above, the research generated and tested the model to be able to evaluate the effects of the transformational leadership quality of the team leaders on the relationship between team condition, defined as the environment that teams are performing in, and team performance. Through this study, the team leaders evaluated the team environment based on six extracted criteria from the literature (highlighted in Table 1); the team members scored their leader's transformational leadership behavior across five aspects incorporating IA, IB, IM, IS, and IC; and last, the supervisor of each team assessed the team performance across five related elements, primarily adopted from Hirst (1999).

Accordingly, the current research extends some of the vital elements necessary to evaluating team conditions in the context of construction teams, which are at the performing or adjourning stages, and generating a new model. This investigation further argues that there is no widely acknowledged definition of teams, much less team condition (Stott & Walker, 1995), and that team condition or the environment in which teams are performing is a context-dependent, multi-dimensional construct whose associated substantial dimensions depend upon the conditions, criteria, and circumstances placed in different industries (Anantaraman, 1984; Molyneux, 2001; Stott & Walker, 1995; Thamhain, 1990). Thus, understanding of distinct parameters in the team condition evaluation has confirmed the extent to which construction teams display better performance in team activities. The results indicate that among all of the dimensions of team condition, conflict, and competition (β = 0.798) is the most significant factor, followed by experimentation and creativity (β = 0.769), communication (β = 0.757), interpersonal relationships (β = 0.726), responsibility and accountability (β = 0.624), and the contribution and collaboration of team members (β = 0.570) in cases where evaluating the environment within which the construction teams are performing. The results of the study also show that experimentation and the creativity level of team members have positive effects on team performance (R ² = 0.591), which is in contrast to the findings of Hoegl and Parboteeah (2007) and in agreement with those of Kazemak (1991) and Stott and Walker (1995).

Additionally, this research has explored the distinct roles of the team condition, transformational leadership, and team performance in a nomological network; this role has not been put into practice adequately in the extant literature. The outcomes of the study also reveal that the team condition has a significant effect on the transformational leadership behavior of the team leaders (β = 0.414), which in turn has an influence on team performance (β = 0.405). In this interconnection, 26% of the influence of the team condition on team performance is mediated by the transformational leadership behavior of the leaders. This result implies that the transformational leadership behavior of team leaders, as a mediating variable, has a major role in the relationship between the environment and/ or condition in which the teams are working and team performance. In-line with this finding, it has also been validated that the team's condition comes with an essential, direct impact on team performance (β = 0.479), along with transformational leadership behavior (β = 0.405), and that both constructs explain 55.3% of the variance in team performance. For that reason, construction organizations tend to make much better conditions for teamwork activities in order to be able to have both a direct and an indirect influence (through transformational leadership practices) on team performance in construction works.

