Enabling Team Learning when Members are Prone to Contentious Communication

human relations
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DOI: 10.1177/0018726715622673
hum.sagepub.comhuman relations
Enabling team learning when
members are prone to contentious
communication: The role of team
leader coaching
John Schaubroeck
Michigan State University, USA
Abraham Carmeli
Tel Aviv University, Israel
Sarena Bhatia
Michigan State University, USA
Etty Paz
Western Galilee Academic College, Israel
Abstract
Members of teams are often prone to interpersonal communication patterns that can
undermine the team’s capacity to engage in self-learning processes that are critical to
team adaptation and performance improvement. We argue that team leader coaching
behaviors are critical to ensuring that team discussions that may foster learning new
teamwork skills and strategies are unfettered by the tendency of two or more members
to exhibit contentious interpersonal communications. We accordingly test a model
in which team contentious communication moderates the mediated relationship
of team leader coaching behaviors on team innovation effectiveness and team task
performance. In a study of 82 work teams, team leader coaching behaviors exhibited
indirect, positive relationships with both team innovation effectiveness and team task
performance through team learning, but only among teams with an average or higher
Corresponding author:
John Schaubroeck, Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA.
Email: [e-mail]; [e-mail]
622673HUM0010.1177/0018726715622673Human RelationsSchaubroeck et al.
research-article2016
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2 Human Relations
level of contentious interpersonal communication. We discuss theoretical and practical
implications for the leadership of teams.
Keywords
contentious communication, group communication, team innovation, team leader
coaching, team learning, team performance
As work teams have become more prevalent and vital to organizations, scholars and
practitioners have become increasingly interested in how team processes influence
important team outcomes such as innovation and performance (Burke et al., 2008; Shaw
et al., 2011). Researchers have placed considerable emphasis on the benefits to team
learning and adaptation that derive from the ability and willingness of members to share
diverging perspectives about team tasks and priorities (Behfar et al., 2008). Yet, many
teams may not reap these benefits when contentious patterns of interaction between two
or more members impede collective learning. Such teams may face difficulties in adapt-
ing to change, improving their processes, and creating innovative products or services
(Lovelace et al., 2001).
The potential for disruptive interpersonal communication in team discussions sug-
gests an important role for team leaders. Team leaders can mitigate the extent to which
existing frictions between particular team members impact the quality of team discus-
sions, and they may thereby better ensure higher team functioning. Yet, although schol-
ars have begun to appreciate the role of team leaders in facilitating group processes
(Morgeson, 2005), the potential beneficial role that adept team leaders may play in teams
prone to dysfunctional communication patterns has received only limited attention
(Schippers et al., 2008). We advance a novel theoretical perspective by focusing on team
leader coaching (TLC) (Carson et al., 2007; Edmondson 1999, 2003) and conceptually
differentiating the context of team discussion that is vital to team learning from the inter-
personal tendencies among members (i.e. levels of interpersonal contentious commu-
nication between members).
Edmondson and her colleague (Cannon and Edmondson, 2001; Edmondson, 1999;
2003) formulated the construct of TLC in terms of a relatively narrow set of behaviors.
From their perspective, effective TLC involves initiating team discussions about how to
improve team processes and learn new skills, actively facilitating these discussions, and
being readily available for help and consultation about team and interpersonal issues.
TLC may play an important role in enabling group learning in teams that struggle with
contentious communication. Contentious communication refers to a pattern of unpro-
ductive interactions between two or more persons in which each tries to show he or she
is right and insists the other is wrong (Lovelace et al., 2001). Without a team leader who
insists the group meet and openly discuss issues that may promote learning, and who
facilitates these discussions in ways that keep the team focused on learning, teams in
which members have a propensity for contentious communication may fail to have the
open and frank discussions about the team’s interaction processes they require to learn
from their experiences. Experiential team learning (‘team learning,’ hereafter) refers to
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Schaubroeck et al. 3
‘activities carried out by team members through which a team obtains and processes
data that allow it to adapt and improve’ (Edmondson, 1999: 353). Moreover, without a
suitable mechanism for team learning, teams will not discover, develop and implement
better ways to coordinate members’ actions and to adapt quickly when environmental
changes demand new approaches. Thus, we argue that TLC behaviors are critical for
teams that are otherwise less able to engage in open and inclusive discussion.
Overcoming barriers to team learning not only promotes team productivity as argued by
Edmondson (1999), but doing so also enables teams to develop and implement novel
products or processes (West, 2002).
