The Testing of a Four-Dimensional Model of Athlete Leadership and Its Relation to Leadership Effectiveness

Abstract

Athlete leadership researchers have typically investigated three dimensions of athlete leadership behaviors, which include the meta-categories of task-, social-, and externaloriented leadership. More recently, motivational leadership was added as a fourth dimension. Researchers in organizational leadership have advanced another dimension, referred to as change-oriented leadership (Yukl, 2012). Therefore, in the present study, we tested a four-dimensional model that includes the dimensions of task-, social-, external-, and change-oriented leadership. Two samples of 161 athletes and 69 coaches rated every player on their team on the four-dimensional model and on perceived athlete leadership effectiveness. A multilevel regression analysis showed that all four dimensions of athlete leadership significantly predicted perceived athlete leadership effectiveness for players and three dimensions (i.e., social-, task-, and change-oriented leadership) for coaches. These results support the importance of change-oriented leadership in relation to athlete leadership.

Mediating effect of organisational innovation in the prediction of change-oriented leadership on organisational performance

“…Precisely, our study extends the established view of change-oriented leadership’s effect on organisational performance, indicating that change-oriented leadership does not only affect organisational performance but also organisational innovation. Furthermore, this work adds empirical evidence to the extant association between on change-oriented leadership and organisational performance (Andersen, 2010; Bergsten et al , 2021; Elkomy et al , 2020; Fan et al , 2020; Ghasemy et al , 2020; Katz et al , 2009; Maechel et al , 2020; Maladzhi, 2015; Øygarden et al , 2020) by proposing and confirming the mediation role of organisational innovation on the relationship between change-oriented leadership and organisational performance. Although prior studies have examined the mediating role of organisational innovation on the effect of various leadership styles on organisational performance (Ebrahimi et al , 2016; Sethibe and Steyn, 2015; Zehir et al , 2012), such studies did examine the mediating effect of organisational innovation along with the path from change-oriented leadership to organisational performance.…”

Athlete Leadership Development Within Teams: Current Understanding and Future Directions

“…The authors delivered four separate workshops over the course of the season to three teams (while three other teams served as a control group). These four workshops were designed using the four athlete leadership meta-categories advanced by Maechel et al (2020) that contained social, task, change and external-oriented forms of leadership. Using a mixed-methods approach, the quantitative data showed that all four meta-categories were significantly higher for the three teams in the intervention condition compared to the control condition.…”

“…The study conducted by Fransen et al (2014) emphasised the relevance of this leadership classification by demonstrating that an effective fulfilment of the four leadership roles by members of the team resulted in higher team confidence, stronger team identification and better team performance outcomes (e.g., ranking). Expanding upon the work of Fransen et al (2014) , Maechel et al (2020) suggested an additional change-oriented leadership role, focused on promoting change and innovation and encouraging team learning.…”