Written by When I say the word ‘Leader’, we all probably think of someone different. Some of us may see a former coach, a player on our team, or someone entirely unrelated to sports. Leaders are everywhere, in every field, but sports is where my mind goes to first when thinking of the word ‘Leader’. We’ve all heard the word and learned about what it takes to be a good leader, and hopefully we’ve applied some of that to our own work as athletes and coaches.
No matter the sport or the level, it’s difficult to build the team culture we want and find success without a strong sense of leadership coming from the top down. And this all starts with the coaches and administrators leading the charge.
Being a coach is the ultimate form of leadership in my opinion. We are in charge of a group of young people and tasked with getting them to all work together toward a common goal, handle adversity along the way, and find some way to reach that goal. It’s a pretty big ask to be a coach and accomplish all of this, and if you aren’t prepared to be an effective leader it can make it all that much harder.
I’m never going to tell you there is only one way to do things, we are all unique and in unique circumstances. These are just options that are out there for you to implement and try if you think it would help you and your team grow and form into the healthy, successful team culture you’ve been striving for.
Today we are going to talk about Leadership as a whole, because I truly believe it’s the backbone to coaching at any level. We’ll take a look at a few different ‘traditional leadership styles’, different ways to develop and grow as a leader, and a few research based guidelines for coaches to follow in order to be as effective a leader as possible.
The best way to look at this information is through research and academia because ‘Leadership’ is one of those things that is extremely subjective and looks quite a bit different to each and every one of us!
Instead of writing this section like one of the research papers I wrote in grad school, filled with references and annotations, I’ll tell you from the start that the majority of this information and research came from: The 6th Edition of Foundations of Sport and Exercise Psychology written by Weinberg & Gould (One of the only textbooks I held onto after finishing school, and one of my favorite references!)
Leadership Styles
A massive part of forming an effective leadership method and style all starts with forming healthy and foundational relationships with your athletes. With this piece missing, you have nothing to base your leadership off. You’re essentially trying to build a house without a foundation. Once you’ve formed some of those deep, meaningful relationships your athletes are much more willing to listen and follow whatever it is you offer them. They better understand that you truly care for them and are offering them solutions and suggestions that are in the best interest of the team’s success. Relationships are everything when it comes to leading a program and building a healthy culture.
The traditional Leadership Styles are: Democratic, Autocratic, Laissez-Faire, and Holistic. I don’t want to spend much time on these because frankly, it’s kind of boring.
While it’s good to understand these concepts to an extent, oftentimes when we start talking about leadership styles, we get too caught up in the name of them and the connotations surrounding it. Instead, I think it’s important to focus on what behaviors and strategies YOU can implement that fit your team the best.
It’s important to remember that every situation is different and may require a different style or response. It’s good to have a primary and preferred leadership style, but there are bound to be situations where that style just doesn’t fit, and that’s when it’s important to be flexible and be able to adapt to what will work best in that situation for that athlete.
Just because you subscribe to an Autocratic style of leading your program, that doesn’t mean that you can’t implement a few Democratic aspects here and there and allow your players to have some power once in a while, or vice versa.
There is no such thing as a perfect formula here for all of us. The only way to find the formula that works for you and your team is to:
- Understand Yourself
- Understand Your Team
- Understand Your Goals
Once you have a full understanding of your entire situation, you can start determining the best way to lead the group toward the goal you’ve set out to achieve. If you just blindly subscribe to a style and never deviate from it, you’re missing out on getting the most out of your team because they may not respond best to your current style.
This is a situation where you have to put your ego to the side, be willing to learn and grow, and find the best strategy for the success of your team!
Effective Leadership Development Through Sport
When we talk about leaders, we often fall back to the Nature vs. Nurture debate and determine that leaders are born not made, right? I don’t completely disagree with that. I believe that some people are more predisposed to becoming great leaders than others, but that doesn’t mean that no one else in the world can become a great leader. Everyone’s life experiences are unique and will form them into different individuals- Some more likely than others to be effective leaders.
Leadership, just like most things, is a skill when you break it down to its core. It’s something that can be learned and improved upon over time. Effective leadership, especially in sports, is a combination of a multitude of different factors of the coach, the athletes, and the situation as a whole.
