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Birds of a Feather Sometimes Flock Together

Birds of a Feather Sometimes Flock Together. Team Leadership, Heterophily, and Team Performance Andrew Knight University of Pennsylvania. Overview. Team diversity Leadership, heterophily, and performance Method, Analyses, & Results Implications. Team Diversity A Double-Edged Sword.

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Birds of a Feather Sometimes Flock Together

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  1. Birds of a Feather SometimesFlock Together Team Leadership, Heterophily, and Team Performance Andrew Knight University of Pennsylvania

  2. Overview • Team diversity • Leadership, heterophily, and performance • Method, Analyses, & Results • Implications

  3. Team DiversityA Double-Edged Sword • Benefits of diversity • Greater breadth of resources • Creativity • Diversity as variety • Costs of diversity • Opposing views • Conflict • Diversity as separation

  4. Common Research Approaches:Group & Individual Level • Link group-level metrics of diversity to group processes • Group processes: Cohesion, conflict • Standard deviation as diversity metric • Link an individual’s average dissimilarity to individual-level outcomes • Individual outcomes: Satisfaction, turnover • Euclidean distance as diversity metric

  5. General Assumption:Birds of a Feather Flock Together • Homophily often assumed… • Team members have positive perceptions of similar others and negative perceptions of different others • Grounded in similarity-attraction theories • …but seldom tested • Very little team diversity research at the dyad level • Little exploration of actual relationships • Workplace may place boundary conditions around homophily • Roles and role structures • Leadership, power, social influence

  6. Hypothesis 1: Homophily varies across teams

  7. Team Leadership • Team leaders set the tone for a team • Shape team climates • Reinforce certain types of behaviors • Model appropriate behaviors • Leaders who take an inclusive approach may model positive cross-category relations

  8. Hypothesis 2: Leader inclusiveness is positively related to heterophily

  9. Heterophily & Team PerformanceBack to the Sword • Gaining the benefits of diversity • Positive cross-category relations yield access to diverse information and resources • Diversity in KSAs aids in problem-solving, creativity • Avoiding the costs of diversity • Positive relations aid in coordination • Positive relations mitigate the effects of conflict

  10. Hypothesis 3: Heterophily is positively related to team performance

  11. Method: Research Setting • Team-based military competition • 9-person teams navigate a 9km obstacle course • Teams train for nearly 4 months to prepare for the one-day event

  12. Method: Sample • 33 teams • Composed of cadets from the hosting academy • Training teams ranged from 10 to 16 members • 381 individuals • 86% male • 79% White • Mean age = 20.3 (SD = 1.4)

  13. Method: Procedure Month 1 Month 2 Month 3 Month 4 Team Roster Confirmed Time 1 Survey Time 2 Survey Time 3 Survey Time 4 Survey Competition OPORD Published Start of Formal Training

  14. Method: Predictor Variables (All at T1) • Team-level • Leader inclusiveness: 5-item scale completed by team leader • “Effective team leaders carefully weigh members’ opinions.” • Controls: Prior competition experience, Athletic GPA, Military GPA • Individual-level • Class (i.e., freshman, sophomore, junior, senior) • Gender • Branch choice (e.g., infantry, artillery, medical, intelligence) • Dyad-level • Same or different category membership for class, gender, branch choice (0 = Same; 1 = Different)

  15. Method: Criterion Variables • Dyad-level criterion: Friendship (T3) • “How much did you socialize with X in your free time during the past week?” • Members rated one another on a 5-point scale in a round-robin fashion • Team-level criterion: Team performance (T5) • Team total score in the military competition • Scored by trained competition officials

  16. Analyses: The Social Relations Model via RCM • Random coefficient model • Random intercepts for team, actor, partner • Estimate A-P covariance and within-dyad covariance • Random slope for “homophily” effects • Fixed effects for category membership and diversity • Extracted homophily slope coefficients to test team performance hypothesis • SAS PROC MIXED

  17. Analyses: Sample SAS PROC MIXED Code procmixed covtest data=t3srm; class dyad GROUP actbranch partbranch; model frd = actbranch partbranch difbranch leader leader*difbranch / solution ddfm=SATTERTH; random a1-a16 p1-p16 intercept difbranch / solution sub=group type=lin(5) ldata=g; repeated / type=cs sub=dyad(group); ODS Output SolutionR = r_difbranch; run; Fixed Effects Cross-Level Int. Random Intercepts Random Slope Within-Dyad Cov Output Coeffs.

  18. Results: Null Variance Decomposition Reciprocity • Generalized: .32 • Dyadic: .61

  19. Results: ClassLeadership & Variance in Homophily

  20. Results: ClassLeadership & Variance in Homophily

  21. Results: GenderLeadership & Variance in Homophily

  22. Results: BranchLeadership & Variance in Homophily

  23. Results: Branch ChoiceLeadership & Variance in Homophily

  24. Results:Heterophily and Team Performance

  25. Discussion: Summary of Results • Variance in homophily across teams • Supported for class, gender, branch choice • Models including random slopes were a better fit for the data • Leadership predicts heterophily • Supported for class and branch choice • Members of teams with inclusive leaders are more likely to form friends with members of different classes and military branches • Heterophily predicts team performance • Supported only for class • Teams with heterophilous relationships with respect to class perform better in the military competition

  26. Discussion: Implications of Results • Birds of a feather sometimes flock together • Key assumption may not hold in all work teams • Some teams are more heterophilous than others • Leaders may shape relational patterns in teams • Inclusive leaders model positive cross-category relations • Leadership as a lever for maximizing the benefits and minimizing the costs of diversity • Diversity can help team performance if homophily is not the rule • Key assumption of team diversity literature limits benefits • To benefit from diversity, teams may need heterophily

  27. Discussion: Broader Implications for Team Diversity • Examining diversity effects at the dyad level • A fine-grained look at diversity • Relationships are building blocks of team processes • A multilevel approach to studying diversity • Group composition research is inherently multilevel • Dyadic approach helps “unpack” variance • Develop and test comprehensive theories of team composition with precision

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