My research focuses on how leaders and teams learn, adapt and develop over time. This research helps us understand how people learn leadership skills through life experience, the impact of experience on how individuals see themselves as leaders, and how organizations can support experience-based leadership development. This research also shows how teams adapt to dynamic challenges and the role of leadership in facilitating team learning and adaptation. Below is a collection of articles, presentations, and assessments that were developed as part of this research program.

Adaptive leadership theory: Leading and following as a complex adaptive process.

Develops a theory explaining how recurring patterns of leading-following interactions produce emergent leader-follower identities, relationships and social structures that enable groups to develop and adapt in dynamic contexts.
• Research in Organizational Behavior

Teaching leadership: Issues and insights.

Introduces a special issue on the teaching of leadership. I am forever grateful for the work of my co-editors on this project, Sim Sitkin from Duke University and Joel Podolny from Apple, along with the wonderful lineup of authors who are included in the issue.
• Academy of Management Learning and Education

The impact of feedback frequency and positive affective state on task performance: Challenging the “More is Better” assumption.

We challenge the “more is better” assumption and propose that frequent feedback can overwhelm an individual’s cognitive resource capacity, thus reducing task effort and producing an inverted-U relationship with learning and performance over time.
• Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

Trait and behavioral theories of leadership: A meta-analytic test of their relative validity.

Develops an integrative trait-behavioral model of leadership effectiveness and then examines the relative validity of leader traits and behaviors across multiple leadership effectiveness criteria.
• Personnel Psychology

Who will lead and who will follow? A social process of leadership identity construction in organizations.

Develops a theory explaining how a leadership identity is co-constructed in organizations when individuals claim and grant leader and follower identities in their social interactions. Through this claiming-granting process, individuals internalize an identity as leader or follower, and those identities become relationally recognized through reciprocal role adoption and collectively endorsed within the organizational context.
• Academy of Management Review

Power to the people: Where has personal agency gone in leadership development?

Shifts the responsibility for leadership development to the individual learner, and thus re-frames the organization’s role in the leadership development process.
• Industrial and Organizational Psychology

Understanding the motivational contingencies of team leadership.

Examines how leaders need to adapt their style of leadership depending on the task and composition of team members.
• Small Group Research

Efficacy dispersion in teams: Moving beyond agreement and aggregation.

Challenges group and team researchers to think beyond agreement and aggregation of group-level constructs, and think more broadly about the patterns of dispersion in groups.
• Personnel Psychology

Leadership in teams: A functional approach to understanding leadership structures and processes.

Reviews the existing literature on leadership in teams, and develops a conceptual model and measure of team leadership.
• Journal of Management

When is straightforwardness a liability in negotiations? The role of integrative potential and power.

Examines the costs and benefits of being straightforward in interpersonal negotiations.
• Journal of Applied Psychology

Developing leaders via experience: The role of developmental challenge, learning orientation, and feedback.

Identifies the types of developmental experiences that promote leadership skill development, and shows the importance of feedback and having a learning orientation in the leadership development process.
• Journal of Applied Psychology

A Leader? Who me?

Describes the process by which people come to see themselves as leaders. Harvard Business School.

Reassessing the value of leadership experience.

Shows the impact of developmental experiences on leadership skill development. Duke University.

Team leadership, creativity and performance.

Early report of a study on how different leadership networks in teams impact team creativity and performance. Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Launching your dissertation.

The five key questions you must answer in order to successfully launch and complete the dissertation process. Academy of Management.

Getting off to a good start: Publishing your research.

A framework for how to publish high quality scholarly research in the organizational sciences. Academy of Management.

Based on my research, I have created a series of assessments and training tools that can be used to facilitate leadership and team development. The assessments enhance individual and team self-awareness regarding key drivers of leadership success. The training tools challenge individuals and teams in ways that facilitate and promote leadership skill development. If you would like more information on these assessments and training tools, please contact me.

Journal Publications and Book Chapters

Adaptive leadership theory: Leading and following as a complex adaptive process.

Develops a theory explaining how recurring patterns of leading-following interactions produce emergent leader-follower identities, relationships and social structures that enable groups to develop and adapt in dynamic contexts.
• Research in Organizational Behavior (in press)

Teaching leadership: Issues and insights.

Introduces a special issue on the teaching of leadership. I am forever grateful for the work of my co-editors on this project, Sim Sitkin from Duke University and Joel Podolny from Apple, along with the wonderful lineup of authors who are included in the issue.
• Academy of Management Learning and Education (in press)

The impact of feedback frequency and positive affective state on task performance: Challenging the “More is Better” assumption.

