Influence Of The Complementarity Between Leaders Character And Followers’ Proactivity To The Group Performance

In accordance with theories of group dynamics, especially the Dominance Complementarity Perspective, this study analyzes the influence of reciprocity between leaders and followers of different personality traits on group performance in small work teams of3to6members each. If the Dominance Complementarity Perspective holds, one assertive and dominant party in the group will likely attract another party that is submissive because people seek balance in interpersonal interactions. Such a balanced combination is expected to lead to best performance.Eighty subjects in Quasi-Experiment1were grouped into20teams:The team leaders were chosen based on extreme scores on extroversion or introversion (iv1:leader’s personality) and three members for each team based on extreme values on proactivity and submissiveness (iv2:team member’s personality). All teams were asked to finish the task of building a train from a fixed number of materials provided and all leaders and group members rated their assessments of satisfaction (dv2) after the task. The experimenter rated the degree of the groups’ performance (dvi). In accordance with the assumptions derived from the Dominance Complementarity Perspective, a general liner model showed no main effects, but a statistically significant interaction effect between the leaders’ and team members personalities, respectively, on group performance.Twenty-four subjects were grouped into6teams, featuring one extrovert/introvert leader with three proactive/submissive team members each. They had to finish the same task as in Quasi-Experiment1first, but leaders were then exchanged to lead a new team of the opposite personality from the teams they had lead before, finishing an equally difficult, but different task. In line with the previous results, a statistically significant interaction effect between the leaders’ and team members’ personalities appeared.The two experiments in this study conclude that when common team members are submissive, teams with extrovert leaders perform better than teams with introvert leaders and when common team members are proactive, groups with introvert leaders perform better than proactive groups with extrovert leaders. Limitations and implications of these preliminary results are discussed and future research options are outlined accordingly.