Task and person-focused leadership behaviors and team performance: A meta-analysis

This paper reports the results of a meta-analytic review of the relationship between person and task oriented leader behaviors, on the one hand, and team performance, on the other hand. The results, based on 89 independent samples, show a moderate positive (ρ=.33) association between both types of leadership behaviors and perceived team performance. For objective team performance as dependent variable, the effect sizes are smaller, yet positive (ρ=.18 for task oriented leadership behaviors and. ρ=19 for person-oriented leadership behaviors). Furthermore, with respect to the methodological moderators, the analyses show that the relationships were stronger when leadership behaviors were rated by the leaders themselves, rather than by others, and the association was stronger when the correlations were estimated at the individual level, as opposed to the team level of analysis. Concerning conceptual moderators, team type was identified as a significant moderator, and correlations between a person oriented leadership style and team performance were stronger for service and project teams than for action/performing teams. Task interdependence was another significant moderator of the relationship between task-oriented behaviors and perceived team effectiveness, the correlation being stronger for teams scoring high, rather than low on task interdependence.