Higher education and training systems must ensure that students are equipped with the skills needed to pursue both an initial occupation and further learning throughout their entire career. The technological change has reshaped labour market in a way that has favoured workers with higher skills. According to Cedefop’s report, the projected structural change to 2030 will lead to a strong increase in intellectual and social tasks (see Figure 33 in Cedefop, 2018). For these types of tasks, the training of skills related to team managing and communication becomes crucial. For this reason, this paper addresses a twofold purpose: first, to evaluate the impact of leader style on project coordination in university students, and second, to analyze whether intra-team communication can enhance the coordination of collective projects that require members' cooperation. Furthermore, we research whether the leadership style adopted is influenced by gender, exploring potential differences in how male and female leaders approach coordination and communication.

To achieve this purpose, we use an experimental pedagogical approach as a tool for the development of leadership competency. We conducted a classroom experiment with a total sample of 120 students. Two treatments were designed: one with communication, where students had access to a chat at the beginning of each round, allowing them to communicate anonymously, and one without communication, where students were not allowed to communicate with each other during the experimental session. The experiment consisted of a coordination game in which team members sequentially decided whether or not to support a collective project. If the majority of the team members decide to support it, the project will be carried out; otherwise, the project would not go forward. Each student has two types of information sources at his disposal: public information and private information. The leader of each team, the first student to decide, can makes his decision according to his private information, a good leader, or act contrary to his information by providing incorrect information to the team, a bad leader. This experimental design allowed us to investigate important aspects: i) whether team members followed the initial decision of the leader; ii) how the leadership style and the leader's gender influenced team coordination; and iii) whether the option to communicate improved the level of coordination.

Students learn that teams led by good leaders achieved a significantly higher level of coordination compared to teams led by bad leaders. In sessions with communication, there was greater adherence to the leader's decisions by team members, regardless of whether the leader was good or bad. Specifically, the proportion of uncoordinated projects decreased in the presence of communication. An analysis according to the gender of the leader revealed that, when team members are able to communicate, the number of good female leaders is significantly higher than the number of good male leaders. In addition, the number of projects coordinated by good female leaders is higher than the number of projects coordinated by men. These findings show the importance of equipping students with communication skills and a good leadership style in higher education. By incorporating these competencies into university curricula, students will be better prepared to face the coming changes in the labor market.

Keywords: Leadership, coordination, communication, classroom experiments, gender.