Since PLS is perceived to be better matched in dealing with complex interactions and relationships (Chin, 2010) and for the reason that it also has less needs regarding the sample size (Urbach & Ahlemann, 2010), the application of PLS path modeling has made it feasible to test and develop the theoretical contributions of this research. By employing the technique of repeated indicators proposed by Wold (1985) to be able to determine the higher order latent variable, this study has proven adequate dimension and structural outcomes for the proposed research model. This study signifies that team condition assessment is a second-order reflective construct that has a significant effect on the transformational leadership behavior of team leaders as well as team performance in a hierarchical model. The findings also confirm that the hierarchical reflective model with the mediating effects of transformational leadership can readily be predicted by using PLS path modeling. Thus, the successful application of PLS in this framework, along with the mediation effects, echoes Wold's idea (1985, pp. 589-590): "PLS comes to the fore in larger models, when the importance shifts from individual variables and parameters to packages of variables and aggregate parameters." This study has made significant contributions to knowledge and practice by proposing enhancements in team condition in the construction industry based on six criteria, including contribution, communication, responsibility and accountability, experimentation and creativity, conflict and competition, and interpersonal relationships, and provides a holistic view for team leaders when the goal is building productive teams. In addition, evaluating the hierarchical team condition construct, incorporating its effect on transformational leadership behavior, and assessing the impacts of both of these factors on team performance in construction teams are the other contributions of the study in both knowledge and practice. Since prior research has not frequently explored the relationship between team condition and the transformational leadership behavior of the leaders and their consequences on team performance, this study perhaps offers comprehensive understanding in teamwork-based practices in the construction industry. On the whole, this investigation presents a practical framework by means of clarifying the particular function of team building, transformational leadership, and team performance in the teams performing in the construction industry. Furthermore, the study reveals that transformational leadership has a mediating role on the relationship between team condition and the performance of teams. Likewise, the study offers an extensive theoretical contribution by featuring the research model in a new setting; that is, the team condition-transformational leadership based leader develops a team in the context of the construction industry. Corresponding to the statement by Whetten (1989, p. 493), that "the common element in advancing theory development by applying it in new settings is the need for a theoretical feedback loop... new applications should improve the tool, not merely reaffirm its utility, the current research is aimed at theoretical re-conceptualization and methodological validation for construction teams in general. The study evaluated six extracted attributes from the literature to measure the condition of construction teams and scored their share on teamwork performance from the team leader's point of view. The results indicate that all six attributes are vital to teamwork evaluation and relatively significant in facilitating team overall performance. In addition, the importance of the team condition refers to an adequate focus on team performance and the leadership behavior of leaders. The second-order perspective of teamwork features the demand for team leaders to build and develop their teams across all dimensions, because failing to attain one dimension may act as the basis to exhaust other dimensions.

Conclusion

In summary, the current study shows that the six extracted attributes used-to measure the condition of construction teams are positively related to their performance. In addition, the transformational leadership behavior of team leaders correlates in a positive direction with team performance across the criteria used in the analysis. Moreover, transformational leadership has a mediating relationship between the environments in which teams are performing and the overall team achievements. Accordingly, transformational leadership has an augmentation effect across individual-level contextual and team-level performance. Overall, the results support the belief that transformational leaders in the construction industry lead their teams to achieving higher levels of performance. We believe that our framework adds insights into a practical problem among the teams in construction organizations and can be a useful tool in clarifying the mechanisms linking team condition and team performance.

Limitations and Future Research Directions

This research has some limitations that present a direction for future study. This study was conducted within construction teams in Malaysia as a specific context; therefore, more research is required to determine how accurate the findings of this research are in other countries as well as in other industries. Furthermore, effective variables that might help clarify the predictive power of the model should be investigated in future research. Although the present research model explains 55.3% of the variance in team performance, it is probable that team efficiency could be further enhanced by integrating other additional constructs, such as trust among team members in temporary organizations, which has been also highlighted by Chou, Lin, Chang, and Chuang (2013).

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge Universiti Sains Malaysia for providing the RUI Grant No. 1001/PPBGN/816283 as financial support to conduct the research.

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Vinzi, V. E., Trinchera, L., & Amato, S. (2010). PLS path modeling: From foundations to recent developments and open issues for model assessment and improvement. In V. E. Vinzi, W. W. Chin, J. Henseler & H. Wang (Eds.), Handbook of partial least squares: Concepts, methods and application. New York, NY: Springer.

Wang, G., Oh, I.-S., Courtright, S. H., & Colbert, A. E. (2011). Transformational leadership and performance across criteria and levels: A meta-analytic review of 25 years of research. Group & Organization Management, 36(2), 223-270.

Wang, P., Rode, J. C., Shi, K., Luo, Z., & Chen, W. (2013). A workgroup climate perspective on the relationships among transformational leadership, workgroup diversity, and employee creativity. Group & Organization Management, 38(3), 334-360.

West, M. A., Borrill, C. S., Dawson, J. F., Brodbeck, F., Shapiro, & Haward, B. (2003). Leadership clarity and team innovation in health care. The Leadership Quarterly, 14, 393-410.

