About

Leslie DeChurch is an academic and expert in organizational leadership and teamwork, serving as a Professor of Communication Studies at the Northwestern University School of Communication. She holds courtesy appointments in Management & Organizations at the Kellogg School of Management and in the Department of Psychology at the Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences. Her research examines the leadership and teamwork that enable extraordinary success across various contexts, including the Italian Renaissance, space exploration, and human-AI partnerships. She leads the ATLAS lab: Advancing Teams, Leaders, and Systems, which conducts laboratory and online experiments, meta-analytic integrations, and field studies to understand core organizing processes of teams and leaders. DeChurch is also the Director of the immersive undergraduate program Leading a Renaissance, Then and Now, held annually in Florence, Italy. Her work has been funded by agencies such as the NSF, NIH, NASA, and the Army Research Office, and she has contributed to influential publications and national committees on teamwork and leadership issues. She holds a PhD in Organizational Psychology and is recognized as a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, and the Society of Industrial & Organizational Psychology.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Data Mining
• Sociology
• Knowledge management
• Information Retrieval
• Machine Learning
• Econometrics
• Art
• Data science
• Engineering
• Applied psychology
• Mathematics
• Social psychology
• Psychology
• Engineering ethics
• Management

Selected publications

• Collective Attention in Virtual Teams: A Pathway for Mitigating Communication Delays

  Personnel Psychology · 2026-03-02

  articleOpen access

  ABSTRACT Virtual work has become a defining feature of modern organizations, intensifying the need for strategies that support virtual team performance. Communication delays—prolonged intervals between sending and receiving messages—are one of the most persistent and consequential barriers to virtual team performance. However, effective mitigation strategies remain scarce, likely due to an incomplete understanding of the explanatory mechanisms linking delays to team performance. Adopting a dynamic view of teamwork, we propose that delays impair team performance by disrupting collective attention —the synchronous focus of team members on a shared target. Building on the collective attention literature, we identify three factors that help teams sustain collective attention during communication delays: task experience , which strengthens members’ capacity to coordinate attention; message simplicity , which increases the clarity of attentional cues; and shared leadership , which enhances social connectivity and mutual engagement. We test our framework in two studies. Study 1, a longitudinal spaceflight simulation, demonstrates that collective attention mediates the negative relationship between communication delay and team performance, and task experience buffers this effect. Study 2 uses a calibrated agent‐based model (ABM) to simulate how collective attention networks evolve under varying levels of communication delay, task experience, message simplicity, and shared leadership. Results show that collective attention is best sustained when teams combine high task experience with clear communication and distributed influence. Together, these studies position collective attention as a central mechanism explaining how communication delays degrade team functioning and offer a multi‐pronged intervention framework for sustaining it amid the challenges of virtual teamwork.

  PublisherDOI

• Vero: An accessible method for studying human–AI teamwork

  UNC Libraries · 2025-03-18

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The differential impacts of team diversity as variability versus atypicality on team effectiveness

  Scientific Reports · 2025-02-06 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access

  Interest in team diversity initiatives has grown significantly over the past decade. Some initiatives focus on creating "highly variable" teams where members bring a wide range of attributes. Others prioritize "highly atypical" teams, where members contribute attributes underrepresented within the broader organization or field, regardless of variety. These two approaches entail markedly different assumptions about maximizing team diversity's benefits. Comparing short- and long-term outcomes provides important insights into cultivating and leveraging diverse teams. To do so, we examined the proposal submissions of all variable and atypical teams within a competitive seed grant program over six years. We assessed short-term performance based on funding outcomes following a three-stage review process and long-term viability based on team members' tendency to collaborate more in the future. Our findings demonstrate that diversity operates differently when conceptualized as variability versus atypicality. Specifically, while team variability often resulted in neutral or even negative short-term performance, it had a mixed effect on long-term viability. Conversely, while team atypicality had a mixed impact on short-term performance, it consistently enhanced long-term viability. These results underscore the distinctive value of nurturing highly atypical teams to promote lasting collaboration success and highlight the importance of aligning diversity cultivation strategies with organizations' short- and long-term goals.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Embedded Interactions and Selective Disclosure: Network Effects on Conversations aboard Skylab

  Symbolic Interaction · 2025-07-09

  articleOpen access

  How do absent others influence our interactions? We argue in this paper that interactions are embedded within networks formed by chains of specific relationships between known third parties. The anticipation of future interactions with external others conditions our interpretation of the current situation and affects our behavior in the interaction. We employ embedded interactions to analyze the case of conflicts between the astronauts and ground control during NASA's Skylab 4 missions. Our analysis reveals how anticipation of eventual interactions between uninvolved actors led the crew to withhold important information from ground control, information that would have been shared with ground control if the astronauts had been able to prevent its future transmission. Skylab astronauts were heavily concerned with how their actions would be framed through these chains of interactions and eventually interpreted by Congress and the general public. The astronauts' attempts to save face by controlling information about themselves at these distant sites led them to deviate from protocol and produced the conflicts for which Skylab 4 is best known.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Corrigendum to “Leading the crew to Mars: Evidence from NASA HERA analog crews” [Acta Astronaut. 237 (2025) 141-150]

