Is shared or formal leadership effective in guiding aerospace teams to financial success?

Research exploring the influence of leadership on team performance has revealed certain leader behaviors can impact team effectiveness (Burke et al., 2006; Chidester, Helmreich, Gregorich, & Geis, 1991; Yukl, 2012). This is especially relevant for jobs that require high levels of collaboration among team members. The Flight Operations Center – Unified Simulation (FOCUS) Lab at Middle Tennessee State University replicates a high-fidelity flight operations center where team members work together to operate a virtual airline. Effective leadership within each FOCUS Lab team is necessary for operations to run smoothly. The formal leadership of the Flight Operations Coordinator (FOC) is displayed through communication and decision making that directly impacts the performance of the team. The purpose of this research is to evaluate the relative impact of leader behaviors on team outcomes in the context of a student-lead flight operations center. FOC and shared team leader behavior scores are expected to relate to team performance. Three measures of leader behaviors (i.e., person-oriented, task-oriented, and transformational leadership) demonstrated by the FOC and the overall team will be examined in relation to performance criteria (i.e., financial data including flight delays and penalties; N = 300 participants, 29 teams)