Wetzels, M., Schroder, G. O., & Oppen, V. C. (2009). Using PLS path modeling for assessing hierarchical construct models: Guidelines and empirical illustration. MIS Quarterly, 33(1), 177-195.

Whetten, D. A. (1989). What constitutes a theoretical contribution. Academy of Management Review, 14(4), 490-495.

Williams, E. A., & Duray, R. (2006). Teamwork orientation, group cohesiveness, and student learning: A study of the use of teams in online distance education. Journal of Management Education, 30(4), 592-616.

Wold, H. (1985). Partial least squares. In S. Kotz & N. L. Johnson (Eds.), Encyclopedia of statistical sciences. New York, NY: Wiley.

Yammarino, F. J., & Dansereau, F. (2008). Multi-level nature of and multi-level approaches to leadership. The Leadership Quarterly, 19, 135-141.

Yang, L. R., Huang, C. F., & Wu, K. S. (2011). The association among project manager's leadership style, teamwork and project success. International Journal of Project Management, 29(3), 258-267.

Yukl, G. (2002). Leadership in organizations (5th ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

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Amin Akhavan Tabassi, PhD, PMP, earned his PhD in Project Management from Universiti Sains Malaysia and is a senior lecturer at the School of Housing, Building and Planning, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia. Dr. Tabassi is also an honorary lecturer at the University of Liverpool, Liverpool, England. He can be contacted at akhavan.ta@gmail.com

Kamand M. Roufechaei earned her PhD in Project Management from Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia. She can be contacted at kamand84@gmail.com

Abu Hassan Abu Bakar earned his PhD in Building Management from University College London, England. He is a Professor at the School of Housing, Building and Planning, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia. He can be contacted at abhassan@usm.my

Nor'Aini Yusof earned her PhD in Housing from Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia. She is a Professor in the Architecture Department, College of Architecture and Design, Effat University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and in the School of Housing, Building and Planning, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Penang, Malaysia. She can be contacted at ynoraini@usm.my or noyusof@effatuniversity.edu.sa

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Linking Team and Team Performance: A Transformational Leadership Approach

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Because project teams in the construction industry shape the primary focus of the industry's project life cycle, a high-performance construction workplace facilitates employees' technical and innovation skills through team development. Drawing on the current research in general teamwork and leadership, this study, from a theoretical perspective, extends the team condition as a hierarchical construct, incorporating six associated components.

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Principals and Student Achievement: What the Research Says

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Principals and Student Achievement: What the Research Says

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Kathleen Cotton

Cotton outlines the characteristics, actions or traits that produce the greatest increases in student achievement. As Morzano says, everything works, so we must implement those things which make the greatest impact. Cotton's list helps to guide young leaders to make the decisions with these ideal in mind.

Cotton, K. (2003). Principals and student achievement: What the research says. ASCD.

Available at: https://www.amazon.com/Principals-Student-Achievement-What-Research/dp/087120827X

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Tranformational and Servant Leadership Styles

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Tranformational and Servant Leadership Styles

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A educational leader who can achieve a balance between being a servant leader and a transformational leader would truly be an effective one!

Sinek, S. (2009). Start with why: How great leaders inspire everyone to take action. Penguin.

Sergiovanni, T. J. (1993). Frames of Leadership. International Journal of Educational Reform, 2(1), 19-26.

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Created by https://www.renderforest.com by Tiffany Maher.

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Empowering and Inspiring followers is key to achieving long-term success in any institution.

Simon Sinek says, “As it turns out, all the great inspiring leaders and organizations in the world, whether it’s Apple or Martin Luther King, Jr. or the Wright brothers, they all think, act and communicate the exact same way. And it’s the complete opposite to everyone else."

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Last updated: 4 March 2020

>> Pssst! Want to discover insider secrets from some of the most dynamic and inspirational leaders and entrepreneurs? Join our Leader's Edge 14-day free trial to receive practical tools on how to be a leader, run a business and live a successful, fulfilling life!

