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Leadership And Motivation In Sports

Leadership has been defined in a variety of ways, but most definitions generally refer to it as a behavioral process with the intent of influencing individuals or entire groups toward a set of goals. As it pertains to the contexts of sport and athletics, the concept of leadership can play a critical role in a program’s successes or failures. Ultimately, the leadership behaviors of coaches can significantly impact the outcome of a team’s performance. From both theoretical and practical standpoints, motivation to perform a task is the key to achieving desired performance. Though the link between motivation and actual performance outcome can be somewhat blurry (i.e. a highly motivated team may not necessarily be a winning team), most will agree that a lack of motivation is not conducive for accomplishing any task. In the realm of sports, motivation entails the establishment of a desire to apply great physical effort and a sense of dedication towards the team goals. Therefore, one of the most important leadership functions for a coach in influencing an athletic team toward a set of goals is to be able to help create and facilitate athletes’ motivation. Where then can a coach begin in figuring out how to influence or motivate his/her athletes toward greater performances? The role of the coach as a motivator entails three major functions: * to provide direction toward the team’s goals * to help energize the team’s effort in that direction * to find a way to make the effort toward the goals persist and persevere over time. One useful way to understand how to go about meeting these three functions is to simply begin by analyzing the athletes in terms of their motivational patterns. Figure 1 below provides an illustration of leader behaviors and an athlete’s motivational process as developed from existing leadership theory and research. Figure 1: Leader Behaviors Attuned to An Individual’s Motivational Process Source: Chelladurai, P. (1981). The coach as motivator and chameleon of leadership styles. Science Periodical on Research and Technology in Sport. Ottawa, Canada: Coaching Association of Canada. An underlying aspect of pursuing excellence in sport is that the athletes themselves possess a certain degree of self-motivation. Put differently, individuals are motivated to engage in athletics because they value the rewards of such participation. The rewards may be things such as kinesthetic gratification (enjoyment of the physical feeling of performing the movements and skills), the desire to do something well, and attaining prestige or status among other things. However, the rewards of excellence and prestige accrue to the athlete only if a certain level of performance is attained. Therefore, the amount of effort and motivation must be closely linked to the expected performance level. In looking at Figure 1, the athlete’s motivational process begins with the athlete’s self-motivation, which in turn directly affects the athlete’s effort. The relationship between effort and performance, however, is not always straightforward. Rather, effort as it relates to performance can be impacted by other factors such as the athletes’ inherent traits and physical skill. Likewise, effort is also affected by the athlete’s role perception (i.e., understanding of personal responsibilities and how to fulfill those responsibilities). Performance is, in essence, what leads to rewards. The attainment of rewards results in satisfaction, though the level of satisfaction can be either enhanced or diminished depending on whether or not the athlete perceives the rewards to be equitable. In other words, an athlete compares the rewards received with some standard and decides whether the rewards are equitable or not. One way to look at this concept is to expect that the athlete will compare the total cost (time and energy) with the total benefits they receive (rewards). With enhanced satisfaction, the athlete is motivated to put forth more effort; with lowered satisfaction, motivation and effort is reduced. Given this basic model of an athlete’s motivation, performance and satisfaction, it is easier to specify the points at which a coach can intervene in order to enhance athletes’ motivation and performance. Generally speaking, five basic dimensions of coaching behavior have been identified: * Training and Instruction * Positive Feedback * Social Support * Democratic Behavior * Autocratic Behavior. Below provides descriptions of each of these dimensions. Three of these dimensions, namely Training and Instruction, Positive Feedback and Social Support directly relate to the motivational process depicted in Figure 1. Training and Instruction Behavior of the coach that entails teaching the skills, techniques and tactics of the sport as well as arranging and conducting practice sessions in order to maximize the mastery of the skills and coordinating and clarifying the roles and activities of each of the team members. Social Support Behavior Behavior of the coach characterized by a concern for individual athletes, for their welfare, for positive group atmosphere, and for warm interpersonal relations with members. Positive Feedback Behavior Behavior of the coach which includes providing reinforcements for an athlete by recognizing and rewarding good performance. Democratic Behavior Behavior of the coach which allows greater participation by the athletes in decisions pertaining to group goals, practice methods, and game tactics and strategies. Autocratic Behavior Behavior of the coach which involves independence in decision making and which stresses personal authority. Source: Chelladurai, P. & Saleh, S.D. (1980) Dimensions of leader behavior in sports: Development of a leadership scale. Journal of Sport Psychology, 2(1), 34-45. The Social Support behavior of the coach can directly affect the effort on the part of the athlete. The significance of Social Support behaviors is highlighted by the fact that athletes spend a large number of hours training relative