A lot of research from Weinberg & Gould points to the fact that Effective Leadership is made up of 4 Key Components:
- The Leader’s Qualities- Some common qualities among great leaders include: Integrity, Flexibility, Loyalty, Confidence, Accountability, Preparedness, Patience, and Self-Discipline. Not every leader will have these exact same qualities, but these were the most common ones found among some of the most successful leaders they studied.
- Leadership Styles- Just as we talked above. Having a sound style to the way you lead creates a sense of normalcy and consistency for everyone involved. It doesn’t have to fit perfectly within one of the styles listed, it can be a combination of multiple styles- whatever fits your situation the best.
- Situational Factors- What level are you coaching? How big of a team is it? Individual or Team Sport? How much time do you get with your athletes each day? How often do you compete? The list goes on, but taking inventory of exactly what you’re dealing with helps clear a lot of things up.
- Followers’ Qualities- Again, understanding WHO you are coaching. Knowing what your athletes respond best to, and planning accordingly. Every athlete you encounter will be unique in some way, so understanding them to the best of your ability is a tall task, but it’s vitally important to formulate an effective leadership plan for you and your team.
I think we can all agree that this is far from everything that makes up a good leader, but it’s a good foundation to start from. If you can look at those 4 points and answer them according to your situation, you’re in a pretty good place as the leader of your program.
Being in a good place is awesome, but we never want to get complacent or stuck in our ways. One of the qualities mentioned above is Flexibility and I think that’s one of the most overlooked ones on that list. Coaches can often become creatures of habit and fall victim to the “because that’s the way we do it” mentality and never grow, learn, or improve as they stay in the game for extended periods of time.
It’s important to put your ego to the side and be willing to learn, grow, and adapt your leadership style just as you would your tactical game plan from game to game. As time goes on, people change, society changes, and you have to as well, or risk being left behind when the ‘new school’ mentality starts to come through. We’re at a place in time where building a healthy team culture is harder than ever, which is why taking leadership seriously is so important when you find yourself in charge of a group of young, impressionable athletes.
The most successful coaches and leaders of all-time found their success through constantly growing and evolving alongside their athletes. The second you stop growing is the second you start falling behind.
Guidelines for Coaches
When scouring this textbook to refresh myself on some of this information, I found it really difficult to pick and choose what to include here today. The chapter a lot of this information is from is over 20 pages long and filled with fascinating topics, graphics, and more references than anyone should ever have to read.
But, along with the information I’ve shared so far, there was one graphic that really stood out to me and it was one put together back in 2001 by Frank Smoll & Ronald Smith who spent the previous 25 years extensively researching effective coaches and leaders at all levels of sport.
After 25 years of interviews, studies, and research they compiled a list of ‘Behavioral Guidelines for Coaches’ with the goal of providing some words of advice for coaching young athletes.
Even though this list is now 20 years old, I think it still provides an incredible amount of value to coaches no matter what level you’re at, so I thought I would pass it on here:
1.Provide reinforcement immediately after positive behaviors and reinforce effort as much as results.
2.Give encouragement and corrective instruction immediately after mistakes. Emphasize what the athlete did well, not what they did poorly.
3.Don’t punish athletes after they make a mistake. Fear of failure is reduced if you work to reduce fear of punishment.
4.Don’t give corrective feedback in a hostile, demeaning, or harsh manner because this is likely to increase frustration and resentment.
5.Maintain order by establishing clear expectations. Use positive reinforcement to strengthen the correct behaviors rather than punish incorrect behaviors.
6.Don’t nag or threaten athletes to prevent chaos.
7.Use encouragement selectively so that it is meaningful.
8.Encourage effort but don’t demand results.
9.Provide technical instruction in a clear, concise manner and demonstrate how to perform the skill whenever possible.
If I had to summarize everything I wanted to say about leadership and coaching into as small of a list as possible, it would probably look painfully similar to this list. I love every one of these points and think they can apply to every single one of us as a coach.
Leading a team and building a healthy team culture is such a difficult task to handle alone, thankfully we have people out there researching constantly and figuring out the best ways to do so. Resources like the ones throughout this article are what I base everything I do off when working with athletes and have seen it work wonders. Now it’s up to each and everyone of you reading this to digest this information and determine the best way to implement it into the situation you’re currently in.