LDR 711A Week 7 Shared and Collective Leadership Example

No One Person Runs an Airport: Shared and Collective Leadership Across the Agencies of a Regional Airfield

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

LDR/711A: Leadership Theory and Practice

Week 7 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Cascade Valley Regional Airport, its partners and its teams are composites written for a model paper.

Three findings from the storm set up this week: command worked only inside Marisol's own departments, absent ties choked off information and much of the night's leadership came from people without rank. In response, director of operations Marisol Vega created an irregular operations team. It includes the four airline station managers, the security screening manager, the control tower manager, the fire and rescue chief, a ground handling supervisor, a concessions representative and the airport's terminal and communications managers. None reports to Marisol except two. The team meets monthly, runs tabletop exercises and convenes by video call whenever a disruption longer than an hour occurs. This paper examines shared and collective leadership and evaluates the team.

Shared Versus Vertical Leadership

Vertical leadership is influence exercised by a formally appointed leader over a team. Shared leadership is a team property in which influence is distributed among members, who lead one another toward goals. The two can coexist: a formal leader may enable and participate in shared leadership.

Conditions for Shared Leadership

Carson et al. (2007) studied consulting teams and found that shared leadership emerged in teams with a supportive internal environment, consisting of shared purpose, social support and voice, and in teams whose external coach provided encouragement and support. Shared leadership, measured as the density of leadership influence among members, predicted team performance as rated by clients.

What the Evidence Shows Overall

D'Innocenzo et al. (2016) brought together dozens of studies linking distributed leadership to how well teams perform. They found a positive relationship overall, with stronger effects when shared leadership was measured as an aggregate of members' leadership behaviors or as network density rather than in other ways, and when tasks were more complex. They emphasized that conclusions depend on how shared leadership is conceptualized and measured.

Shared and Vertical Leadership in Change Teams

Pearce and Sims (2002) compared vertical and shared leadership in change management teams and found that shared leadership predicted team effectiveness beyond vertical leadership. Shared transformational and empowering behaviors among members were associated with better outcomes, while shared aversive behaviors were associated with worse outcomes.

Building Shared Purpose

The team began by agreeing on a purpose statement: during any disruption, every passenger receives accurate, consistent information and basic care, and the airfield returns to service safely as fast as possible. Members helped write it, and it is read at the start of each meeting.

Building Social Support and Voice

Monthly meetings rotate among members' workplaces, and members share their own constraints, such as airline staffing rules and federal screening requirements. A norm developed that any member can call a coordination session. The screening manager, initially quiet, now regularly raises staffing issues before they become problems.

Marisol as External Coach

Marisol's role resembles the external coach in Carson et al. (2007): she convenes the team, provides resources such as a shared messaging channel and facilitation and encourages members to lead. She deliberately does not chair every discussion.

The team works best on the days Marisol says the least and the airline managers and screening chief run the call themselves.

Evidence From a Fog Event

In October, dense fog closed the airport for six hours with about 900 passengers in the terminal. The team convened within 20 minutes. Leadership shifted among members as needs changed: the tower manager led on forecast and reopening estimates; the airline managers jointly drafted a single passenger message; the screening manager arranged to keep one checkpoint open so passengers could leave and return; the concessions representative coordinated food; and the fire chief arranged medical checks for an elderly passenger. Complaints fell by more than 70 percent compared with a similar event before the team existed.

Measuring Shared Leadership in the Team

Following the network approach discussed by D'Innocenzo et al. (2016) would require asking each member to rate how much they rely on every other member for leadership. A short survey after the fog event found leadership influence distributed across at least six members, compared with mainly Marisol before the storm.

What Members Said

Interviews with five members after the fog event described a change in how the team felt. The fire chief said he now knew whom to call and expected them to answer. An airline station manager said he no longer waited for the airport to tell him what to do, because the group had agreed in advance who would handle each task. The concessions representative, who rarely spoke at early meetings, said she now raised food supply issues on her own. These accounts suggest that shared purpose, support and voice developed through repeated meetings and exercises rather than through a single decision.

Remaining Gaps

Two gaps remain. One airline participates inconsistently because its company policy routes decisions through a distant operations center. And the team has not yet handled a disruption involving conflict among members, such as competition for gates.

When Shared Leadership May Not Help

For safety-critical decisions, such as closing a runway, vertical authority remains essential and clear. Shared leadership works best for complex, interdependent problems like passenger care, while some decisions must stay with designated authorities.

Connecting to Earlier Weeks

The team reflects lessons from earlier weeks: the decision model's emphasis on consulting when information and commitment are dispersed, the relational importance of trust built before crises and the constructionist view that leadership can be claimed and granted by many people.

Risks of Shared Leadership

Shared leadership carries risks. Responsibility can blur, so that each member assumes another is handling a task. Strong personalities can dominate, leaving quieter members silent. And when members' organizations have conflicting interests, such as two airlines competing for limited gates, shared leadership may stall. The team has addressed the first risk with a task checklist assigned at the start of each event and plans to address the others through exercises and clear escalation rules.

Implications for Practice

The airport will formalize the team in its emergency plan, invite the inconsistent airline's regional operations center to tabletop exercises and run a scenario involving gate conflicts to test how the team handles disagreement.

Implications for Theory

The airport is a natural laboratory for this question because no member can order the others to act. The case suggests that shared leadership theory, developed mainly in single-organization teams, applies to interorganizational networks where no vertical leader has full authority, and that a convening leader acting as coach may be especially important in such settings.

Conclusion

Shared leadership distributes influence among team members and, according to field and meta-analytic evidence, tends to improve performance on complex tasks when teams have shared purpose, support and voice and a coaching leader. Cascade Valley's irregular operations team shows these conditions developing across organizations, with leadership shifting among members during a fog event and outcomes improving. Gaps remain, but shared leadership has filled the space that no single leader could.

References

Carson, J. B., Tesluk, P. E., & Marrone, J. A. (2007). Shared leadership in teams: An investigation of antecedent conditions and performance. Academy of Management Journal, 50(5), 1217-1234. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2007.20159921

D'Innocenzo, L., Mathieu, J. E., & Kukenberger, M. R. (2016). A meta-analysis of different forms of shared leadership-team performance relations. Journal of Management, 42(7), 1964-1991. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206314525205

Pearce, C. L., & Sims, H. P., Jr. (2002). Vertical versus shared leadership as predictors of the effectiveness of change management teams: An examination of aversive, directive, transactional, transformational, and empowering leader behaviors. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 6(2), 172-197. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2699.6.2.172