Abstract
Research has shown that athlete leadership is related to a variety of individual and team level correlates (e.g., Price & Weiss, 2013). Despite these positive relationships, the majority of research examining athlete leadership has focused on the frequency of leadership behaviors with little regard in determining which behaviors would be important for athletes to develop. Furthermore, it would be critical to determine which leadership behaviors are important to develop based on team tenure. Consequently, Janssen (2004) proposed that athletes at the intercollegiate level can be classified into three leadership categories: rookie, emerging, and veteran leaders. Thus, the first purpose was to determine the importance athletes placed on athlete leadership behaviors. The second purpose was to examine the importance of these leadership behaviors based on team tenure (i.e., rookie, emerging, veteran). Varsity athletes (N = 148) rated the importance of 17 athlete leadership behaviors and ranked their importance based on team tenure. Overall, the results indicated that it was important for athletes to display 16 of the 17 leadership behaviors (means greater than 3.07 out of 5). As for team tenure, participants were allocated 30 points to distribute among those who should be exhibiting specific leadership behaviors. The results indicated that it was important for all athletes to display leadership behaviors, however, it was highest for veteran athlete leaders 13.98 (SD = 2.37), followed by emerging 9.54 (SD = 1.05), and rookie athlete leaders 6.51 (SD = 1.90). The results are discussed in relation to athlete leadership development programs.