Love inspiring Ted Talks on leadership? So do we!

That's why we put together this list of our crème de la crème TED Talks on leadership.

So next time you're needing a little boost, take a 20-minute break to listen to one of these and learn from some of the most forward-thinking and innovative experts to discover what's given them their little-known edge.

With more than 29 million views, Simon Sinek is now on the A-List of leadership gurus, after he gave this incredible talk.

As Sinek himself says, "As it turns out, all the great inspiring leaders and organizations in the world, whether it's Apple or Martin Luther King, Jr. or the Wright brothers, they all think, act and communicate the exact same way. And it's the complete opposite to everyone else. All I did was codify it, and it's probably the world's simplest idea. I call it the Golden Circle."

For Sinek, the difference between these inspirational leaders and everyone else is they start with "why," which is the core concept of his Golden Circle. By asking why, how and what, you can set yourself on a trajectory of tremendous success that, statistically speaking, very few people attain.

To be an effective leader, you need to know what makes people "tick," and especially what motivates them in the workplace to give you their best. Interestingly enough, money only takes you so far.

In this compelling video -which has clocked over 13 million views - Pink (author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us) untangles the web of motivation in a way that makes sense for leaders. Here's a hint: traditional rewards aren't always as motivating as we think.

Sandberg left Google to become Facebook's COO in 2008. In this video, she looks at why so few women make it to the C-suite, and offers up three important pieces of advice to women who want to buck the trend and get there. The key, in Sandberg's view, is ensuring women remain in the workforce.

As it turns out, having more women remain in the workforce has other positive benefits on society and households, such as equal earning and equal responsibility between partners. As Sandberg notes, households that demonstrate this equality also have half the divorce rate.

To be a successful leader, what better place to start than by defining exactly what you mean by success? The man affectionately known as "Coach" redefines success to be much more than merely winning. Coach James Wooden explains this difference with profound simplicity, and urges everyone to pursue the best in themselves. The Coach's 17-minute talk is uplifting as much as it is inspiring.

Dan Ariely is a behavioral economist who has gained a deeper understanding of human motivation than most economists could ever hope for. He even designed experiments that would help solve the mystery of motivation, which is what this video is all about.

As it turns out, money isn't the only thing that motivates us to work. It isn't exactly joy, either. The real motivation for going to work every day is to make constant progress and lead a life of purpose. Strong leaders care about the bottom line, but are about much more than that. They have a sense of purpose, and get out of bed every single day to fulfill it.

Simon Sinek's material is so good that he's the only one to appear twice on this list. You know building trust among your followers is important, but actually doing it is another thing entirely.

Sinek's video on the topic will take your understanding of trust to a whole new level. After all, humans are emotional species who struggle with insecurities and vulnerabilities. A good leader brings his or her employees into a circle of trust. This is especially important in today's economy, where jobs are destroyed as fast as they are created. Leaders have a responsibility to make their workers feel safe.

When it comes to forming your dream team, the last thing you should do is surround yourself with what Heffernan calls "echo chambers" who only tell you what they think you want to hear. Mastering the art of disagreement is essential to effective leadership. Leaders must also be willing to cope with others disagreeing with them. Only through disagreement are ideas challenged.

Hefferman outlines a rubric for avoiding echo chambers and allowing ourselves to experience what she calls constructive conflict.
"So what does that kind of constructive conflict require? Well, first of all, it requires that we find people who are very different from ourselves. That means we have to resist the neurobiological drive, which means that we really prefer people mostly like ourselves, and it means we have to seek out people with different backgrounds, different disciplines, different ways of thinking and different experience, and find ways to engage with them. That requires a lot of patience and a lot of energy."
You've no doubt heard leadership described through the metaphor of conducting an orchestra. Itay Talgam operationalizes that metaphor by sharing what leaders can learn from 6 different 20th-century conductors. Don't worry, this TED Talk requires no formal background (or interest) in the symphony.

