Leadership Research Summary:
- The study of athlete leadership has gained momentum over the past 15 years and is recognized as a vital component of team performance. Specifically, athlete leadership has been most studied with regards to its impact on the outcome of cohesion. As a result, a current gap in this area of research is the analysis of attribute data, such as tenure and self-reported athlete leadership, and how this attribute data is related to outcomes, such as cohesion.
- However, much of current research examining this relationship has utilized traditional statistical methods, limiting interpretation of data because team members are inherently interdependent. One approach that considers the interdependence of team members is social network analysis (SNA). SNA facilitates the study of social structures within networks of people, such as a sports team, as well as individual attributes influencing or being influenced by the network.
- The present study used SNA to examine athlete leadership and cohesion within a sports team of 22 female professional hockey players. Participants self-reported tenure, completed a self-rated athlete leadership questionnaire, and rated each of their team members on network variables of athlete leadership and cohesion. The results showed that high network density and low degree centralization was found for both athlete leadership and cohesion networks, with high indegree centralities for each team member.
- Further, a strong correlation was found between the athlete leadership and cohesion networks (p < 001), indicating a positive relationship between the athlete leadership ties and the cohesion ties. Lastly, significant correlations were found between self-rated athlete leadership and the networks of athlete leadership and cohesion. Together these data suggest that a cohesive team shares leadership responsibilities with many ties between teammates.
Leadership Research Findings:
- The relationship between athlete leadership and cohesion is important for sport teams because both athlete leadership and cohesion are positively associated with performance (Carron et al., 2002; Fransen et al., 2017). The direction of these relationships are reciprocal, such that cohesion improves performance and good performance improves cohesion (Carron et al., 2002). This is also the case for the relationship between leadership and performance, as indicated by the Multidimensional Model of Leadership (Chelladurai, 2007), where leadership characteristics positively impact leadership behaviour which in turn improves performance, and improved performance enhances positive leadership behaviours. Taken together, there are many positive relationships between leadership, cohesion, and performance, and thus are important for improving team effectiveness.
- First, the present study may show a different relationship due to how highly dense and cohesive this particular team was; thus, the density of the team may act as a moderating factor for the relationship between an athlete leadership or cohesion network and athlete tenure. Second, the current study sampled athletes playing at a professional level compared to studies (Loughead et al., 2006; Duguay et al., 2018) where the athletes were competing at an intercollegiate level. At the intercollegiate level, coaches place a major emphasis on developing their athlete leaders gradually over the course of their five-year career (Duguay et al., 2020). In contrast, it may be the case that athletes at the professional level are expected to provide leadership as soon as they join the team. Future research should examine whether and what are the different expectations for leadership based on playing level.
- Interestingly, while self-reported athlete leadership was positively associated with the athlete leadership network, it was negatively associated with both cohesion networks. Meaning that individuals that rate themselves highly as leaders, are also perceived highly as leaders within the team, however these individuals tend to be rated lower on being cohesive with their teammates. This is an unexpected finding since typically athlete leadership and cohesion are highly correlated, however this is the first study to assess both self-rated athlete leadership and network athlete leadership simultaneously. These results suggest that some differences may exist between one’s self-perception of leadership and teammates perception of their leadership as it relates to cohesion between members, and further investigation into this discrepancy is warranted.