The Role of Group Affective Tone in Shaping Outcomes of Team-Focused Leadership

This dissertation presents an analytical framework based on the processes of social identification
and self-categorization as mechanisms through which team-focused leadership and group affective tone
separately and jointly contribute to team outcomes at both the team and team member levels A review of
relevant literature supported the development of the research hypotheses The hypotheses were tested using
multilevel structural equation modeling and single level path analysis to tease out significant effects of
team leadership and affective processes in teams
The results of single level path analyses demonstrated that leaders and team members contribute to
the affective tone of a team through the sharing of emotions and processes of emotional contagion and
norms of emotional expression via identification and self-categorization processes Both individual leaders
(vertical team-focused leadership) and team members sharing in leadership processes (shared team-focused
leadership) were found to distinctly contribute to group affective tone and the important team outcomes of
team performance, creativity, trust, team member engagement, team member identification, and team
member citizenship behaviors The results further demonstrated that the affective tone of a team (group
affective tone) has direct effects on team member outcomes, and mediates direct effects on outcomes of
team-focused leadership Group affective tone was found to mediate the effects of both vertical and shared
team-focused leadership on team member engagement, identification, citizenship behaviors, and team trust The results are relevant to both researchers interested in studying leadership and affective
processes in teams and to management practitioners interested in understanding contributions to team
effectiveness The consideration of both team-focused leadership and the affective tone of a team matter in
team effectiveness The emotional climate of a team appears to be important to team member outcomes
more so than team-level outcomes Therefore, what managers consider to be important indicators of team
effectiveness (either team-level or team member-level) determine the actions of a manager to monitor and
strengthen the positive affective tone of a team Limitations are discussed and future research directions are
provided to extend the observations of this study