Building effective student teams through transformational leadership

A study was conducted assessing the effects of a new leadership program that focused on team leadership behaviors and effective team building. This leadership program represented a departure from a single-leader focus to a focus on the leadership responsibility of each team member. A pretest-posttest survey was used to measure individual perceptions of team leadership and effectiveness based on Bass and Avolio's Full-Range Model of Leadership (Bass & Avolio, 1996). The team leadership program began with a half-day session followed by one hour monthly sessions focusing on the attributes of transformational, transactional, and non-transactional leadership. Team effectiveness ratings were positively related to measures of transformational leadership and contingent reward, but negatively correlated with management-by-exception passive and laissez-faire. Results also indicate that team members that had participated in previous competitions were more likely to report higher levels of team effectiveness after the program than those that had not attended a competition. Team members that had been or were currently serving as team managers were less likely to report higher levels of team effectiveness after the program.