Relationship between leadership behaviors and performance The moderating role of a work team’s level of age, gender, and cultural heterogeneity Jens Rowold TU Dortmund University, Dortmund, Germany Abstract Purpose – In today’s organizations, the heterogeneity of work teams is increasing. For example, members of work teams have different ages, genders, and/or cultural backgrounds. As a consequence, team leaders have to face the challenge of taking into account the various needs, values, and motives of their followers. However, there has been very little empirical research to test whether the influence of leadership behaviors on performance is moderated by facets of team heterogeneity. This paper aims to address this issue. Design/methodology/approach – The leadership behaviors of transactional and transformational leadership, laissez-faire, consideration, and initiating structure, as well as three facets of heterogeneity (i.e. age, gender, and culture) were assessed in an empirical study based on a sample of n ¼ 283 members of German fire departments. These team members also provided self-ratings for their performance. Findings – The results revealed that the relationship between three leadership behaviors (i.e. transformational leadership, laissez-faire, and consideration) and performance was being moderated by facets of team members’ heterogeneity. Practical implications – Both transformational leadership and consideration work best when the work team is heterogeneous with regard to gender. Originality/value – The importance of the contextual influences of team members’ heterogeneity for effective leadership processes was explored theoretically, and subsequently, demonstrated empirically for the first time. Keywords Leadership, Heterogeneity, Team, Performance management Paper type Research paper Introduction Over the last decade, important advancements have been made contributing to our understanding of effective leadership. For example, we know a great deal about the effectiveness of various leadership behaviors, based on results of meta-analysis (Dumdum et al., 2002; Judge et al., 2004). However, although recent theoretical works have emphasized the context sensitivity of leadership (Conger, 2007; Hunter et al., 2007), empirical research in this field is still rare. That is, the contextual conditions under which the leadership-effectiveness relationships hold true are not yet fully explored. As a consequence, scientists as well as practitioners still cannot recommend specific leadership behaviors to organizational leaders for certain situations with any The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/0143-7739.htm Part of this research was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, No. Ro 3058/2-1, principal investigator: Jens Rowold). The author would like to thank Christina Wohlers and Kathrin Staufenbiel for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript. LODJ 32,6 628 Received September 2009 Revised June 2010 Accepted November 2010 Leadership & Organization Development Journal Vol. 32 No. 6, 2011 pp. 628-647 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0143-7739 DOI 10.1108/01437731111161094