Department of Movement Sciences, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, QLD, Australia.
Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2020 Apr;30(4):766-786. doi: 10.1111/sms.13620. Epub 2020 Jan 15.
An emerging body of evidence indicates that, in addition to the coach, athlete leaders within a team are vital for a sports team's success. Sports teams are therefore keen to know which attributes are distinctly characteristic of high-quality leaders on and off the field. The present study aims to shed more light on this question.
A wide variety of traits and leadership behaviors was assessed in a sample of 776 athletes, stratified across gender, competitive level, and four sports. The leadership quality of each of the athletes (ie, as task, motivational, social, and external leader) was determined on the basis of the perceptions of teammates using social network analysis.
Findings revealed that leadership behaviors outweighed personality traits in distinguishing high-quality leaders from others on and off the field. Providing identity leadership that creates, embodies, advances, and embeds a collective sense of "us" in their teams was found to be a particularly important leadership behavior that characterized high-quality leaders both on and off the field.
The fact that leadership behaviors were important predictors of high-quality athlete leadership (and more important predictors than traits) suggests that leaders are not just born, but can also be made. Our findings therefore highlight the clear need for leadership development programs to target the behaviors that we identified as important predictors of leadership.
越来越多的证据表明，除了教练，运动员在团队中也是领导者，这对运动队的成功至关重要。因此，运动队渴望了解哪些特质是场上和场下优秀领导者的明显特征。本研究旨在进一步探讨这个问题。
在一个由 776 名运动员组成的样本中，对各种特质和领导行为进行了评估，该样本按性别、竞技水平和四项运动进行了分层。每位运动员（即任务型、激励型、社交型和外部型领导者）的领导素质是根据队友的看法，运用社会网络分析来确定的。
研究结果表明，领导行为比个性特征更能区分场上和场下的优秀领导者。研究发现，提供身份领导，即创造、体现、推进和嵌入团队的集体意识“我们”，是一种特别重要的领导行为，这种行为是场上和场下优秀领导者的特征。
领导行为是优秀运动员领导力的重要预测因素（比特质更重要的预测因素）这一事实表明，领导者不仅是天生的，而且可以后天培养。因此，我们的研究结果强调了领导力发展计划需要针对我们确定的重要领导行为预测因素的明确需求。
