Personality and leader emergence in virtual teams: A temporal and interactive perspective

Abstract

Leader emergence, the process by which an individual becomes influential and is granted a leadership role by others, is essential for the performance of virtual teams (VTs). However, in digitally mediated environments, reduced nonverbal and contextual cues alter how leadership behaviors are expressed, perceived, and granted. Drawing on a realistic accuracy model, we move beyond the leader-centric paradigm by conceptualizing leader emergence in VTs as a socially constructed, context-specific, and dynamic process shaped by the personality traits of both observers and focal individuals. Using a multiwave design and exponential random graph modeling, we examined leader granting across early, intermediate, and late phases in 65 VTs. Our approach advances traditional leader-centric methods, which focus solely on individual-level predictors, and demonstrates the value of network-based, system-level perspectives. The results show that observers high in agreeableness are more likely to grant leadership in the early and late phases. For focal individuals, conscientiousness and extraversion increase the likelihood of being granted as leaders in the intermediate and late phases, whereas agreeableness decreases it, and neuroticism becomes a positive predictor in the late phase. Finally, although leadership structures remain centralized, influence shifts among individuals with different attributes to meet evolving team needs.