Flow in Teams: How Proactive Individuals Thrive in Reflective Teams to Enhance Performance

This study expands our understanding of the antecedents and outcomes of flow in work teams. We focused on how individual personality is related to individual performance via flow in a team environment based on flow theory. This study longitudinally examined the mediating role of flow and team reflexivity on the relationship of proactive personality to performance from 79 ongoing teams. Using multilevel structural equation modeling (MSEM) with a Bayesian estimator, we found that proactive personality is positively associated with individual performance in a team environment through flow, but not through team reflexivity. We also found that both proactive personality and team reflexivity are positively related to flow. Moreover, flow mediates the relationship between team reflexivity and performance. These findings are discussed in terms of the antecedents from both individual and team levels of flow, and the practical implications for increasing performance.