We extend previous research on TLC, team learning and team task performance by
developing a model in which TLC is particularly crucial for team learning when there is
more potential for members’ extant contentious communication patterns to disrupt group
discussion. The favorable effects of TLC behaviors on team learning, in turn, promote
team task performance and team innovation effectiveness. Thus, we argue that TLC will
be more important in teams that exhibit patterns of contentious communication in the
day-to-day interactions of at least some of their members. We present a test of this model
of moderated mediation based on a sample of work teams that were temporally stable,
such that the teams served as the work units of the team members.
Theory and hypothesis development
Maier (1950) and Maier and Solem (1952) reported on what were arguably the first
prominent studies of group leadership. These classic studies demonstrated that prac-
tices in which formal group leaders engaged to facilitate discussion in ad hoc work
groups were associated with more creative and effective solutions to particular task
problems. Whereas these studies did not test mediation, the qualitative findings sug-
gested that groups encouraged by the leader to exhibit more open interaction achieved
better outcomes. Groups were especially successful when their leaders served as
gatekeepers who encouraged inputs from members who held opinions that differed
from the majority.
Since this seminal work of Maier and colleagues, conceptions of team leaders have
moved away from considering their role as facilitators who buffer relationships between
team states and team outcomes, and have instead focused largely on how broad compos-
ites of leader behaviors (e.g. transformational leadership) directly influence teams’ learn-
ing, performance, or creative outcomes (e.g. Eisenbeiss et al., 2008). We draw from
Maier and colleagues’ less ‘heroic’ view of team leaders in suggesting that merely by
being available to members for consultation, and initiating and facilitating team discus-
sions, team leaders can prevent latent contentious communication patterns between two
or more members from undermining the team’s ability to learn and thereby improve its
ability to function as a team.
We first review the role that TLC behaviors may play in promoting team learning. We
then consider how such behaviors, which are similar to the ‘democratic’ behaviors Maier
and colleagues emphasized as being most critical for group facilitation (Maier, 1950;
Maier and Solem, 1952), are especially instrumental to team learning when interpersonal
dynamics between members threaten to undermine team discussions.
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Influences of team leader coaching (TLC) on team learning
A team is unlikely to respond in a consistently adaptive manner to changing task demands
unless it engages in a substantial amount of team learning (Argote, 1999). Team learning
requires collaborative reflection about the team’s experiences, with the aim to improve
members’ ability to collaborate by improving their patterns of interaction. Much of this
learning centers on identifying and experimenting with ways members work together.
Successful team learning may, for example, establish better approaches to performing a
new collective task or to utilizing a new technology. Alternatively, members may improve
their skills for coordinating team action in particular phases of projects in which the team
has experienced difficulties (Edmondson, 2003).
Effective team learning involves raising doubts, seeking feedback, reflecting, and
engaging in experimentation. Thus, it requires that members are willing and able to
freely share their views, listen to one another, and demonstrate a willingness to recon-
sider their own views and integrate them with others (see Burke et al., 2008; Edmondson,
1999). Team learning is especially important for teams in which members engage a great
deal of their time at work and which are stable in terms of membership. It is particularly
advantageous in such situations because there is a higher potential return to the team’s
investments of time and effort into learning new skills and strategies (Katz, 1982).
The team leader often plays a substantial role in instigating and facilitating discus-
sions that promote team learning. As suggested by Maier (1950), a group leader’s pri-
mary role is to remove collective and interpersonal barriers to team members’ interaction
and thereby to aid the team in its progression toward greater collective self-regulation.
Teams tend to learn collectively only when they perceive that the work context supports
their taking the interpersonal risks that such learning requires (Burke et al., 2008;
Edmondson, 1999). This function of the leader is not highly directive, because for a
group to operate effectively as a team, the members themselves must take responsibility
for team learning (Kozlowski, 1998; Maier, 1950).
As stated by Edmondson (2003: 124), TLC refers to ‘any leader behaviours that
explicitly invite and clarify the need for others’ input or that seek to minimize power dif-
ferences.’ Within Edmondson’s perspective (Cannon and Edmondson, 2001; Edmondson,
1999), the hallmarks of TLC are high accessibility for consultation, a propensity to initi-
ate team meetings, and concerted efforts to instigate and facilitate open team discussions.
Team leaders’ initiations of team discussions provide a context wherein learning may
occur, as members normally do not tend to initiate such meetings of their own accord
(Burke et al., 2008). Facilitating these discussions in such a manner that all members
freely share their knowledge and ideas and communicate in a collaborative fashion then
becomes crucial to fostering learning. Edmondson (1999) reported that TLC was posi-
tively correlated with team members’ aggregated perceptions of a supportive work cli-
mate for the team, team efficacy and team learning (cf. Cannon and Edmondson, 2001).
Based on the extant conceptual work and empirical findings concerning the relation-
ship between TLC and team learning, we propose the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1: Team leader coaching (TLC) is positively related to team learning.
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