Talgam describes the "magical moment" when a conductor turns chaos into blissful music. It's a very small gesture, "not very pomp, not very sophisticated." And suddenly, out of the chaos, noise becomes music.

Everyone knows that a staggering number of people are disengaged from their work. Yves Morieux argues that our reaction to the unfathomable complexity of modern work has a lot to do with that disengagement. Traditional organizational management certainly doesn't help, either. His antidote includes 6 refreshing ways to engage in what he calls "smart simplicity." The first rule is understand what your colleagues actually do. This is especially important for business leaders if they wish to simply the workplace and boost employee engagement.

Roselinde Torres has developed a deep understanding of what makes leaders effective. She poses 3 laser-like questions that will spur your own thinking on what it takes to be a great leader.

In a world filled with executive leadership programs and expensive seminars, Torres argues the best way to learn leadership might be right under your nose. Torres' 9-minute talk is candid and to the point.

His book, Purpose-Driven Life, has sold more than 30 million copies. The church he pastors, Saddleback Church, has more than 22,000 members. Clearly, Rick Warren understands a few things about leadership.

This video is an intimate presentation of his own thoughts and crises around leadership. For anyone who's ever looked at their existence and said, "There's got to be more to life than this" will certainly find solace in Warren's 21-minute talk.

Stanley McChrystal is a 4-star general who spent decades in the military. What he gleaned about leadership that can build a shared sense of purpose among an incredibly diverse set of followers boils down to how well you listen and learn, as well as how you position failure.

McChrystal's view of leadership can be summarized with the following quote:
"[A] leader isn't good because they're right; they're good because they're willing to learn and to trust. This isn't easy stuff."
Making toast is simple, right? But what happens when someone asks you to draw how you make toast? Suddenly things get interesting, and complicated.

This simple exercise reveals much about leading solutions to complex problems. Tom Wujec invites listeners to run the exercise themselves while explaining what he's learned from observing thousands of people draw toast. From this talk, leaders will learn some important truths about how to handle real-world challenges.

Drew Dudley's whole approach is to make sure everyone understands how to bring out the leader within. Too many people think great leadership is reserved for extraordinary people.

His humorous take will remind you of all the little things leaders do each day. Leadership may be self-taught, but certainly isn't reserved to a special segment of society. Dudley reminds us that leadership is an everyday act that should be celebrated.

It's easy to think that as a species we have evolved far beyond the days of tribalism, but management consultant David Logan argues that effective leaders understand the 5 kinds of tribes that still crop up naturally in nearly any setting. Logan's talk takes you through the 5 tribes, or stages, beginning with "Life sucks" and ending with "Life is great."

If you missed the opening line of this article, Fields Wicker-Miurin will remind you that leadership is self-taught. People who are looking for the holy grail leadership manual will wait forever in vain.

Leadership comes from within, but that shouldn't stop you from developing the qualities that people admire in a great leader. Instead of looking for a how-to manual, learn the inspiring story of a local leader in your community. They're not as far away or elusive as you might think.

Leaders may be workaholics, but they also value work-life balance. That's Nigel Marsh's main thrust in this 2010 talk. Marsh shows you how to share a balance lifestyle between family, personal time and productivity. He also drops some inspiration from his books Fit, Fifty, and Fired Up and Overworked and Underlaid (yes, he has a great sense of humor).

Achieving an ideal work-life balance may seem like a jigsaw puzzle, but isn't nearly as hard as our productivity-obsessed culture makes it out to be. Through small changes, you can have a big impact on work, relationships and life in general.

Successful consultant-turned-teacher Angela Lee Duckworth reminds us that success requires hard work and grit. While this is nothing we don't know, why are these characteristics so difficult to apply? As Duckworth says, "as much as talent counts, effort counts twice."

