Hazy Team Composition Processes: Shared Team Leadership, a Strategy to Team Excellence in Higher Education

Teamwork is an emergent property of efficacious organizations. Team-based and result-oriented organizational structures are gaining momentum, increasing 6% each year. Over 80% of organizations globally deploy teams by putting ordinary people to work together for extraordinary performance. The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center is a unique institute that teaches foreign languages in an immersive and team-based environment. This mixed-methods research study investigated (a) the teaching team composition processes, (b) the applicability of trust and diversity in team composition, and (c) the impact of shared team leadership in the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center. Data were collected from 82 faculty across eight undergraduate education schools of the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (n = 66 quantitative; n = 16 qualitative). The analyzed quantitative data of Pearson correlations between the core themes of team composition processes showed that all items were positively related and significant at p = .01. Also, the amount of variance and diversity accounted for in the model (adj. R2 = -.031) was not significant F(8, 54) = .769, p = .631. The t-test analysis revealed no significance across demographic information of the respondents and diversity in the teams. The qualitative results found no standardized policy on team composition processes; teams were formed by the department chair(s), and the shared team leadership model only existed partially at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center. As per the inputs, processes, and outputs model, prioritization of team composition processes will benefit the organization