Leadership
Who can be considered a good leader? Throughout centuries many excellent leaders, generals and statesmen tried to lead, control and set aims. The route towards leadership8 theory and leadership psychology was very long until it could be stated that there is not such a thing as a good or a bad leader. A leader can be good in a given situation. A few decades ago the followings were thought about a good leader, see figure 4.
Figure 17. Ideal leader is like this? Stuller (1980) and Fayal (1918). Between these two theories surprisingly there are a lot of similarities.
The notion of leadership has been attempted to define in several ways. Klein says (2007, p. 29) “it is to achieve the goals with the assistance of others”. Naturally the athletes’ cooperation, competences and talent are also needed. Most professionals agree that leadership depends on “space”, environment in which both leader and athletes work. The best word for this is organization or association. The image of a good leader has considerably changed and developed since the end of the 19th century.
The development of leadership models
Figure 18. The development of leadership models. In this list those are highlighted which are important for sports organizations.
Leadership styles and characters (Murphy, 2005) styles
Figure 19. Leadership styles in sport, Murphy (2005).
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The general image of a leader is that he/she should lead, coordinate, giving and evaluating the tasks. This question is often asked: who becomes a good leader? It is an advantage if a leader also did sports earlier and could experience the structure and the strategy of sports organizations. It is also true that not all successful athletes have become efficient leaders or coaches. It is another profession. Not many athletes have become excellent leaders. There are only few of them. Learning to lead professionally is a longer process. This job requires specific competences, for example, the ability to make decision, communication and reflective skills. The environment and the macro or organizational culture where coaches and leaders do their job is also significant elements of leadership. There are /were efficient sport leaders of a country but as soon as they start/finish the work in a foreign country success do/did not characterize their new career. The reason for this failure is not the lack of professionalism. Many decades ago the classical model of leadership did not deal with the individual’s personality. Later the focus turned to both the inner and outer personality traits. Figure 17 summarizes these attitudes.
Figure 20. Are personality qualities enough for becoming a good leader or a coach?
New theories were needed within the realm of leadership models. Among the new trends Lewin’s views were accepted and widely applied. He identified leadership styles as autocrat and democratic ones (Laissez Faire was not a leadership style rather an experimental situation). Later, for example, Likert and Tannenbaum, see figure 15, worked out a more detailed version of the autocrat and the democratic leadership styles. They involved the competences of decision making in this list. Linkert and his fellow colleagues found that this model needs further development, a new typology was required, in a way in which the focus was shifted to the leaders’ activities, whether the task was finished or not, and personal relationship. The previous is a task oriented style the latter is a relationship centred one. This typology was built on the contingency model. It was assumed that the efficiency of a leader depends on whether the leader and his/her environment are in harmony. The typology of the situation where leaders work was tried to describe (Fidler’s contingency model). Its most important factors are the relationship between a leader and his/her under-strappers, the nature of the task and the leader’s formal power. To this leadership style task-or relationship orientation were attached. Empirical research has been carried out aiming to examine which situational criteria supported the effective leadership styles. This model is also used in case of sports organizations but further researches are needed to elaborate the theory. Recently new theories about leadership styles have been published. For example, Chelladurai’s multidimensional model (see figure 18.). He characterises coaches along 5 factors, namely, leading trainings, autocrat, democratic, positive feedbacks, and support. These factors are used to analyse how players view their coach, as well as whom they consider an ideal coach. After having analysed the data of the three questionnaires it became clear whether there were any differences among the factors.
Murphy, see figure 16, clearly shows how the outcomes of earlier and the latest leadership models have been adapted. Naturally we should not forget about a crucial fact, that is, leadership style is affected by each organization. Check the characters of leadership in figure 19.
Figure 22. The factors determining leadership style.
The notion of leadership is often identified with management. Bakacsi thinks (1996, p. 150) “leadership means the capability of organizing work so that everyone would be working in favour of the common aims”. It is worth examining how Likert (in Klein, 2007) views the difference between the affective and non-affective leadership style. So far it may have been clear that leadership does not equal to management. The former involves the work of employees, changes and motivation whereas the latter mainly focuses on managing the organization and the tasks. Actually leadership involves all the above mentioned competences as well as the knowledge of leadership psychology9. As it has been already mentioned in this study a world class athlete not necessarily becomes an effective leader or a coach. In sum, leading an organization or a team requires different skills and competences.
Effective Leaders (Likert)
Figure 23. Comparison of effective and none-effective leaders, based on Likert (in Klein, 2007).