We challenge the “more is better” assumption and propose that frequent feedback can overwhelm an individual’s cognitive resource capacity, thus reducing task effort and producing an inverted-U relationship with learning and performance over time.
• Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes (in press)

Mixing individual and group incentives: Best of both worlds or social dilemma?.

Examines the impact of individual incentives versus group-based rewards on team performance.
• Journal of Management (in press)

Trait and behavioral theories of leadership: A meta-analytic test of their relative validity.

Develops an integrative trait-behavioral model of leadership effectiveness and then examines the relative validity of leader traits and behaviors across multiple leadership effectiveness criteria.
• Personnel Psychology (2011)

Who will lead and who will follow? A social process of leadership identity construction in organizations.

Develops a theory explaining how a leadership identity is co-constructed in organizations when individuals claim and grant leader and follower identities in their social interactions. Through this claiming-granting process, individuals internalize an identity as leader or follower, and those identities become relationally recognized through reciprocal role adoption and collectively endorsed within the organizational context.
• Academy of Management Review (2010)

Power to the people: Where has personal agency gone in leadership development?

Shifts the responsibility for leadership development to the individual learner, and thus re-frames the organization’s role in the leadership development process.
• Industrial and Organizational Psychology (2010)

Understanding the motivational contingencies of team leadership.

Examines how leaders need to adapt their style of leadership depending on the task and composition of team members.
• Small Group Research (2010)

Efficacy dispersion in teams: Moving beyond agreement and aggregation.

Challenges group and team researchers to think beyond agreement and aggregation of group-level constructs, and think more broadly about the patterns of dispersion in groups.
• Personnel Psychology (2010)

Leadership in teams: A functional approach to understanding leadership structures and processes.

Reviews the existing literature on leadership in teams, and develops a conceptual model and measure of team leadership.
• Journal of Management (2010)

When is straightforwardness a liability in negotiations? The role of integrative potential and power.

Examines the costs and benefits of being straightforward in interpersonal negotiations.
• Journal of Applied Psychology (2009)

Developing leaders via experience: The role of developmental challenge, learning orientation, and feedback.

Identifies the types of developmental experiences that promote leadership skill development, and shows the importance of feedback and having a learning orientation in the leadership development process.
• Journal of Applied Psychology (2009)

Harmful help: The cost of backing up behavior in teams.

Shows how team members helping each other can backfire and actually interfere with team success.

• Journal of Applied Psychology (2008)

How different team downsizing approaches influence team-level adaptation and performance.

Shows how teams can effectively adapt to disruptive events, in this case a downsizing event that requires teams to adapt in order to achieve team goals.

• Academy of Management Journal (2008)

Event criticality, urgency, and duration: Understanding how events disrupt teams and influence team leader intervention.

Examines the types of events that can disrupt team functioning and how leaders should respond to these disruptive events to ensure teams adapt effectively.

• Leadership Quarterly

Assuming the mantle: Unpacking the process by which individuals internalize a leader identity.

Describes the process by which people come to see themselves as leaders.

Stability and change in person-team and person-role fit over time: The effects of growth satisfaction, performance, and self efficacy.

Examines how individuals’ perceptions of fit with their team evolve and what factors predict these changes in fit over time.

• Journal of Applied Psychology

Bridging the gap between I/O research and HR practice: Improving team composition, team training, and team task design.

Discusses common misconceptions about teams in organizations and how HR practice should change to address these misconceptions.

• Human Resource Management

Toward a theory of efficient creativity in teams.

Discusses how teams should organize and function in order to rapidly and efficiently achieve high levels of creativity.

• Research on Managing Groups and Teams

The search for internal and external fit in teams.

Discusses how teams must achieve a fit with their external environment and their internal composition in order to be successful.

• Perspectives on Organizational Fit

Other

When is straightforwardness a liability in negotiations? The role of integrative potential and power.

Investigates the conditions under which being transparent and straightforward in negotiations is a liability.

• Journal of Applied Psychology

When can employees have a family life? The effects of daily workload and affect on work-family conflict and social activities at home.

Shows the effects of workload and affect at work on conflict and participation in social activities at home. The results are troublesome considering how time and energy we invest at work.

• Journal of Applied Psychology

The convergent and discriminant validity of subjective fit perceptions.

Investigates the impact of individuals’ subjective fit perceptions on job performance, satisfaction, and organizational commitment.

• Journal of Applied Psychology

Statistical power and parameter stability when subjects are few and tests are many.

Illustrates the adverse impact of small sample sizes on statistical analyses.

• Journal of Applied Psychology (200