Las familias y su desarrollo desde la perspectiva de género

This section discusses the method of the application of the shared leadership used for the pilot study and the results gathered from the pilot study in a university setting.

Method discussion

Bass TMLQ and the shared leadership research instrument were applied and evaluated through a social network analysis method on three teams with three members in each team. Two samples were taken with an interval of three months between the samples to see how the values for the TMLQ and shared leadership evolved. The teams were coached on leadership and course topics between the two samples. Using the TMLQ and comparing the values with normative values seemed to be suitable methods. Since the teams were newly established, the teams were expected go through the storming, norming, and performing phases (Tuckman, 1965; Lee, 2008). The values of the transformational and transactional leadership attributes at the beginning of the project and at the end of the project were expected to change. Therefore, capturing these values via the TMLQ with two samples seemed to be a suitable method. A standard method for evaluating shared leadership behaviour and competencies is a social network analysis (SNA), which is a suitable tool to depict power and the relations in teams. However, the team size of each team was three; this is rather low for a self-organising team, which usually has a team size of six to nine members (Schwaber, 2008). Because of the small

team size, the social network approach to investigate shared leadership could deliver high values for shared leadership since the tasks are not as distributed as they are likely to be in larger networks. This might be indicated in the high shared leadership values for coordination, communication, and teamwork. With teams of three, the density and the links per member (links/member) are rather low because of the small team size, and they are not as meaningful as they are in larger networks where the team members have more connections to the other members in the team. As a suggestion and improvement for further applications of a social network analysis (SNA) in a shared leadership context, teams with a larger team size should be considered to gather more meaningful results. Even though each team in the pilot consisted of no more than three members, the leadership behaviour in the team is vulnerable and cross- pressured since there is more than one leader influencing the other, which subsequently influences the overall team leadership behaviour (Balkundi and Kilduff, 2006). Nevertheless, social network analysis appears to be a useful method for enhancing the understanding of how shared leadership is executed in self-organising teams.

The presentation of the shared leadership data as described by Pearce and Conger (2003) and Pastor and Mayo (2002) and the concept of depicting the results in quadrants of low shared leadership, shared leadership, leadership avoidance, and vertical leadership are useful to obtain a ready overview of a team’s shared leadership behaviour.

Result and Discussion

For all the three evaluated teams, the values of the shared leadership attribute decision making are in the quadrant of low shared leadership. For one team, the shared leadership competence of vision/coordination increased to the shared leadership level for the second sample. For the other teams, the shared leadership behaviour (except decision making) of the teams remained at the shared leadership level for both samples. It is not surprising that all three teams showed shared leadership behaviour for communication, coordination, and teamwork because the team members had previously worked and learned together during other courses at the university. A crucial part of self-organising teams is the decision-making competence. To have an effective team, the decision-making process should be shared, and the decisions should be made collectively (Moe et al., 2012).

The core of a shared decision-making process is consensus building. The team members must share their knowledge and views, they must find an agreement, and they need to decide on actions (Bergman et al., 2012). Finding an agreement among the members of the team that

serves the team goal is a necessary condition for a good decision-making process (West, 2012). The results suggest that the teams were not able to undertake shared decisions, and the decisions were made by specific individuals in the team. A possible reason why decision making was on the low shared leadership level was the ad hoc setting of the teams; further, the teams only had a little time (three months) to build trust with the team members, which would enable shared decision-making leadership to emerge in the team. Moreover, since the study was undertaken in a university setting, the students were usually accustomed to the instructor of the course making the decisions; usually, the students only executed the instructor’s decisions. Since the different team members were forced to take over the decision-making function, this might have led to a low value for the decision-making attribute. Additionally, since the groups were formed ad hoc and had to go through the whole team building process, it could be the case that the teams had never left the storming phase (Tuckman, 1965; Lee, 2008).

It might be not surprising that the TMLQ results showed high MBEA values for all the three teams because the teams were graded for the project outcome by the instructor of the course. It is interesting to note that for two teams, the values of INSP and IS were rather high, which could be explained by the fact that the teams were forced to define their research project, and that they had defined the team goal that inspired and stimulated the intellectual behaviour attribute of the team. For the mixed-gender team, all the transformational values were below the normative values. In a self-organising team, team members take over leadership according to the tasks that the team had defined on their own. This taking over of leadership has a motivational effect when the path to the goal becomes clear. In most of the cases, this journey through the path is done by removing obstacles; further, the person currently in charge of the leadership tasks coaches the other team members. This resonates with the path-goal leadership theory, which suggests that leaders in conventional settings should clarify the path to the goal and remove obstacles to goal achievement (Evans, 1970; House, 1971; Northouse, 2011). While working with the mixed team, it became visible that there was one strong character who tried to lead the team, which influenced the decision-making process of the team. According to Zaccaro et al. (2001), strong leaders generate a cognitive conflict with and among team members about the ideas and the way forward. While such conflicts can be constructive, they can slow down the decision-making process. This could explain the decrease in the shared decision-making competence of the mixed team. By using SNA to examine the team behaviour with only three team members, the results reflected the team behaviour very well and reflected the shared leadership competency of the team. The team

with the lowest transformational leadership values exhibited diverse shared leadership competencies. The teams with high transformational leadership values seemed to exhibit high shared leadership values as well.