Team collective efficacy as a mediator of coaching leadership effects on exhaustion: a multilevel investigation

Purpose – Team-based work is increasing within organizations nowadays. Despite calls for differentiation between individual and team levels of analysis, research on leadership effects at multiple levels is still limited. By integrating the Conservation of Resources and Social Cognitive theories, this paper aims to analyze the relationships between coaching leadership, team collective efficacy and individual exhaustion via multilevel modeling. Design/methodology/approach – This paper opted for an exploratory study testing a 2-2-1 multilevel mediational model, positing team collective efficacy as a key factor in mediating the relationship between coaching leadership at the team level and exhaustion at the individual level. The hypotheses were tested on a sample of 311 employees, nested in 72 teams (Msize = 5.70, SDsize = 2.82 team members) of a large Italian company that provides financial services. Findings – Results supported the positive association between coaching leadership and team collective efficacy, which, in turn, was negatively associated with team members’ average score in exhaustion and fully mediated the effect of coaching leadership on exhaustion, even controlling for team design features (i.e. task interdependence and team virtuality). The association between coaching leadership and exhaustion was only indirect, explained by teamcollective efficacy. Research limitations/implications – Because of the self-report nature of the measures and the crosssectional nature of the data, this research results might raise problems of variance in common methods and not allow causal conclusions to be drawn. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed propositions further. Practical implications – This paper includes several practical implications for enhancing group efficacy beliefs, which have an impact on individual well-being within the team. Originality/value – This paper addresses the lack of empirical findings on the multilevel nature of the relationship between coaching-based leadership, collective teameffectiveness and individual exhaustion.