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The purpose of this paper is four‐fold: to highlight the emerging stream of team interaction in research; to present a methodology to measure and map out team interaction; to compare team interaction between US and Spanish MBA teams so as to identify any differences between the two cultures; and to propose team interaction focused programs in educational institutions and organizations.

The study used a quantitative research design and administered a survey that captures ten aspects of team interaction in four major dimensions to 32 US MBA teams (n   =   176) and 31 Spanish MBA teams (n   =   152) engaged in the same group exercise and used ANOVA analysis to compare the two groups.

The findings show that the US and Spanish teams differ only in the diverging dimension of their actual team interaction (F   =   26.42, p  <  0.000). A comparative analysis of the ideal team interaction show that both MBA samples desire increased levels of the diverging (F   =   37.7, p <  0.000) and recursiveness (F   =   23.65, p   <   0.000) dimensions.

The study provides a methodology and highlights the significance of employing a team interaction perspective for team learning and development programs in educational and organizational settings.

The paper presents team interaction along four major dimensions – divergent, convergent, status and recursiveness – and provides a brief overview of the theory of Conversational Learning. The approach used in this study contributes to this emerging stream of team research and presents the significance of focusing on the social‐emotional aspects of team interaction in educational and organizational team development programs.

Research has extensively underlined the positive impact of emotional, social and cognitive competencies on leadership effectiveness. Despite the fact that literature acknowledges that these competencies can be learned from different experiences over a person’s lifetime, research has mainly focused on leadership development in adulthood. Through the case study of the Ca’ Foscari Competency Centre, this chapter advances the understanding on how higher education can favour leadership development at the early stage, in terms of identity formation and self-regulation, through the implementation of the intentional change theory, considering that this learning process varies according to different developmental trajectories.