engleski

THE RELATIONSHIP OF COACH'S LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOUR AND HIS MOTIVATIONAL STRUCTURE WITH ATHLETES' MOTIVATIONAL TENDENCIES

Athlete’ s motivation is being permanently upgraded, developed and changed under the different environmental influences present during sport participation. Situational factors act interactively on athletes’ dispositions ; the variations in sport behaviour are the functions of personal characteristics (goals, skills, knowledge, personality traits, etc.) and the environmental influences (physical and social alike). Athletes’ dispositional goal orientations and situational determinants, like coach’ s leadership behaviours and team motivational climate, interactively affect athletes’ behaviour, affects and cognitions. Up to date those variables have been investigated primarily separately. This study, on the contrast, by combining elements, variables, and predicted relationship from contemporary motivational theories and leadership models in sport, examined the relations between the coach’ s motivational structure and his/her leadership behaviour, and the athletes’ motivational structure. Through the interactionistic approach we integrated both the dispositional and the situational motivational variables with the coach’ s leadership behaviour as the determinants of athletes’ motivational structure. To answer to the general research issue, five investigation problems were established. On the sample of 580 Croatian young male junior basketball, football and handball players and their 54 coaches the following questionnaires were employed: Task and Ego Orientation in Sport Questionnairre (TEOSQ, Duda et al., 1995), Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (IMI ; McAuley et al., 1989), Perceived Motivational Climate in Sport Questionairre (PMSCQ, Seifriz et al., 1992), and Leadership Scale for Sport (LSS, Lee et al, 1993). The results obtained did not confirm completely the expected associations between the athletes’ and their coaches’ motivational structures. Bivariate correlation coefficients showed some significant associations, it seemed that athletes’ feeling of pressure was mostly influenced by their coach’ s motivational variables, i.e. by coach’ s ego goal orientation and his perception of performance motivational climate. Canonical discriminant analysis showed that highly intrinsically motivated coaches, with clear goal orientations, had the highest contribution to their athletes’ intrinsic motivation. The results of cluster analysis revealed two different types of coaches. The first type of coaches are more athlete-directed and low ego oriented coaches, while the second type are less athlete-directed, high ego oriented coaches. The first type of coaches, who prevail in this sample, are low ego oriented, they feel less pressured, and are more supportive, more instructive and more ready to give positive feedback to their athletes. Testing the differences between athletes’ motivational tendencies with regard to different coaches’ profiles showed that the athletes who were trained by coaches of the first type enjoyed their sports better, and invest more effort in training and competing ; they were highly task and moderately ego oriented, perceived the team motivational climate as mastery climate, and their motivational structure is more congruent to their coaches’ motivational structure, when compared to the rest of athletes. Comparison of athletes’ and their coaches’ perceptions of coach’ s leadership behaviour and team’ s motivational climate showed that coaches overestimated their tendency to be supportive, instructive and rewarding, i.e. they evaluated themselves in a more positive way than their athletes did, who also perceived the team motivational climate as less directed towards learning, improvement and cooperation in comparison to their coaches. Using structural equation modelling two structural models of athletes’ motivation were tested. The general model of athletes’ motivation was confirmed after two modifications, showing that athletes’ dispositional goal orientation, determined predominantly by task goal orientation, contributed much more to athletes’ intrinsic motivation than athletes’ perceptions of their coach’ s leadership behaviour, which influence was less important, but significant. The model was also confirmed by several multi-group analyses (by different: sport, coach’ s types and motivational climate patterns). The concurrent model, which presumed the mediating effect of perceived competence to athletes’ intrinsic motivation, was not confirmed. The obtained results corroborated and extended previous research findings. The applicative value of this empirical study leads towards the conclusion that athletes’ dispositional goal orientation role is the most important factor in intrinsic motivation development ; coach’ s influence is less significant. Coach’ s influence would be important for leading teams in a more athlete-directed way, shaping appropriate environment, i.e. mastery motivational climate, which foster the development of athletes’ intrinsic motivation. The recommendations derived from this study might be applicable to sport context, but to the area of physical education as well, aimed to better recognition of athletes’ and children’ s needs and creating interesting and challenging sport environment which would promote and foster intrinsic motivation.

intrinsic motivation; goal orientation; motivational climate; leadership; young athletes; LISREL

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