Abstract
Leadership can be defined as a process whereby a person influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal (Northouse, 2010). Not surprisingly, within a sport team, effective leadership has been assigned great value by both coaches and athletes, each crediting the other for their role in contributing to the success of the team. In fact, previous research has shown that coaches and athletes use different types of leadership behaviours (Loughead & Hardy, 2005). However, it should be noted that athletes were asked to evaluate the behaviours provided by all athlete leaders on their team. Another method of examining leadership behaviours is to ask the athletes how they perceive their own leadership behaviours. The participants were 114 athletes competing in a variety of interdependent team sports. The athletes completed the Leadership Scale for Sports (Chelladurai & Saleh, 1980) and were asked to evaluate their own leadership behaviours as well as the leadership behaviours of their coach. The results showed that coaches were perceived by athletes to exhibit training and instruction and autocratic behaviours to a greater extent than athletes. Conversely, athletes were judged to exhibit more social support, positive feedback, and democratic behaviours than coaches. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for understanding the role of leadership from both coaches and athletes.
