Leadership Emergence and Group Development: A Longitudinal Examination of Project Teams

This study examined the relationship between individual behavior and leader emergence over the course of a group’s development. Results indicated that behaviors related to leader emergence changed over time. Social behaviors were most strongly associated with leader emergence during the beginning of the project, while task behaviors were most strongly associated with leader emergence during later phases. These findings suggest that groups require primarily social-oriented leadership early on; however, needs shift during later phases to task-oriented leadership. The role of talkativeness in leader emergence was also examined and significantly interacted with task-oriented behaviors to predict leader emergence.