Differentiated Leadership and Team Viability: The Buffering Role of Least-Supported Members’ Proactivity

Abstract

While transformational leadership benefits self-managing teams, its uneven distribution (i.e., differentiated transformational leadership) can harm helping norms due to perceived inequities. Drawing on the theoretical framework of group norm emergence and using a multi-source, time-lagged survey of 91 work teams in Taiwan, we propose and examine how the least-supported members’ proactivity mitigates the destructive effects of differentiated transformational leadership. We anticipate this research to bring important insights about how individual members can take agency to offset the destructive effect of differentiated leadership, and the conclusions offer practical guidance to organizations and leadership coaches aiming to develop team managers.