Virtual teams and the case of emergent leadership: an exploratory study

In the present business world, where various factors are constantly transforming the nature of professional entities and facilitating the foundation of a new type of team-based groups, namely virtual teams, the question about the power dynamics within said structures remains rather unclear. This exploratory study aims to analyze a wide mix of variables, ranging from personality traits to emotion detection abilities, in order to build a conclusive pattern that suggests what the most important qualities and skills of an emergent leader, in such virtual settings, could be. For that purpose, cutting-edge technologies like IBM Watson Personality Insights and LIWC dictionary were used to analyze the data. In addition, a performance-based test was also incorporated in order to measure the abilities of the participants to detect emotional nuances.