engleski

The coach in the mirror

THE COACH IN THE MIRROR Introduction Sport performance, although depending mostly on characteristics of an individual athlete, reflects also the coach-athlete relationship and its impact on the sport preparation process. The complexity of coaching could be expressed through different personal and professional relationships a coach establishes with his/her athletes (Serpa, 2001), while guiding athletes’ behaviour from the scientific, technical, pedagogical and sport expert’s point of view, attempts to develop the whole series of different factors for successful sport performance. As coaches usually differ among themselves in their qualification, personality and leadership style their impact on development of athletes my vary. This influence reflects in athletes’ perceived competence and skills, self-esteem, motivation, goal orientation etc. Since sport in general is considered to be important tool of athletes’ development, it is very important for young athletes to be provided with a quality experience (Barnett, Smooll & Smith, 1992). Positive general experiences will increase all components of their sports experience, thus providing further benefits in continuation of their sport involvement and prevention of dropouts from the sport environment. Although there is a large empirical support that coaches could affect many aspects of athletes’ characteristics and behaviour, there is a lack of studies in this field, especially investigations of the two-way interaction between coach and athletes, or of causal relationship between coach behaviour and athletes development. Usually, researchers focus on one of the following approaches to study leadership (Zhang, Jensen & Mann, 1997): a) personality traits of a coach – based on assumption that leadership qualities are innate; successful coaches are borne with some special characteristics that are effective and could impact athletes’ high achievements; b) leadership behaviours of a coach – presumes that leadership behaviour can be learned and directed; c) situational coaching leadership – depends on sport situation, athletes and their reactions, etc. The most effective leadership is probably the result of interaction between the situation, personal characteristics and actual behaviour of a coach. On the other hand, successful performance and satisfaction of an athlete is a function of congruence between actual coach’s leadership behaviour and athlete’s preference for such behaviour. A multidimensional model of sport leadership behaviour (Chelladurai & Caron, 1981) focuses on three aspects of coaching leadership: actual behaviour, preferred behaviour and required behaviour, covering the characteristics of a coach, an athlete and a situation, respectively (Zhang, Jensen & Mann, 1996). Previous studies showed that some gender differences existed with regard to athletes’ estimation of leadership behaviour. Girls trained by a male coach showed lower similarity between coach’s and athlete’s perception of leadership behaviour than boys and girls trained by a female coach (Alferman et al., in press). Also, female coaches were more realistic than male coaches in their self-ratings (Salminen & Liukkonen, 1996). Authors explain it with better self-knowledge in females. Chelladurai (1984) found perception and preference discrepancy of leadership behaviour between basketball coaches and their players in all the sport leadership behaviour (LSS) dimensions. Horne and Carron (1985) studied compatible and incompatible coach-athletes dyads in female intercollegiate teams. Variables that predicted athletes’ satisfaction were discrepancy between perception on the social support, reward and the instruction dimension of coaches’ leadership behaviour. Chelladurai and Carron (1983) investigated on the sample of 262 basketball players athletes’ preferences for training and instruction behaviour and social support as a function of athletes’ maturity. The results showed that trend in preference for training and instructions decreased with age, but a trend for social support progressively increased. The purpose of this study is to investigate differences between coaches’ self-evaluation and athletes’ perception of their coaches’ leadership behaviour on the sample of female basketball players. The perceptions of leadership behaviour were measured with the British version of the Leadership Scale for Sport (Lee et. al. 1993). No differences between coaches’ and athletes’ estimations of leadership behaviour were expected. Materials and Method Participants were 23 Croatian basketball male coaches (25-61 years old) and their 317 basketball female players, aged 10 to 27 years (M=15.49 yr., SD=3.14). The number of athletes per coach varied from 7 to 46; one coach trained sometimes different age groups in the same club. Girls were members of basketball clubs from all over Croatia competing in teams of varying degree of competence. Instrument and Procedure. The British version of the Leadership Scale for Sport (LSS) (Lee et al., 1993) was applied. It was translated to the Croatian language (Barić, 2002) and adapted for basketball prior the measuring procedure. With permission of the club management, the coaches and athletes were informed about the purpose of the study. All testing procedures were announced in advance. The girls and the coaches participated voluntarily and confidentiality was guaranteed. The coaches completed the self-rating version of the questionnaire. The girls were requested to rate the leadership style of their coaches using the LSS rating form. It is 21-item questionnaire measuring four dimensions of leadership behaviours in sport. The version applied corresponds to the original version of the LSS, but for the autocratic style dimension, that showed low reliability in the previous application (Salminen, Liukkonen, 1996). The measured dimensions are: explanation and instruction (Instruction), democratic style (Democratic), positive feedback (Feedback) and social support (Support). The items were rated on a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from ‘never’ to ‘always’. All the items were condensed to a particular dimension by mean