Paradox-Aligned Self-Leadership Rotations: Intentionally Asymmetric Self-Leadership to Improve Team Outcomes

Stewart, Courtright, and Manz (2019) highlight paradoxes of self-leadership, including “me-but-not-you” and “self-leadership through collaboration.” Luciano et al. (2024) show that managing the collaboration paradox (unity vs. diversity) in virtual teams improves performance, but requires sustained intervention. This idea flips the default assumption that uniformly high self-leadership is optimal: we test deliberate asymmetry—some members take strong self-leadership in exploration phases (promoting divergent thinking and voice), whereas others anchor in exploitation phases (promoting unity, coordination, and execution). Roles rotate over time and task phase. We integrate Ding et al.’s (2024) centralization × tie strength findings to adapt role structures to the team’s communication network and use voice behavior (Alpiani & Harsono, 2025) as both an input and outcome. The novelty lies in prescribing and validating phase-specific, rotating asymmetry, rather than universally amplifying self-leadership. Using an RCT with virtual teams, we could pair paradox-thinking training (Luciano et al., 2024) with role-rotation schedules and assess impacts on knowledge sharing and resilience (Ding et al., 2024). The expected impact: a blueprint for timing, distributing, and rotating self-leadership to exploit paradoxes rather than smoothing them away.

References:

1. Unveiling the Impact of Communication Network on Engineering Project Team Performance: The Interplay of Centralization and Tie Strength. Xue Ding, Qian Shi, Chao Xiao (2024). Psychology Research and Behavior Management.
2. The Impact of Voice Behavior on Team Performance Evidence From Indonesian Retail Firms. Devi Alpiani, Deti Mulyo Harsono (2025). Buletin Poltanesa.
3. Self-Leadership: A Paradoxical Core of Organizational Behavior. G. Stewart, Stephen H. Courtright, Charles C. Manz (2019). Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior.
4. Improving Virtual Team Collaboration Paradox Management: A Field Experiment. Margaret M. Luciano, Jean B. Leslie, John E. Mathieu, Emily R. Hoole, Rebecca Anderson, Virgil W. Fenters (2024). Organization science (Providence, R.I.).