1

1a. Why do you think that being assigned as a formal leader results in the person dominating team discussions?

1b. Have you ever held back communication in a team when the leader behaved autocratically? Explain why the leaders amount of talking suppresses team members open communication.

1c. How can organizations implement the idea that reminding a leader of the importance of team open communication is important for team performance?

Research in Action Can Power Make Followers Speechless? A series of laboratory experiments was conducted to examine the impact of how much the formal leader of a group talks on the reactions of team members. MBA students were assigned to work on a leadership simulation. The first experiment showed that leaders who felt powerful were more likely to verbally dominate discussions, and this decreased perceptions of their openness. As a result, team performance was lower. The second experiment replicated these findings and further demonstrated the important role of team members' reactions to leaders' behavior. Specifically, although subjective feelings of power increased leaders' autocratic tendencies, their formal role determined team members' willingness to give in to them. The third experiment replicated the findings from Studies 1 and 2 with respect to formal leaders. This study also found that teams with powerful formal leaders reported higher levels of their leader talking, lower team open communication, and lower team performance. This only occurred when leaders were not reminded of how important their team member input was for success. When leaders were reminded that all team members had the potential to contribute to team success, these effects did not emerge. These findings show that a leaders' awareness of the importance of their team members motivates them to overcome their tendency to discount others' perspectives and input. In other words, the negative effect of power on team open communication is eliminated. A summary of these research findings is shown in Figure 7.2. + + Formal Authority Formal Openness and Leader's Leader Team Amount of Team Open Performance Power Talking Communication Figure 7.2 Power and Talking Affects Team Communication and Performance