Purpose ¿ To establish the extent of the influence of variables which, under a particular style of leadership, form the necessary basis for encouraging and developing group, entrepreneurial activities carried out within the context of small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) thus explaining the transmission of the entrepreneurial spirit to the work team and, consequently, the existence of collective entrepreneurship in the firm. Design/methodology/approach ¿ From the results of a questionnaire carried out via personal interviews with over 100 firms, a confirmatory factorial analysis was carried out that provided us with the variables to be studied. The cause/effect relationships and their implications were obtained from applying a LISREL8 analysis. Findings ¿ A leadership based on relationships shows a positive impact, with an intensity of more than double that of participative leadership. A task-oriented leadership style reduces the chances of transmitting the entrepreneurial spirit to the work team by having a negative influence on the generation of collective entrepreneurship in the firm. Research limitations/implications ¿ The models contain the relations of ¿causality¿ between these latent variables, assuming that the variables observed therein are indicators or symptoms of those other variables. This could be considered as a limitation to our analysis as the study of covariance. Practical implications ¿ The model has important applications for the process of incorporating new CEOs into the organization. Originality/value ¿ This paper presents confirmation of the need for aspects traditionally associated with the figure of the entrepreneur to be transmitted to the organization¿s collective as a whole and for the existence of collective entrepreneurship: an area of management that has thus far received relatively little attention and which could have important practical implications. Keywords Entrepreneurialism, Team working, Leadership, Small to medium-sized enterprises