| A Leader Needs... |
...good communication skills, a positive attitude, commitment and more
Everyone involved in athletics in the United States talks about how leadership is developed through athletics participation. But, do coaches develop leadership? If so, how? The following was first published on the FA Learning website.
By Hector R. Morales-Negron, Itay Basevitch and David W. Eccles
Coaches and managers need players who can contribute to the team with more than just great technical skill. Coaches want players who can support the team goals and objectives by becoming leaders. Coaches want these leaders to motivate and provide direction and instruction to other players on the team both in and out of play. But leadership identification and development in football are not simple challenges and are often ongoing because players move, rotate and retire. In this article, we discuss types of leaders, functions of leaders, and various leadership qualities you can look for in your players, before outlining a range of activities for developing player leadership.
Types of leaders
Before focusing on developing leaders, it is useful to have some understanding of the different types of leaders and leadership styles. A distinction is often made between assigned and unofficial leaders. Assigned leaders are assigned to the leadership position by others and include coaches, managers, team captains and other administrators. These individuals have been placed in a leadership position due to their experience, education and training, or demonstrated capability.
Unofficial leaders include those players that the rest of the team look toward at critical times for guidance and direction. These leaders are not appointed but have emerged owing to their chemistry or “cohesion” with the remaining players on the team and their behavior on the field. Therefore, as you scan your players in the search for potential leaders, start by looking at your unassigned leaders. These unassigned leaders are already part of the leadership of your team and organization because they have won half of the leadership fight; earning the trust of those to be led. Regardless of their appointed or unassigned status, what we expect from these leaders remains constant.
Leadership functions
So what does leadership really mean? If you research or ask this question you will get a multitude of definitions; however, one method for arriving at a definition for leadership is by evaluating what people expect from leaders. Common answers to this query include wanting a leader to tell us what we should be trying to achieve and how to achieve it, and to remind us that we can do it. From this approach then, leaders provide purpose, direction, and motivation for their team members. Understanding these functions is important when attempting to identify potential leaders in your team.
• Purpose First, in football, leaders provide purpose by giving players a reason to do things. For example, an emerging leader might be heard to say to other players during a game that the team needs to better defend the right wing to avoid getting beaten.
• Direction Second, players want direction; leaders provide direction by figuring out how to get the work done right with the players, time and other resources they have available. For example, following the right wing defense example, the emerging player might be heard directing players into positions and suggesting to them tactics that will enable the right wing to be defended.
• Motivation Effective leaders understand that people are driven when they have both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is motivation provided by feelings “that come from within” – for example, wanting to feel that one has a purpose in life, to feel competent and the desire for challenge. Extrinsic motivation is motivation provided by feelings about things that “come from without,” often from rewards such as prize money. Leaders motivate their players by highlighting to their colleagues both intrinsic and extrinsic motives. For example, they might give a speech to players reminding them that not only will they feel personal reward by meeting the challenge of rising above the stress of a cup final and playing their best (intrinsic reward) but also knowing that a great performance could lead to a win, which would lead to the chance of becoming the league champions and standing on the podium (extrinsic reward).
Leadership qualities
Certain qualities have been found to be common in successful leaders and these are described in this section. Coaches should look for these qualities in their players when attempting to identify potential future leaders and should help instill these qualities in their current leaders.
• Commitment Players will never follow a leader who they believe is not truly committed to the players’ and the team’s success. In one way, this is a trust issue. Players are not going to take risks and apply extra efforts to improve current performance on the basis of the leader’s recommendations if they do not trust that the leader is committed to the team more or at least as much as to himself or herself. The level of a player’s commitment can often be identified by the player being willing to undertake acts that put the team first; that is, acts that negatively affect him or her personally but are of benefit to the team such as sitting it out on the bench rather than playing when feeling under the weather.
• Communication Leaders cannot be effective if they lack communication skills. Leaders need to be able to communicate clearly and should also provide players with opportunities to speak out if they do not understand something that has been communicated to them. One method of testing the communication skills of emerging leaders is to ask them on several occasions to relay various messages, such as those relating to practice and tactics, to the remainder of the team and then, once this has been undertaken, to speak to various team members to assess the extent to which they understood the messages relayed. In addition, take time out, and try to foresee opportunities to observe your emerging leaders as they communicate with the players and, based on your observation, provide feedback to them on where they might be falling short in communicating well.
• Initiative Initiative is the tendency to act to better oneself (and in this case the team) without being told. For example, a player who comes to you to present possibilities for a more challenging practice session that he or she thinks will help the team is showing initiative. You can create situations that present possibilities for your players to show initiative. For example, ask your players to think, by the next match, about how the team’s performance might be improved. Observe which players take the initiative by coming back to you with good ideas.