  Acta Astronautica · 2025-10-29

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Social perception in Human-AI teams: Warmth and competence predict receptivity to AI teammates

  UNC Libraries · 2025-02-05

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• When Two is Too Many and Not Enough: Discoveries on the Stability of Shared Leadership from Rome to Mars

  Academy of Management Discoveries · 2025-12-05

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Leadership research has established the benefits of shared leadership, but much less is known about its stability. Drawing on data from NASA space analog teams and Ancient Rome (32 BCE–491 CE), we discover that the number of leaders critically shapes whether shared leadership persists or changes form. Using observational data from 13 NASA crews and historiometric data from the Roman Empire, we find that shared leadership often arises in both contexts, but its stability varies markedly. Specifically, while both hierarchical leadership (single leader) and group shared leadership (three or more leaders) tend to persist, dyadic shared leadership (two leaders) is uniquely unstable. This

  PublisherDOI

• Leading the crew to Mars: Evidence from NASA HERA analog crews

  Acta Astronautica · 2025-08-18

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Leading Without Authority: The Legacy of Lucrezia Tornabuoni (1427-1482) in Renaissance Florence

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2025-07-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Modeling the “who” and “how” of social influence in the adoption of health practices

  Social Networks · 2025-04-05

  articleOpen access

  Family planning is heralded as one of the ten most significant contemporary public health achievements, yet it remains underutilized in countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, that might most benefit from it. While substantial strides have been made to address supply-side barriers to modern contraceptive (MC) adoption in these regions, demand-side obstacles like personal or partner opposition are less understood. This study investigates the role of social influence in shaping MC demand in communities with low modern Contraceptive Prevalence Rates (mCPR). Using the Structured Influence Process (SIP) framework, we examine how an individual's social relations and exposure to persuasive messages, either in support of or opposition to MC use, jointly influence their decision to adopt or reject contraceptives. Using survey data from two different Kenyan communities, both exhibiting low mCPR but one relatively higher than the other, we observe that mere exposure to MC users or non-users during free-time interactions is insufficient to sway usage decisions. However, the combination of direct contact with contraceptive users and persuasive messages emerges as a potent force of influence. In the lower mCPR community, only a few types of persuasive messages are circulated, and they are all consistently influential in either encouraging or discouraging MC use. These messages primarily appeal to individuals’ desire to do what is “right” by emphasizing social validation and deference to trusted authorities, or their desire to do what is “liked” by reinforcing interpersonal bonds and reciprocal obligations. In the higher mCPR community, a broader range of persuasive messages effectively promote MC use; however, only those invoking social shame effectively discourage it. These findings highlight a crucial distinction between “prevalent vs. persuasive” messaging: While many persuasive messages may be prevalent (i.e., used often), only a subset are also persuasive. Recognizing which messages are merely pervasive versus those that are genuinely effective is vital for efficiently allocating resources to promote or counter MC use narratives. Leveraging research across network science and persuasion, this study contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of how social influence shapes contraceptive decision-making. • Empirically shows that network ties influence modern contraceptive (MC) use through explicit persuasive messages about MCs. • Exposure to MC users does not lead to MC adoption unless close friends and family actively discuss their MC use decisions. • In higher-prevalence communities, many persuasive message types circulate but only shame-based ones effectively deter MC use. • In lower-prevalence communities, fewer persuasive message types circulate but all effectively influence MC use and non-use.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Collaborative Research: SCC-SBE: Research Coordination Network on Leveraging Computational Social Science for Understanding Virtual Organizations

  NSF · $337k · 2013–2016

• Innovate Against Time: Drivers and Mechanisms of Knowledge Innovation Within and Across Organizations

  NSF · $499k · 2011–2014

• VOSS: Creating Functionally Collaborative Infrastructure in Virtual Organizations

  NSF · $400k · 2009–2011

• CAREER: Leadership for Virtual Organizational Effectiveness

  NSF · $108k · 2016–2018

• CAREER: Leadership for Virtual Organizational Effectiveness

  NSF · $425k · 2011–2017

Frequent coauthors

• Noshir Contractor

  60 shared

• Jessica Mesmer‐Magnus

  University of North Carolina Wilmington

  27 shared

• Dorothy R. Carter

  Michigan State University

  24 shared

• Alina Lungeanu

  Northeastern University

  17 shared

• Toshio Murase

  Waseda University

  13 shared

• Lindsay Larson

  Florida International University

  13 shared

• Raquel Asencio

  Block Engineering (United States)

  12 shared

• Stephen J. Zaccaro

  George Mason University

  12 shared

Labs

• ATLAS labPI

Awards & honors

• 2024 Sage Publishing Award for the best management history p…
• 2023 Sage Publishing Award for the best management history p…
• Fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA), 2016
• Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science (APS), 2…
• Fellow of the Society for Industrial & Organizational Psycho…