How Shared Leadership Strengthens Team Creativity and Innovation

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Discover how shared leadership boosts team creativity, trust, and innovation with real data and practical steps for today’s agile organizations.

Summary

To drive innovation, organizations should build teams around shared leadership. Recent research confirms that distributing leadership responsibilities increases creativity through trust, open knowledge flow, and psychological safety. For executives, replacing rigid hierarchies with collaborative structures leads to stronger outcomes and sustained performance.

Why Shared Leadership Accelerates Innovation

Creativity is now a requirement for businesses adapting to constant change. Traditional top-down leadership often limits participation and originality. Shared leadership, where team members lead based on expertise, enables agility and encourages high levels of contribution.
 

Data-Driven Benefits of Shared Leadership

1. Builds Trust and Promotes Learning
Teams with mutual trust are more likely to share leadership and support one another’s growth. A study involving 44 teams found that cognitive trust strengthened shared leadership. Team learning explained how shared leadership influenced team creativity (Lyndon et al., 2020).
 
2. Enhances Knowledge Flow for Innovation
In digital and hybrid teams, shared leadership improved how ideas and expertise were exchanged. A 2015 study showed that teams using distributed leadership reported higher levels of knowledge sharing and creativity (Lee et al., 2015). CEO innovation leadership at the top level also supported this pattern (Carmeli & Paulus, 2015).
 
3. Encourages Psychological Safety for Creativity
Psychologically safe teams, where individuals can share ideas without risk, perform more creatively. Shared leadership, especially relation-oriented approaches, helped establish this environment and supported more effective brainstorming (Han et al., 2019).
 

4. Requires Balanced Distribution to Prevent Conflict
Centralizing leadership in only a few team members can lead to internal competition and reduced creativity. A 2024 study revealed that evenly distributed shared leadership improved information sharing and reduced status conflict (Wu et al., 2024).
  
5. Improves Creativity at Both Team and Individual Levels
Shared leadership also boosts individual development. A multilevel study found increases in both team confidence (potency) and individual skill, leading to higher creativity across the board (Gu et al., 2020).
 

Frequently Asked Questions

Is shared leadership effective under pressure?
Yes. Shared leadership improved motivation and innovation in high-stress ICU teams during the COVID-19 pandemic (Ali & Wang, 2021).
 
Can shared leadership cause confusion?
It can. If poorly structured or overly centralized, role confusion may result. Clarity and support from formal leadership help avoid these issues (Liu & Gu, 2024).
 
How can executives apply shared leadership effectively?
Build trust, delegate responsibility based on skill, and maintain open communication. Support team safety and regularly assess how leadership roles are shared.
 

Conclusion

Shared leadership strengthens adaptability, encourages innovation, and delivers measurable gains across teams. It builds trust, improves knowledge flow, and activates problem-solving capabilities. For forward-looking organizations, shared leadership is a practical framework for performance and innovation.
 
 
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Related Research Topics:

  1. Distributed Leadership in Remote Teams
    Investigates how leadership roles shift and influence creativity in virtual or hybrid work environments.

  2. Psychological Safety and Employee Performance
    Explores how a safe interpersonal climate within teams supports innovation, engagement, and risk-taking.

  3. Knowledge Sharing as a Driver of Innovation
    Examines how information flow between employees correlates with problem-solving and breakthrough thinking.

  4. Trust Dynamics in High-Performing Teams
    Focuses on the role of interpersonal and cognitive trust in promoting collaboration and shared accountability.

  5. Leadership Balance and Conflict Management
    Analyzes how leadership role distribution impacts internal competition and team cohesion in project-based work.

  6. Multilevel Leadership Impact on Individual Creativity
    Studies how shared leadership affects both group innovation and individual employee output and skill development.

  7. CEO Leadership Styles and Organizational Creativity
    Evaluates how senior executive behaviors influence company-wide innovation practices and team-level ideation.

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Works Cited

Ali, A., & Wang, H. (2021). A Creative Pursuit to COVID-19 Intensive Care Team Performance: Role of Shared Leadership and Leader Creativity Expectation. Journal of Business Research. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3928334.

Carmeli, A., & Paulus, P. (2015). CEO Ideational Facilitation Leadership and Team Creativity: The Mediating Role of Knowledge Sharing.. Journal of Creative Behavior, 49, 53-75. https://doi.org/10.1002/JOCB.59.

Gu, Q., Liang, B., & Cooke, F. (2020). How does shared leadership affect creativity in teams? A multilevel motivational investigation in the Chinese context. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 33, 1641 - 1669. https://doi.org/10.1080/09585192.2020.1783345.
 
Han, S., Lee, Y., & Beyerlein, M. (2019). Developing Team Creativity: The Influence of Psychological Safety and Relation-Oriented Shared Leadership. Performance Improvement Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1002/PIQ.21293. 
 
Lee, D., Lee, K., Seo, Y., & Choi, D. (2015). An analysis of shared leadership, diversity, and team creativity in an e-learning environment. Comput. Hum. Behav., 42, 47-56. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2013.10.064.
 
Liu, M., & Gu, Q. (2024). Does Shared Leadership Always Have Positive Effects on Employee Creativity? A Role Conflict Perspective. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 31, 420 - 432. https://doi.org/10.1177/15480518241287644.
 
Lyndon, S., Pandey, A., & Navare, A. (2020). Shared leadership and team creativity. Personnel Review. https://doi.org/10.1108/pr-05-2019-0262.
 
Wu, J., Zhang, Z., Song, L., & Zhu, L. (2024). Shared leadership and team creativity: Examining effects of shared leadership level and concentration and the countervailing mechanisms.. The Journal of applied psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0001258.