to the duration of competition. The coach’s Social Support during these training sessions can soften the deadening impact of the strenuous and monotonous work during the season. The Training and Instructional behaviors of the coach consists of teaching the skills, techniques and tactics of the sport as well as conducting practice sessions that maximize the mastery of the skills. Training and instruction also involves defining and clarifying the role that each of the athletes on the team. The coach may organize the relevant abilities and talents of athletes into a complete strategy for the team, but these plans can only be successful if the athletes have a clear understanding of how they fit into the total picture. Ultimately, by improving the technical skills of the athletes and by clarifying their roles on the team, the coach strengthens the effort-performance relationship, and enhances the overall motivation of the team. The third dimension, positive feedback feeds into the concept of the athlete’s perceived equity of rewards. Coaches must be cognizant of how they distribute their positive feedback because it can be a very powerful and critical factor in the athlete’s motivational process. Essentially, a coach’s motto in this regard should be “equal rewards for equal performance.” Though they are not identified specifically in the athlete’s motivational process, the final two dimensions of coaching, Democratic and Autocratic Behaviors, are also important components of leadership. They are both decision-making styles that coaches may adopt, and it is important to point out that all activities carried out by the coach involve decision-making (including the acts of Social Support, Training and Instruction and Positive Feedback). In a democratic or participatory style the coach allows for their athletes’ input in a decision, while in an autocratic style the coach makes the final decision alone. Although, coaches instinctively favor one style over the other, recent approaches to decision-making suggest that the style of decision-making depends more upon the situation in which the coach finds him/herself rather than upon the coach’s attributes. Thus a coach should learn to adjust his/her decision style as the situation dictates. While models such as Figure 1 can provide useful insights into the motivational process, the nature of coaching entails interpersonal interactions between the coach and each of the athletes. Therefore, developing a protocol for optimal leadership behaviors can be somewhat complex. Each team member possesses a unique personality and ability level, and therefore the athletes will respond to a coach’s leadership in individual ways. Furthermore, coaching what is essentially a group of “I’s” toward a set of group goals is compounded by the fact that individual preferences may not necessarily be congruent with the leadership behaviors that a particular situation dictates. While the idea of a coach being able to meet the varying needs of each individual athlete is appealing, factors relating to the organization and its environment can also impose certain demands and constraints on the leader’s behaviors. Thus, one of the greatest challenges that coaches face is that of balancing the needs and desires of each team member while at the same time meeting the needs of the team as a whole and the demands of the situation. Obviously, these factors pose a problem for any coach seeking a simple answer to the question of how best to go about motivating athletes toward greater performances. Though there may not be a straightforward answer, many studies have been conducted in this area. One prominent approach used in many of these studies has been a leadership assessment tool developed by Chelladurai and Saleh in 1980 called The Leadership Scale for Sport (LSS). The LSS is a questionnaire made up of 40 items that are divided into sub-scales based on the five coaching dimensions mentioned earlier. The LSS has been used in a variety of contexts to measure many different variables related to leadership in sport. Generally, there are three main areas the scale has been used to measure: * athletes’ preferences for specific leader behaviors * athletes’ perceptions of their coach’s behaviors * coach’s perceptions of their own behaviors. Among other things, the scale has also been used to study other important facets of leadership in sport including athletic maturity, discrepancies in athlete preferences’ across cultures, discrepancies between preferences and perceptions of leader behavior, discrepancies between gender preferences, relationships between coaches and athletes, and team cohesion. The LSS can be as valuable from a practical standpoint as it has been from a theoretical standpoint. In fact, various sport organizations have put the scale to good use for their own personal assessment purposes. For example, in 2002 a North Baltimore Aquatic Club affiliated with USA Swimming used the scale to determine whether the athletes’ perceptions of their coaching leadership behaviors matched the perceptions and purposes of what the Club intended. In a similar manner, coaches themselves may engage in self-assessment using the items in the LSS. They can check by themselves the extent to which they engage in the behaviors listed in the LSS. They may also ask some impartial observers to assess the extent to which those behaviors are exhibited by the coach. In the final analysis, the foregoing analysis provides only a basic framework for the coach to utilize. Coach’s past experiences themselves do constitute a vast reservoir of information. Such experiences would show the links between coaching behaviors and athlete’s positive and negative reactions to those behaviors. In fact, most coaches may be able to relate their experiences to the model proposed in Figure 1. Such an effort would facilitate a greater understanding of the motivational processes of individual athletes, and how one’s leadership behaviors would enhance athlete’s motivation and effort.

 

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