The role of leadership in shared mental model convergence and team performance improvement: An agent-based computational model

Leadership theory and research in the new millennium: Current theoretical trends and changing perspectives

“…Computational models have been employed to understand how interactive processes among intrapersonal variables affect the dynamics of person construal (Freeman & Ambady, 2011), personality (Read et al, 2010), and leadership perception (Dinh & Lord, 2013). Computational modeling has also been used to investigate the emergence of leadership learning and development (Black, Oliver, Howell, & King, 2006) and a leader's role in facilitating team dynamics (Dionne & Dionne, 2008;Dionne, Sayama, Hao, & Bush, 2010). Because computational modeling can simulate the changing dynamics among simultaneously occurring processes in real time, it can account for the uncertainty that characterizes real organizational systems (MacKay & Chia, 2013), and thereby, explain how leadership processes and contexts interact to create unintended consequences in the present and future (Lord, Dinh, & Hoffman, in review).…”

Enabling team learning in healthcare

“…One aspect of team working research that is closely related to the study of team learning is the examination of how teams share information (Hoch 2014) process information (Hinsz, Tindale, and Vollrath, 1997) share knowledge (Lee, Lee, and Park, 2014) create knowledge (Reihlen and Nikolova 2010) integrate knowledge (Gardner, Gino, and Staats, 2012) share cognition (Cannon-Bowers and Salas 2001), or develop team cognition (Cooke et al 2003;He, Butler, and King, 2007) and create shared mental models (Dionne et al 2010). …”

“…In an analysis of team leader functions, Zaccaro, Rittman, and Marks (2001) argued that an important role for team leaders was to 'coordinate the contribution and combination of team knowledge and information resources; where "gaps" occur, they make interpretations and decisions that move the team along' (464). Sarin and McDermott (2003) Participative leadership has been seen as better than more directive leadership in engaging team members in collective problem solving (Sarin and McDermott 2003;Zaccaro, Rittman, and Marks, 2001) and promoting mental model convergence in teams (Dionne et al, 2010). It has been held that shared leadership within teams leads to increased information sharing (Hoch 2014) increases the absorptive capacity of the team (Lee, Lee, and Park, 2014) and has a positive impact on team learning (Liu et al 2014).…”

Conclusion: Leadership Lessons from Compelling Contexts

“…They create shared mental models of the tasks at hand, and the norms of how to handle them. Indeed leaders can actively create such shared mental models, whether through standardization or interaction with their teams (Dionne, Sayama, Hao, & Bush, 2010). Another example of how leaders can handle paradox is provided by Murphy (this volume), who describes how Walt Disney created animation as the "creative heart and soul of the organization", while keeping costs to a minimum.…”