scale values. Results and Discussion The internal consistencies, estimated by the Cronbach’s alpha coefficients, were acceptable for all the dimensions, calculated on both the samples. (Table 1). Table 1: Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for LSS dimensions (N coaches=23, N athletes=317) DIMENSIONS COACHES ATHLETES Instruction 0.70 0.78 Democratic 0.87 0.84 Feedback 0.63 0.67 Support 0.62 0.72 The differences between evaluations of coach leadership behaviour were computed by subtracting the evaluation average obtained from the athletes of the each coach from coach’s own evaluation (Table 2). The significance of these differences was tested by the nonparametric Mann-Whitney U-test, because the ratio of variances, that had been tested before for each the factor respectively, due to different samples size, differed significantly in the ‘instruction’ and ‘democratic’ dimensions (Table 2). For that reason it is not correct to use a parametric statistic procedure for these scales. Table2: The coach and athlete perception of the coaches’ leadership behaviour DIMENSION COACHES (23) ATHLETES ( 317) M SD M SD Difference V-ratio Mann-W. U test Instruction 4.54 0.38 3.73 0.74 0.81 3.90* Z= 5.38** Democratic 3.56 0.69 2.95 0.86 0.61 2.11* Z=1.64 Feedback 4.01 0.50 3.74 0.72 0.27 1.54 Z=3.33** Support 2.50 0.84 2.44 0.93 0.06 1.23 Z=0.33 * statistically significant differences between variances ** p<0.01 These results, contrary to the previous hypotheses, showed that coaches and athletes differ in their estimation of leadership behaviour. Table 2 shows that coaches evaluated themselves in all dimensions higher, than their athletes did. Coaches estimated themselves as more instruction giving, socially more supportive, more rewarding and democratic when compared to estimation of their athletes. The value of differences between the coach self-ratings and athletes’ ratings of leadership behaviour can be understood as indicators of either similarity (zero difference would mean full congruence of their estimations) or dissimilarity (other values). These results show that all difference values are positive meaning that coaches overestimated their behaviour in all the dimensions in comparison with experience of their athletes’ about it. Farther, the rating of coaches and athletes differ significantly in two dimensions, in particular in the instruction and feedback dimensions. However, there was no significant difference in perception of democratic behaviour and support between coaches and athletes. The general trend of coaches overestimation of their own leadership behaviour can be understood, because people do generally tend to overestimate their own characteristics and behaviour, especially the desirable ones, and to underestimate the socially undesirable ones. The similar was found in previous researches (Horne & Carron, 1985; Salminen & Liukkonen, 1996). The greatest similarity of ratings was obtained for the support dimension. The coaches seem to be realistic in estimating themselves as low supportive, which is congruent with the athletes’ estimations. These findings may contribute to improving the communication process between coaches and their athletes. Coaches can evaluate effects their leadership behaviour produces in their athletes and recognise what changes are needed in their behaviour referring to the desirable pattern of sport leadership behaviour (high ratings in all dimensions). As many researchers agree that coaching leadership behaviour can be learned and reinforced (Zhang, Jensen & Mann, 1997) it is important to investigate it together with some of situational factors, as are, athletes’ opinions, for instance. The leadership style of a coach is an important factor affecting emotional atmosphere of training sessions (Salminen & Liukkonen, 1996). It would be also interesting to get an insight in the preferred leadership behaviour athletes would like to experience and recognise in their coaches. These could be very informative data in regard to certain dimensions that could be also affected by coaches’ leadership behaviour, in particularly motivation and sport goal orientation. Conclusion The nonparametric statistical procedure, Mann-Whitney’s U-test, was used in order to determine which variables discriminate between the coaches’ and athletes’ estimations of sport leadership behaviour. The results showed there was a trend of general overestimation in coaches concerning their leadership behaviour as compared to the same estimations from their athletes. The significant differences of these ratings occurred in the instruction and feedback dimensions; the coaches perceived themselves as more instructive and more information giving than they were in the eyes of their athletes. Despite the fact that the difference in the social support dimension is not statistically significant, it is necessary to consider its low value. It should be mentioned here that encouragement and support, combined with the democratic behaviour pattern, are the most desirable features of leadership behaviour that have a tremendous influence on feeling of satisfaction of athletes and, eventually, on sport adherence. For that reason, it can be concluded in general that coaches should direct their actions in the way so as to try to improve their actual leadership behaviour by working on all of the leadership dimensions. References Chelladurai, P., Carron, A.V. (1983). Athletic Maturity and Preffered Leadership. Journal of Sport Psychology, 5:371-380. Horne, T., Carron, A.V. (1985) Compability in Coach-Athlete relationship. Journal of Sport Psychology, 7:137-149. Salminen, S., Liukkonen, J. (1996). Coach-athlete Relationship and Coaching Behavior in Training Sessions. International Journal of Sport Psychology, 27:59-67. Serpa, S. (2001) The Coach’s Role and the Athlete’s Development. Dennis Glencross Seminar, 10th World Congress of Sport Psychology (unpublished material). Zhang, J., Jensen, B.E., Mann, B.L. (1997). Modification and Revision of the Leadership Scale for Sport. Journal of Sport Behavior, 20(1):105-122.

coach; female players; basketball; leadership behaviour

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