Duckworth's quick talk is an essential listen for anyone getting suckered into taking shortcuts. As it turns out, all the old adages about success and hard work are true.

The ability to move others through motivational speech is one of the greatest qualities of a true leader. Author and CEO Nancy Duarte gets it, and that's why she developed this 18-minute talk to help aspiring leaders take their presentation skills to the next level.

Duarte dissects the speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Steve Jobs to uncover the essential qualities of a great presentation. If leadership is your passion, be prepared to spend a lot of time talking in front of people.

Don't let the name of this short TED Talk fool you - Derek Sivers isn't calling for revolution or political anarchy. Using interesting footage, Sivers shows you how surprisingly easy it is to start a movement. As they say, it takes two to tango. That's all that's needed for leaders to inspire a movement.

"Sitting has become the smoking of our generation." - Nilofer Merchant

In her TED Talk, business innovator Nilofer Merchant offers a simple message about the importance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Leaders spend a lot of time in meetings. Merchant suggests you turn your next one-on-one meeting into a "walking meeting." Not only do you hit two birds with one stone - by meeting and elevating your heart rate - the simple act of walking allows your ideas to flow much better than they otherwise would sitting in a cramped office.

Africa has struggled to live up to its development goals, and its leaders are to blame, says TED Fellow and founder of the African Leadership Network Fred Swaniker.

Having lived throughout Africa, Swaniker highlights the vital role true leaders play in building a society, and what can happen in their absence. Swaniker's description of the next great African leaders is anybody who wants to make a difference in their society, especially where strong institutions are lacking.

It's generally assumed we have to work to be happy, but what if we have it backwards? That's the argument psychologist and CEO Shawn Achor makes in this 2012 talk. Achor says we need to be happy independently of work, and only then will we be able to increase productivity and success in the workplace.

Searching for happiness in the workplace can be a deep rabbit hole that often leads to less happiness overall. This is an important message for leaders, who seek to inspire other people in their line of work. It just so happens that developing happiness outside the 9-5 hours is the most important for our health and success.

You don't have to be a teacher to appreciate Linda Cliatt-Wayman's inspirational talk about her time as principal at a failing school in Philadelphia. It didn't take long for her to realize that leadership was more than just "laying down the law." We won't spoil it for you, but let's just say she managed to turn around her struggling school. There were 3 key principles that helped her get there.

If the title of Tim Harford's TED Talk doesn't pique your interest, nothing will. Harford, an economics writer who studies complex systems, talks about the importance of trial and error in achieving success. Except he doesn't just "talk" about it, but presents the findings of his studies on complex systems.

As the title suggests, Harford's talk centres on the concept of a God complex - refusing to admit the possibility of being wrong regardless of the complexity of the situation - and the importance of trial and error in achieving better results. Go down the list, virtually every successful business leader used trial and error to perfect their craft.

"The greatest originals are the ones who fail the most, because they're the ones who try the most." - Adam Grant

Suffice it to say, all aspiring leaders want to be recognized for their creativity and originality. While creativity often lies within, psychologist Adam Grant studies the lives of "originals" - thinkers whose ideas transform the world. Over the course of 15 minutes, Grant explains the unexpected habits of original thinkers, and their fearlessness in the face of failure.

Fear of failure is one of the biggest inhibitors to success in all of life's endeavors. While never easy, leaders must learn to overcome that fear. Studying the habits of original thinkers will teach aspiring leaders they "need a lot of bad ideas in order to get a few good ones."

Four years and more than 38 million views later, Amy Cuddy's powerful TED Talk has resonated with many aspiring leaders. As a social psychologist, Cuddy explains how "power posing" - showcasing a posture of confidence even when you don't feel confident - can affect your brain chemistry and move you to positive action.

While some of the findings presented in the study are controversial among social scientists, Cuddy's talk is a great reminder of the importance of projecting confidence in every situation. Whether that holds up to tests of academic rigor are less important.

