The Effect of Preferred Leadership Role and Preferred Team Leadership Structure on Students’ Perception of Team Processes and Outcome

This research full paper investigates how much the type of leadership role and the type of team leadership structure that engineering students prefer before teamwork will affect students' perception of team processes and outcome. Team processes are team-level attributes that influence team effectiveness and reflect team members' collective attitudes, values, cognitions, and motivations. Many factors can affect these team processes, including leadership role and structure. In this study, we explored how engineering student preferences about leadership structure are related to the perception of students about team processes and outcome. We used a one-way ANOVA, dividing students by leadership role into three groups: prefer following, prefer leading, and balanced. We also divided students by preferred team structure: one strong leader, one leader who gets lots of team input, and shared leadership. We considered other team processes including conflict, psychological safety, cohesion, and the team outcome satisfaction. In the preferred leadership role, students with balanced preference reported most positively regarding all team processes and outcome. Similarly, students with a preference for shared leadership reported most positively regarding those variables.