Examining the behavioral and structural characteristics of team leadership in extreme environments

Abstract

Despite the growing interest in extreme teams, there is currently a lack of understanding concerning leadership within such teams, as the literature has predominantly focused on team leadership within the context of traditional organizations. The current study investigates team leadership within the context of teams operating in extreme environments, with a specific focus on teams operating in isolated, confined environments. We seek to identify team leadership functions as well as a subset of structural characteristics associated with team leadership in extreme environments (i.e., formality of leadership, locus of leadership, and leadership distribution). We leverage a historiometric approach to capitalize on real historical examples of extreme teams that are rich with critical information regarding actual team leadership functions occurring in extreme settings. Results suggest that team leadership functions such as team problem solving, supporting social climate, structure and planning, and sensemaking are among the most prevalent. Results also indicated that the degree to which leadership is distributed throughout the team as well as the formality of leadership varies across action and transition phases of the team's task cycle.

A Bottom Up Perspective to Understanding the Dynamics of Team Roles in Mission Critical Teams

“…Historiometry also enables the examination of complex constructs as expressed in behavior (e.g., team roles) during real situations, and the investigation of how such (team) constructs may differ depending on the type of situation (Antonakis et al, 2003). Recent studies have similarly applied historiometric analysis to explore topics such as team leadership in mission critical/isolated environments, successfully providing insight into other relatively new team-level research areas (e.g., DeChurch et al, 2011; Burke et al, 2018).…”

Teamwork in extreme environments: Lessons, challenges, and opportunities

“…In the second article within the special issue, Burke, Shuffler, and Wiese () emphasize the important role of team leadership in extreme contexts. Accordingly, they build upon prior work that has focused on input variables within extreme environments to examine the role of leadership.…”

“…They discuss how emotions, anxiety, cohesion, and hostility can change over time for the team as well as for specific team members who constantly face the challenges of such contexts over long periods of time. Burke et al () shed light on not just the importance of leadership, but they also begin to peel back the construct of leadership in extreme contexts to suggest that certain leadership functions are more important at different phases of teamwork. They also suggest that the formality and locus of leadership may ebb and flow during the life cycle of the team.…”

“…In fact, it appears that seeking social support may have negative consequences in extreme environments as compared with the more positive consequences noted in more traditional team settings. Burke et al () find that structure and planning, as well as sensemaking, are the most impactful leadership functions during the transition phases of teamwork, whereas team problem solving, supporting the social climate, and monitoring the team collectively are most impactful during action phases. Uitdewilligen and Waller () found that higher performance teams spent more time on structuring and information‐sharing communication phases and less time on decision‐making phases.…”

“…We draw on the insights of our exemplar papers for further reasons and evidence to follow such an approach. For example, in table 2 of Burke et al (), they discuss different dimensions of the contexts included in their study. This might be a foray into delineating the level of extremity that teams encounter.…”