Groups, Teams, and Leadership: Interpersonal Processes That Drive Results

"Psychological safety is not about being nice. It's about giving candid feedback, openly admitting mistakes, and learning from each other. When people feel safe to speak up, teams learn faster, innovate more, and perform better." — Amy C. Edmondson (2019), The Fearless Organization

 Why do some groups of talented individuals function as disconnected performers, while others move in perfect synchronization toward shared goals?

Executive Summary

The difference between a group and a team is neither composition nor resources—it's the interpersonal processes that connect people toward common purpose. Leadership shapes these processes by fostering the conditions through which individuals transform into coordinated, high-performing teams. The empirical evidence is unambiguous: engaging leadership, psychological safety, trust, and communication form an interconnected system that determines whether collective effort produces mediocre results or breakthrough performance.

As Edmondson's decades of research demonstrate, psychological safety is the foundation upon which all other team capabilities are built. Without it, even talented teams fail to share information, admit mistakes, or challenge flawed assumptions—the very behaviors that drive learning and innovation.

From Groups to Teams: The Role of Interpersonal Processes

Research examining 90 work teams (1,048 employees) found that shared team resources—performance feedback, trust in management, communication, and participation in decision-making—predicted team effectiveness (indirect effect B = 0.18, p = 0.013). Team members' perceptions of these shared resources strongly correlated with team effectiveness: communication (r = 0.32***), trust (r = 0.25***), and feedback (r = 0.26***). Teams that invest in communication infrastructure and trust relationships dramatically outperform those focused solely on individual task execution.

Trust as the Foundation

Trust is not a luxury—it's a structural necessity. When team members trust each other and their leader, they become willing to be vulnerable: admitting uncertainty, asking for help, acknowledging mistakes, and coordinating action without defensive posturing.

A study of 285 students in interprofessional teams found that team cohesiveness predicted teamwork satisfaction through collective efficacy (RMSEA = 0.08, CFI = 0.93). The mediation pathway was full:

▸      Cohesion → Collective Efficacy → Satisfaction and Goal Attainment

This suggests that cohesive teams develop shared belief in their capability, which then translates to both satisfaction and performance.

Collective Efficacy: The Belief That "We Can Succeed"

A study of 184 teams found that collective efficacy explained 70% of the variance in team satisfaction and 68% of the variance in team performance. Critically, collective efficacy works through interpersonal processes. Interpersonal processes fully mediated the relationship between collective efficacy and team satisfaction (indirect effect β = 0.31, p = 0.001). This means that teams with high collective efficacy perform well primarily because they engage in better interpersonal processes—not through task execution alone.

The Leadership Imperative: Engaging Leadership

J. Richard Hackman's foundational research on team effectiveness revealed that "the things that most distinguish great teams from bad teams are those that enable people to work well together, not those that matter most for individuals working alone." This insight fundamentally reframes leadership: the critical question is not "who is the leader?" but "are the leadership functions being performed?"

Engaging leaders pursue three behaviors:

• Inspiring: Creating shared purpose by helping team members understand how their work contributes to something meaningful

• Strengthening: Building capability and autonomy by delegating responsibility, providing challenge, and granting decision-making authority

• Connecting: Fostering relationships and team cohesion by promoting collaboration and building psychological safety

The Empirical Impact of Engaging Leadership

A longitudinal study of 1,048 employees in 90 teams (measured at two time points, one year apart) revealed cascading effects:

At the individual level: Engaging leadership predicted work engagement through personal resources (self-efficacy, optimism, resilience, flexibility). Individual perceptions of inspiring leadership (M = 3.48, SD = 0.79) predicted subsequent work engagement (r = 0.27***).

At the team level: Shared team perceptions of engaging leadership predicted team effectiveness through team resources. The indirect pathway was significant (indirect effect B = 0.18, p = 0.013), and connecting leadership (M = 3.61, SD = 0.72) correlated with team effectiveness (r = 0.26***).

Cross-level effects: Team resources created by engaging leadership affected individual work engagement—teams with strong communication, trust, feedback, and participation created environments where individual employees became more engaged, beyond the direct effects of leadership on individuals.

Building High-Performing Teams: The Implementation Framework

• Establish Psychological Safety: Create explicit norms where asking questions is encouraged, mistakes are learning opportunities, dissenting views are welcomed, and team members can be vulnerable without fear.

• Foster Clear Communication Structures: Define how information flows, create forums for diverse perspectives, establish communication norms, and monitor for information bottlenecks. Communication quality (M = 3.24, SD = 0.65) showed strong correlation with team effectiveness (r = 0.32***).

• Build Shared Mental Models: Ensure aligned understanding of team goals, roles, decision-making processes, and collaboration expectations. Teams with shared mental models coordinate actions easily because they know what teammates expect and intend.

• Create Feedback Loops: Performance feedback (M = 2.55, SD = 0.69) predicted team effectiveness (r = 0.26***). Teams that receive structured feedback improve more than those without this reflection mechanism.

• Cultivate Interdependence: Design tasks so individual success requires collective success. When team members depend on each other, they invest in relationships and communication. The cohesion-effectiveness relationship is stronger when interdependence is higher.

References

Edmondson, A. C. (2019). The fearless organization: Creating psychological safety in the workplace. Wiley.

Elms, A. K., Gill, H., & González-Morales, M. G. (2023). Confidence is key: Collective efficacy and team effectiveness. Small Group Research, 54(2), 227-259.

Hackman, J. R. (2011). Collaborative intelligence: Using teams to solve hard problems. Berrett-Koehler.

Mazzetti, G., Schaufeli, W. B., & Senel, E. (2022). The impact of engaging leadership on employee engagement and team effectiveness. PLoS One, 17(6), e0269433.