An examination of the relationship between athlete leadership and cohesion using social network analysis

Abstract

Two studies investigated the structure of different athlete leadership networks and its relationship to cohesion using social network analysis. In Study 1, we examined the relationship between a general leadership quality network and task and social cohesion as measured by the Group Environment Questionnaire (GEQ). In Study 2, we investigated the leadership networks for four different athlete leadership roles (task, motivational, social and external) and their association with task and social cohesion networks. In Study 1, the results demonstrated that the general leadership quality network was positively related to task and social cohesion. The results from Study 2 indicated positive correlations between the four leadership networks and task and social cohesion networks. Further, the motivational leadership network emerged as the strongest predictor of the task cohesion network, while the social leadership network was the strongest predictor of the social cohesion network. The results complement a growing body of research indicating that athlete leadership has a positive association with cohesion.

Athlete leadership in sport teams: Current understanding and future directions

“…Recent research exploring athlete leadership in sport has further highlighted the benefits of athlete leadership in teams by examining its relationship with a range of important team-related factors including: satisfaction and team dynamics (Aoyagi, Cox, & McGuire, 2008;Eys et al, 2007); its influence on task and social cohesion (Loughead, Fransen, Van Puyenbroeck, Hoffmann, & Boen, 2015); performance (Fletcher & Arnold, 2011); external perceptions of effective leadership (Schneider, Ehrhart, & Ehrhart, 2002;; and links to the effectiveness of approaches to leadership within the team including transformational and transactional leadership (Price & Weiss, 2011;Rowold, 2006;Vidic & Burton, 2011;Zacharatos, Barling, & Kelloway, 2000).…”

“…To address these limitations, researchers recently created valued leadership quality networks, in which the strength of the ties represents the perceived athlete leadership quality, ranging from 0 (very poor leader) to 4 (very good leader) (Fransen, Van Puyenbroeck, et al, 2015a;Fransen, Van Puyenbroeck, et al, 2015b;Loughead et al, 2015). Instead of focusing on the presence of athlete leaders, the present studies thus focused on the quality of athlete leaders.…”

“…Furthermore, the social network approach is ideally-suited to enhance on our knowledge on the specific leadership attributes (Fransen, Van Puyenbroeck, et al, 2015a). Finally, the approach allows for further examination of the antecedents and consequences of high-quality athlete leadership (e.g., Loughead et al, 2015).…”

Standing out from the crowd: Identifying the traits and behaviors that characterize high‐quality athlete leaders

“…To identify the leadership quality of all players in the team in relation to the four leadership roles, previous research in sports contexts has measured indegree centrality . In network terms, this is a node‐specific measure (with nodes referring to the players) that captures the average strength of a node's incoming ties (ie, the average leadership quality of an athlete, as perceived by his or her teammates).…”

“…To identify the leadership quality of all players in the team in relation to the four leadership roles, previous research in sports contexts has measured indegree centrality. 28,37,38 In network terms, this is a node-specific measure (with nodes referring to the players) that captures the average strength of a node's incoming ties (ie, the average leadership quality of an athlete, as perceived by his or her teammates). Although the measure has become a standard measure of leadership quality in sport, 25,28 it does not take into account potentially confounding factors that might bias perceived leadership ratings.…”