Lead Me to Train Better: Transformational Leadership’s Moderation of the Negative Relationship Between Athlete Personality and Training Behaviors

Abstract

High-quality training environments are essential for athletic peak performance. However, recent research highlighted that athletes' personality characteristics could undermine effective training.The current set of studies aimed to examine whether specific transformational leadership characteristics displayed by the coach would moderate the potential negative impacts of two personality traits (i.e., extraversion and neuroticism) on training behaviours. In study 1, ninetynine university athletes completed questionnaires assessing personality, transformational leadership, and training behaviours. In study 2, eighty-four high-level athletes completed the same personality and transformational leadership questionnaires. However, in study 2 the head coaches assessed athletes' training behaviours. Both studies showed that coach high-performance expectations moderated the extraversion-distractibility relationship. Further, both studies also demonstrated that the relationship between neuroticism and coping with adversity was moderated by coach's inspirational motivation. Our findings highlight that extraversion and neuroticism can negatively relate to training behaviours, but such effects can be moderated by certain transformational leadership behaviours.The ultimate goal of any competitive athlete is to strive for peak performance in competitive environments (Cohn, 2009). Research has shown that most elite athletes either train for at least ten years or accumulate at least 4,000 actual practising hours to achieve their desired level of expertise (Rees et al., 2016). Despite the essential time in building expertise, the quantity of training itself cannot distinguish world-leading serial medalling athletes from their less successful (non-medalling) counterparts (Hardy et al., 2017). However, recent research has shown self-regulated training behaviours have direct positive impacts on coach ratings of mentally tough behaviour (Beattie, Alqallaf, Hardy, & Ntoumanis, 2018) that benefit elite performance (Bell, Hardy, & Beattie, 2013). Therefore, it is even more important that the quality rather than the quantity of training in the preparation for peak performance states are examined. Recently, Woodman, Zourbanos, Hardy, Beattie, and McQuillan, (2010) developed the Quality of Training Inventory (QTI) to assess how well athletes train in their own environment. Woodman et al. developed their inventory on three essential training behaviours of distractibility .Further, Woodman and colleagues hypothesised that certain personality traits displayed by the athlete might be incongruent to training environments. However, these relationships may be mitigated if the athlete had a set of well-developed psychological strategies. That is, Woodman et al. found that athletes who had high levels of emotional stability coped better with adversity only when emotional control was high (study 1). Further, high levels of extraversion were related to higher levels of distractibility, but this relationship was mitigated when athletes engaged with high ...

Adolescent Athletes’ Perceptions of Both Their Coachs’ Leadership and Their Personal Motivation

“…Regarding the general correlations, there were direct relationships between all of the variables investigated, but the strongest relationship was between transformational leadership and intrinsic motivation. Our results on leadership and sport motivation factors were in line with previous sport research (Amorose & Horn, 2001;Arthur et al, 2011;Balaguer et al, 2011;Callow et al, 2009, Charbonneau et al, 2001Gomes et al, 2020;Smith et al, 2013;Zhang et al, 2019). Interestingly, our results were stronger than those from colleagues (2012,2013), possibly because of the high competitive skill level of our participant sample.…”

“…In relation to the participants' sport skill level, this variable is difficult to define. While we selected government designated high-performance and developing athletes, this variable did not explain the relationship between elite youth perceptions of transformational leadership and their motivational outcomes (Callow et al, 2009;Zhang et al, 2019). We could presume that the athleteperceived coach-athlete relationship among elite youth athletes is associated with more training time, more frequent competitions, and accordingly, more time with the coach.…”

“…On the other hand, the full range leadership approach has provided a more nuanced description of how a coach's interpersonal behaviors affect athletes' outcomes. For example, transformational leadership has been associated with athletes' sport performance (Charbonneau et al, 2001;Gomes et al, 2020;Zhang et al, 2019), sustained effort (Arthur et al, 2011), perceptions of cohesion (Callow et al, 2009;Smith et al, 2013), satisfaction with the coach (Rowold, 2006), experiences of wellbeing (Stenling & Tafvelin, 2014), and higher levels of collective efficacy (Price & Weiss, 2013). Interestingly, researchers have yet to explore how specific leadership behaviors (transformational vs transactional) may affect athletes' motivation.…”

Foresee the glory and train better: Narcissism, goal-setting, and athlete training.

“…In the NARCISSISM, GOAL-SETTING, TRAINING 8 present study, we examined the hypothesized self-inflated ´ dominant narcissism ´ goalsetting interaction on two important aspects of athlete training, namely distractibility and quality of competition preparation. Low distractibility (i.e., concentrating on training despite distractions) and high-quality competition preparation (i.e., focusing on specific plans and routines that form a competition or training preparation strategy) are vital to achieving optimal performance states (Woodman et al, 2010), and scores on these variables discriminate between higher-and lower-level athletes (Zhang et al, 2019). Importantly, narcissism is associated with high extraversion and low conscientiousness (Ackerman et al, 2011) that contributes to increased distractibility and poorer quality of preparation, respectively (Woodman et al, 2010).…”

“…In this study, we focused on the distractibility and quality of preparation subscales as these are likely the most relevant aspects of athlete training undermined by narcissism (Roberts et al, 2018). To NARCISSISM, GOAL-SETTING, TRAINING 11 enable coaches to rate their athletes we changed the QTI items to a third-person narrative (see also Zhang et al, 2019). Considering the nested nature of the data (athletes nested within teams/coaches), we conducted multilevel CFA for the coach-rated QTI and demonstrated a good model fit to the three-factor structure suggested by Woodman et al (2010); Robust χ 2 = 159.18, df = 62, CFI = .90, RMSEA = .07, SRMR = .07.…”