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The purpose of this study was to clarify the role of shared leadership in self-directed teams by testing its relationship with teamwork mental models and team performance. Data from 40 intact, naturally occurring teams involved in highly interdependent tasks demonstrated that the distribution of informal leadership and whether or not perceptions of leadership were reciprocated among leaders were related to the degree of similarity and accuracy of team mental models as well as subsequent team performance. Specifically, teams with a coordinated type of shared-leadership perception demonstrated significantly higher levels of team mental model similarity, team mental model accuracy, and team performance than teams with a distribution of leaders that failed to recognize each other as leaders as well as teams with no leaders. However, teams with distributed-coordinated leadership were significantly different than teams with centralized leadership only with respect to team mental model accuracy scores. Finally, this study builds on prior research by demonstrating that the team mental model accuracy contributes more to team performance than team mental model similarity.

This article examines the impact of role ambiguity and trust on the transformation of task conflict into relationship conflict. Building on the work of Simons and Peterson (2000) we argue that the work environment—in the form of role ambiguity—provides information with which individuals assess the motivations underlying task conflict. We hypothesize that under high role ambiguity, individuals are less likely to attribute an ulterior motive to those engaging in task conflict because they see the conflict as stemming from the needs of the work itself. In a sample of 141 managerial, professional and administrative employees we find strong support for this hypothesis as well as the additional hypothesis that this effect is stronger under conditions of high trust.