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Team learning orientation magnitude and strength are important to sustain group effectiveness and adaptability, but scant research has investigated them simultaneously. We examine how transformational leadership, behavioural integration, and the degree of team personality heterogeneity in extraversion and agreeableness contribute to the magnitude and strength of team learning orientation. In study 1, using a time‐lagged survey sample of 50 work teams, we found that transformational leadership was associated with two team learning orientation aspects through the mediation of behavioural integration. In study 2, in a survey sample of 72 teams, we replicated these findings and further demonstrated that the relationship between transformational leadership and behavioural integration is enhanced when there is greater personality homogeneity in agreeableness. Our findings suggest that transformational leadership is able to converge a high and strong learning orientation in work teams through prompting behavioural integration among members, yet the influence of transformational leadership is contingent on the degree of team personality heterogeneity. Our research conclusions highlight important insights for team leaders about how to create a strong team climate of learning in order to sustain the long‐term success of their work teams. Practitioner points Transformational leadership is shown to be associated with high levels of team learning orientation magnitude and strength. Thus, to encourage team learning, adopting transformational leadership training is an effective strategy. To converge team learning orientation (i.e., promoting strength), it is important for transformational leaders to encourage information exchange, collaboration, and joint decision‐making (i.e., behavioural integration) among team members. The influence of transformational leadership can be amplified when the team is homogenous on members’ personality. As a result, providing leaders with knowledge of the ‘deep‐level’ composition of team members could help them better foster team behavioural and learning dynamics
Chiu et al. (Sun,) studied this question.