• Listening If you want to lead, you have to listen. Leaders are easily accepted and embraced by players when each player feels that the players’ concerns are being heard and their input is being considered — in other words that they matter to the team. It does not mean that the leader has to agree with an individual player’s opinion, just that they consider and reflect on this opinion. Aspirant leaders should understand that good ideas can develop from the ground up. Starting out with the attitude that each player on the field might have something smart to contribute and is capable of making a clear contribution to the overall success of the team will predispose leaders to be better listeners. This quality in a player would be indicated by his or her active attempts to seek the opinions of typically less vocal and/or less listened-to members of the team.
• Positive attitude Effective leaders must be able to find the positive aspects of an adverse situation. Players are always going to be affected when they make an error or miss an opportunity. They might kick wide despite having an open goal or they might lose concentration when marking their man, which results in conceding a goal or they might react late to a penalty kick. Rather than criticize these mistakes, effective leaders treat the mistake as a learning opportunity by providing constructive advice on how to do something different to avoid the problem in the future. You can encourage your leaders to be positive following player mistakes by using the “sandwich” approach to providing constructive feedback which has two positive statements filled with constructive criticism. For example, following a mistake, first begin by praising the team in some way, such as for their effort, and follow this with constructive criticism. Critical sentences should begin with “Here is what I believe we should do to stop this problem happening....”. Finally, end with an encouraging statement “If we do these things, I am sure that we will really be ready to give so-and-so a run for their money next Saturday.”
• Responsibility Leaders must be prepared to assume responsibility for their decisions and their actions. This starts with personal responsibility, which can be indicated by the nature of the leader’s attributions about his or her own performance. If a match does not go as planned, does the individual only find other players responsible for the problems when the individual was also responsible? Do they take full responsibility only when things go right? You can ask yourselves these questions as you evaluate your players for leadership potential.
• Teachability Effective leaders do not exhibit a “know it all” attitude but instead are willing to learn and actively seek out learning opportunities. The best way to identify teachability among players is by observing their actions and behaviors after they make mistakes and after they receive criticism. Do they use the information usefully and make adjustments to their practice and the way they play or do they react negatively? Individuals with teachability make adjustments quickly, and actively look for advice and guidance from others in order to improve their and the team’s performance.
• Vision A leader without a vision for the future is no more than a “fire-fighter” who leads only so that current situations are resolved to bring peace to the environment or to maintain the status quo. They do not look to longer-term goals because they might require that the status quo is changed as opposed to maintained, which is a much harder task. However, effective leaders have a longer-term vision and are able to articulate that vision to their teammates. This quality is often indicated by an individual being prepared to propose changes that are unpopular in the short term (because, say, they create extra work for the team) but potentially lead to a performance gain in the long term.
• Leadership development activities In this section we describe various activities that allow coaches to take an active role in developing leaders in their teams by providing them with opportunities to make decisions about important team-related issues.
• Off-the-pitch planning and strategizing Ask potential leaders to plan and strategize about various issues such as individual practice sessions, a weekly training schedule, or on the pitch play.
• On-the-spot decisions Place your potential leaders on the spot by asking them to make decisions about important issues under time pressure. For example, you could ask a potential leader, without prior warning, which player he or she thinks should be the substitute for an injured player on the pitch.
• Take the day off You or another individual in a supervisory position can “take the day off” and let your potential leaders embrace the opportunity to exhibit their capabilities for an entire day. Days off can provide good opportunities for potential leaders to gain practice at leading for a relatively long period of time.
• Small group problem solving Use hypothetical as well as actual situations to develop leadership by creating small groups in an off the pitch setting. Appoint a different leader for each group you create. This will provide you with opportunities to see how each leader interacts with the remaining players and how they react to the leader. The problems for discussion can vary; you can ask the team to resolve tactical game strategies, discuss practice regimens, or discuss what they feel are the barriers to current performance improvement.
Summary
In this article, we have discussed types and functions of leaders and described various qualities that coaches might look for when attempting to identify potential future leaders and should help instill in their current leaders. We have also outlined a range of activities for developing leadership. We hope that by considering the concepts and trying the activities outlined here, coaches and managers will be able to identify and develop players into leaders who can contribute to the team with more than just great technical skills.
Further reading
Weinberg, R. S., & Gould, D. (2005). Foundations of Sport and Exercise Psychology (Chapter 9: Leadership in sport). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.
Hector Morales-Negron and Itay Basevitch are graduate students in the Sport Psychology program within the Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems at Florida State University. Major Morales-Negron is also Academy Professor at the U.S. Army’s West Point Military Academy. Dr. David Eccles is an Assistant Professor at the Learning Systems Institute and Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems at Florida State University. He has published in the areas of expertise and skill acquisition and served as a sport psychology consultant for the Welsh Canoeing Association from 1998 to 2001.
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