What Do They Do? A Taxonomy of Team Leader Interventions in Various Meeting Scenarios

The purpose of this paper is to sketch a taxonomy describing various team leader interventions, as a consequence of interferences occurring at group meetings. The taxonomy is intended to serve as foundation for future research, methodology and test development. Sixteen Swedish business organisation leaders participated in the case study. The study consisted of ten fictitious scenarios, implying interferences concerning goal achievement. The participants were to propose interventions to the different situations. Based on the results, six categories of interventions were identified: control, inform, initiate, await, support, and explore. The categories corresponded to classical leadership theories. Furthermore, fictitious group scenarios seem to provide information about leadership thinking and interventional styles concerning team work. Scenarios also seem to measure something different than traditional assessment instruments do. This is in accordance with social personality theory, emphasising that personality assessments should not be decontextualised by excluding information concerning the situations in which people are acting.