ABSTRACT Team creativity is central to organizational success and relies on the open exchange and integration of diverse ideas, a process known as information elaboration. Yet, the differences members naturally bring to their team can sometimes impair effective team functioning and hinder creativity. Specifically, subgrouping can undermine information elaboration, thereby limiting team creativity. Team leaders have an important role in managing team functioning and are well‐positioned to counteract subgrouping effects. Building on the functional leadership perspective, we argue that relationship‐focused leadership better helps teams with higher subgrouping than task‐focused leadership to strengthen team identification, thereby fostering information elaboration and enhancing team creativity. To test this prediction, we conducted an experimental laboratory study with N = 103 teams performing a creativity task in an immersive escape room, assessing in‐game indicators of subgrouping (higher vs. lower) and manipulating leadership behavior (relationship‐focused vs. task‐focused). Results of hierarchical regression analyses support our predictions, showing that teams with higher subgrouping benefitted from relationship‐focused (as compared to task‐focused) leadership through increased identification and subsequent information elaboration, which in turn positively related to creativity. We discuss these findings and their implications for theorizing and for the practice of managing subgrouping and leading diverse teams.
Reinert et al. (Thu,) studied this question.