If you think the answer to Seth Godin's talk is "social media," try again. This TED Talk took place back in 2007, a few years before social media became as ubiquitous as it is today. As a leader, getting your ideas to spread requires more than just a Twitter handle. Godin, himself an author and marketing guru, explains the importance of standing out, and why even the craziest ideas can become the most successful ones.

Analyst and bestselling author, Richard St. John, managed to condense 7 years of interviews into an unforgettable 3-minute presentation about what it takes to be truly successful. Believe us, nobody is as cognizant of your time as St. John. This 3-minute talk is normally presented as a 2-hour presentation to high school students.

No list of inspiring TED Talks is complete without Tony Robbins, the globally renowned life success coach who has spent decades helping people achieve their dreams. Robbins shattered many preconceived notions about his work a mere 36 seconds into his presentation.
"I'm not here to motivate you, you don't need that, obviously. Often that's what people think I do, and it's the furthest thing from it. What happens, though, is people say to me, 'I don't need any motivation.' But that's not what I do. I'm the 'why' guy. I want to know why you do what you do."
He then goes into detail explaining the "invisible forces" that make us do the things we do. He also high-fives Al Gore in the front row. With more than 18 million views, Robbins' TED appearance is one of the most popular.

There you have it. More than 8 hours of pure leadership inspiration to help turn you into the type of leader others admire, respect and want to follow.

>>To discover more invaluable leadership lessons from some of the most successful and inspirational leaders and leadership experts, become a Leader's Edge monthly member to receive practical tools on how to be a leader, run a business and live a successful, fulfilling life! Hurry, join now to take advantage of our 14-day FREE trial!
Inspiring Leadership Now
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30 Of The Best TED Talks On Leadership That Every Great Leader Should Watch - 2nd Edition

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Love inspiring Ted Talks on leadership? So do we! That's why we put together this list of our crème de la crème TED Talks on leadership. So next time you're needing a little boost, take a 20-minute break to listen to one of these and learn from some of the most forward-thinking and innovative experts to discover what's given them their little-known edge.

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High Impact Team & Leadership Development Activities

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High Impact Team & Leadership Development Activities

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Written by Tom Heck, the following article contains activities to put teamwork and leadership theories into action.

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"Leadership is having a vision, being able to articulate that so that the people around you can understand it." - Steve Jobs

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Young Steve Jobs on how to hire, manage, and lead people - MUST WATCH

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How Steve Jobs managed people, led people, gave people a common vision, hired insanely great people, and how he avoided "professionals." * Join my BELIEVE newsletter: http://www.evancarmichael.com/newsletter/ ENGAGE * Subscribe to my channel: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=Modelingthemasters * Leave a comment, thumbs up the video (please!)

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Duke University's James A. Joseph explains the leadership curriculum developed at Duke that is based on Nelson Mendela's leadership style.
Dr. Joseph describes that Nelson Mendela was not an example of how a leader should act, he was instead an example of what a leader should be.

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Executive Summary

In chaotic times like these, an executive's instinct may be to strive for greater efficiency by tightening control. At least two companies, CSC Germany and ANADIGICS, have done the opposite-to impressive effect.

In chaotic times, an executive's instinct may be to strive for greater efficiency by tightening control. But the truth is that relinquishing authority and giving employees considerable autonomy can boost innovation and success at knowledge firms, even during crises. Our research provides hard evidence that leaders who give in to the urge to clamp down can end up doing their companies a serious disservice.

Although business thinkers have long proposed that companies can engage workers and stimulate innovation by abdicating control-establishing nonhierarchical teams that focus on various issues and allowing those teams to make most of the company's decisions-guidance on implementing such a policy is lacking. So is evidence of its consequences. Indeed, companies that actually practice abdication of control are rare. Two of them, however, compellingly demonstrate that if it's implemented properly, this counterintuitive idea can dramatically improve results.

