The impact of leader’s expansive body posture and forward leaning behavior on team performance: A Mixed-Method study

The purpose of this study was to investigate how the nonverbal behavior of individuals in leadership positions, expressed during regular staff-meetings, relates to team performance. Hypothesized relationships among key variables were based on psychological and management literature and imply that expansive body posture and body leaning postures demonstrated by a leader during regular meetings with staff facilitate followers ‘cognitive and affective trust in the leader, pro-active behavior and team information sharing within their team members. This study combined follower surveys and video-coded leader nonverbal behavior data, sampled from regularly occurring staff-meetings in a large public-sector organization. The data consisted of 20 coded videos which featured 20 leaders and their followers. The findings revealed a significant correlation between follower’s cognitive and affective trust in leadership and the followers information sharing. This may help future researchers to develop new methods to improve team performance by facilitating trust in the leadership.