The Relationship between Leadership Effectiveness and Task Interaction of Family Physician Team: Mediated by Team Cohesion and Moderated by Team Support

Background The leader of family physician team plays an important role in performing the contracted service functions and is a key player in influencing the task interaction of the members within the team. Objective To identify the mechanisms of the impact of leadership effectiveness on task interaction in family physician teams, and examine the mediating role of team cohesion in the relationship between the two and the moderating role of team support. Methods From October to December 2021, 593 family physician team members from 12 township health centers/community health service centers in Qianjiang City, Hubei Province, and Changsha City, Hunan Province, were sampled by random sampling and cluster sampling methods to conduct a questionnaire survey, which covered the basic information of the members, leadership effectiveness, task interaction, team cohesion, and team support. PROCESS was used to test the mediating effect of team cohesion in the relationship between leadership effectiveness and task interaction and the moderating effect of team support in it, and a simple slope diagram was drawn. Results A total of 580 cases were included with the effective response rate of 97.8%. The leadership effectiveness score of family physician team members was (4.28±0.73), the team cohesion score was (4.21±0.64), the task interaction score was (4.37±0.65), and team support score was (4.09±0.83). The Pearson correlation analysis showed that the four scale scores were linearly and positively correlated with each other (P<0.05). Team cohesion mediated the relationship of leadership effectiveness with task interaction (with a size of indirect effect of 0.08, accounting for 12% of the total effects). Team support moderated the relationship of leadership effectiveness with team cohesion (β=-0.12, P<0.01). The results of simple slope tests showed that the effect of leadership effectiveness on team cohesion was greater for family physician teams with lower team support. Conclusion The empirical analysis found that leadership effectiveness had a significant positive effect on task interaction; team cohesion mediated the relationship between leadership effectiveness and task interaction; and the positive effect of leadership effectiveness on team cohesion was moderated by team support.