In response to poor financial performance in 2007, CSC Germany, a division of the $17 billion worldwide IT consulting and services firm, at first took the usual approach of increasing control and efficiency. The result was a further decline. When the division's leaders did the opposite-relaxed control and gave employees the freedom to do things as they saw fit-the outcome was resounding success.

Responding to an initiative by its parent company to rethink management practices, CSC Germany experimented with a no-control approach within the 60-employee Enterprise Content Management (ECM) unit. To encourage the development of a knowledge culture, the division began using peer group supervision and relying on in-house coaches to do both one-on-one and team coaching at all levels. The results were so impressive that CSC Germany took the approach to its 34-employee IT Architecture Consulting unit.

In April 2009 ECM's revenue, after dipping in December 2008, rose sharply and continued upward. IT Architecture Consulting, which had been performing poorly, showed marked improvement on a productivity measure known as utilization in the months after control was relaxed. CSC is moving to spread this new management style across more of its divisions.

The telecom-component supplier ANADIGICS took the no-control approach nearly a decade earlier. The $250 million company had found that its centralized, authority-driven structure couldn't respond to the fast-moving industry's challenges and opportunities. In 1998 Bami Bastani (who contributed to the preparation of this article), then ANADIGICS's new CEO, distributed authority to employees on the basis of their ability to respond to changes in the market, so that they could make speedy decisions. Within two years revenue had doubled and the company reached solid profitability, with quarterly gross margins improving to more than 50%.

Subsequently, high tech suffered a severe downturn from 2000 through 2005. Downturns create an even greater need for innovation in products, behaviors, and organizational structures-and thus an opportunity for the no-authority approach. ANADIGICS employees focused their energies on 3G wireless technology and thus positioned themselves well to emerge from the downturn. When the sector revived, the company achieved growth for 13 consecutive quarters, through mid-2008.

CSC Germany and ANADIGICS are more than just a pair of outlier data points. Their experiences lend credence to the notion that companies reliant on knowledge and innovation should abandon the traditional structure in which decision rights are reserved for people at the top.

Furthermore, we've found that contrary to what many CEOs assume, leadership is not really about delegating tasks and monitoring results; it is about imbuing the entire workforce with a sense of responsibility for the business. This applies mainly to knowledge organizations, but even production-oriented companies can benefit from having employees who feel more empowered and engaged.

If abdication of authority is to yield value for the corporation, however, individuals must be self-motivated. CSC Germany does this by allowing employees to work on the one of five topics that best utilizes their talents and excites their interest. This involves joining a topic community, such as the one focusing on strategy and innovation. Issues are discussed in these groups until all participants come to an agreement, and leadership within the groups shifts frequently, settling on individuals who have the most competence in the areas of focus and are accepted by others as leaders.

We call such practices "mutualism." It involves measuring workers not against revenue or other numerical goals, which we have observed to be ineffective as motivational tools, but against qualitative values such as trust, responsibility, and innovation. And it implies that leaders don't dictate vision or strategy; instead, they enable employees to create a common vision through, for example, off-sites for discussion of strategic issues and regular feedback and education. Hitting numerical goals has been the natural outcome.

Relaxation of control can benefit any knowledge company, but particularly in certain circumstances: when the organization begins to miss opportunities because it can't understand or respond to market demands; when work is impaired because employees feel excessively pressured and harbor dissatisfaction; and when crises imperil the business. Then mutualism is the best way to unleash the power of employees' creativity.

A version of this article appeared in the December 2009 issue of Harvard Business Review.

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To Be a Better Leader, Give Up Authority

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In chaotic times, an executive's instinct may be to strive for greater efficiency by tightening control. But the truth is that relinquishing authority and giving employees considerable autonomy can boost innovation and success at knowledge firms, even during crises. Our research provides hard evidence that leaders who give in to the urge to clamp down [...]

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Lambert, L. (2002). A framework for shared leadership. Educational leadership, 59(8), 37-40.