How group goal setting mediates the link between individual-level emotion-related factors and team performance

Goal setting theory states that its principles (i.e., specific, difficult goals lead to higher performance than general tasks) and the four mediating factors (i.e., attention, strategies, effort, and persistence) of the goal–performance link can be generalized to the workgroup level. However, less is known about individual-level emotional dynamics within a team that shape team-level motivation and strategies and subsequent team performance. Using multisource data, we tested a multilevel mediation model that posits fear of dominance among the fellow teammates and emotional contagion of fear as individual-level predictors of the group goal setting (GGS) mechanisms (i.e., directions, effort and persistence, strategies), which in turn simultaneously but differentially predict subsequent team performance. Surveys were administered to 315 athletes nested in 38 sport teams. Performance was measured objectively via team rank. Results suggest that fear of dominance was negatively related to group direction and effort and persistence. More interestingly, emotional contagion of fear negatively predicted strategies, which in turn positively predicted team performance. We add to the literature by demonstrating the cross-level mediating role of GGS factors in the relationship between individual-level emotional contagion of fear and the team-level performance outcome. Our study also contributes to contagion and dominance literatures as well as GGS theorizing, thus bridging the two disparate research fields of individual-level emotion-related processes and GGS. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed in light of the relevance of successful performance management as well as of preventing the adverse effects of individual-level dysfunctional affective experience on teamwork motivation and outcomes.