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Soccer Coaches and Leadership

 

            Coaches are the natural leaders of sport teams, especially group sport, such as soccer. Barrow (1977) defined leadership as the process that affects the goal settings of individuals and groups. Numerous researchers found that the leadership of coaches impacted the performance of teams and development of athletes (Chen, 2013; Konter, 2011; Price & Weiss, 2013; Vella, Oades, & Crowe, 2013). For example, a coach provided feedback for positive behaviors and the behaviors were reinforced with youth athlete. Leadership of coaches was related to personal status and coaching level. Konter (2011) examined the relationship between the marital status of the coaches and the leadership power perception of amateur and professional soccer coaches. Participants included 165 male soccer coaches. Of the participants, 71 coaches were technical directors who had an A level license, 46 coaches who had a B level license, and 48 coaches who had an amateur level license. The mean age of the coaches was 40.24 years old (SD = 8.40), and the average coaching years were 8.56 years (SD = 6.75). Konter (2011) used an adapted Turkish version of Power in Sport Questionnaire-Self. Researchers used the Kruskal-Wallis and the Mann-Whitney test to examine the correlation between the leadership power and the marital status of different levels of the coaches. Konter (2011) found that perceptions of Referent Power of single coaches were lower than married coaches for both amateur and professional coaches. The perception of Expert Power of professional coaches was higher than amateur coaches. For professional coaches, the perception of Expert Power of single coaches was lower than married coaches. For amateur coaches, the perception of Expert Power of single coaches was higher than married coaches. The Referent Power was more strongly related to marital status of coaches, and the level of coaching was more influential for the Expert Power.


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