Leading temporary project teams: An analysis of task- and person-focused leadership over time

摘要

Nonprofit organizations are increasingly relying on temporary project teams to carry out their activities. Time is of the essence with such endeavors. Diverse individuals join a project team and work through several phases in order to reach their goal. Because team needs will fluctuate over time, the focus of leadership is also likely to change. Unfortunately, very little is known about these dynamics, because research has overly focused on the individual characteristics of leaders. In this study, we gained access to archival data on the interactions among the individuals working on a temporary project team, which allowed us to compare how both task- and person-focused leadership evolved over time. We found that both types of leadership increase in intensity over the lifetime of the project, but also that the need for person-focused leadership is greater later on, while task-focused leadership is prevalent at earlier stages. Our results help generate key insights for both the theory and practice of project team leadership.