How leaders foster self-managing team effectiveness: Design choices versus hands-on coaching

This multi-method field study examines the relative effects of two kinds of leader behaviors-design choices and hands-on coaching-on the effectiveness of self-managing teams. Findings show that how leaders design their teams and the quality of their hands-on coaching both influence team selfmanagement, the quality of member relationships, and member satisfaction, but only leaders' design activities affect team task performance. Moreover, design and coaching interact, so that well-designed teams are helped more by effective coaching-and undermined less by ineffective coaching-than are poorly designed teams.