Contents I. Introduction
The idea that teams work in cycles is a prominent theme throughout the literature on groups and team performance [1]. Moreover, this same literature has associated various activities with specific temporal phases or stages within a team project [2]. Even though globally distributed teams may find it more difficult to follow a temporal cycle [3], they, nevertheless, do experience similar types of activity patterns [4]. Unlike face-to-face teams, globally distributed teams must balance a number of temporal challenges that demand complex and dynamic coordination, management, and synchronization (e.g., Hamm, [5]). Meeting these challenges requires a leader who understands how to manage the temporal resources of a team [6]. In spite of this recent discovery, research on how leaders actually affect the temporal patterns of a global team is scarce. Although leadership researchers have made explicit links between temporally related activities and the leadership role [7], the formal use of temporal variables in creating specific relationships between leaders and the temporal patterns of a team is still scarce and scattered [8].
