Leadership Research in Sport Management

1. Chapter 12 Leading to Victory

2. Leadership Research As Kent and Chelladurai note, “While leadership has been an immensely popular area of study in industrial and organizational psychology, research on the topic of sport management has been largely focused on coaches rather than administrators.”

3. Coaching Requires Leadership Management professor Dr. Judith Neal (University of New Haven) commented that what we once called coaching is now more appropriately called leadership.

4. Leadership Example: Paul Fenton • Paul Fenton took the initiative to turn his experience as a professional hockey player into a 15-year career as an executive with the Nashville Predators. Since 2006 he has been the assistant general manager. • He continues to travel around the globe looking for new players to sign for the Predators.

5. Managing Versus Leading Leaders influence people to work to achieve the organization’s objectives. We frequently use manager and leader interchangeably. We shouldn’t, because they are not necessarily the same.Leading is one of the four management functions (along with planning, organizing, and controlling).

6. Leadership Styles • Leadership style is the combination of traits, skills, and behaviors managers use to interact with employees. • In the 1930s, before behavior theory became popular, researchers at the University of Iowa studied leadership styles of managers and identified three basic styles.

7. Three Leadership Styles • Autocratic. The manager makes the decisions, tells employees what to do, and closely supervises them—theory X behavior. • Democratic. The manager encourages employee participation in decisions, works with them to determine what to do, and doesn’t supervise them closely—theory Y behavior. • Laissez-faire. The manager lets employees go about their business without much input. Employees decide what to do and take action, and the manager doesn’t follow up.

8. Leadership Grid The leadership grid uses the same dimensions as the two-dimensional model; in the grid, these dimensions are called concern for production (the x-axis) and concern for people (the y-axis). The leadership grid identifies the ideal leadership style as having a high concern for both production and people.

9. (1,1) Impoverished leaders show low concern for production and people and do the minimum required to remain employed. (9,1) Authority-compliance leaders show high concern for production and low concern for people and focus on getting the job done by treating people like machines. (1,9) Country club leaders show low concern for production and high concern for people and strive to maintain a friendly atmosphere without much regard for production. (5,5) Middle-of-the-road leaders balance concerns for production and people. They strive for performance and morale levels that are minimally satisfactory. (9,9) Team leaders show high concern for production and people. They strive for maximum performance and maximum employee satisfaction. Leadership Grid Styles

10. Figure 12.2

11. Creating a 9,9 Situation Tony Dungy, former coach of the Indianapolis Colts, has come close to creating an overall 9,9 situation. The players are happy to play for the Colts, and the team has been very productive on and off the field.

12. Figure 12.4

13. Continuum Model of Leadership • Leader makes decision and announces it to employees individually or in a group without discussion. • Leader makes decisions and sells it to employees through a presentation of why it’s a good idea. • Leader presents ideas and invites employees’ questions. • Leader presents tentative decision subject to change. • Leader presents problem, gets suggested solutions, and makes the decision. • Leader defines limits and asks the employees to make a decision. • Leader permits employees to make ongoing decisions within defined limits.

14. Current Leadership Research • Current researchers focus on which behaviors make top-notch managers outstanding, even though the managers’ individual leadership styles may vary dramatically. • These researchers have identified charismatic, transformational, transactional, and symbolic leaders.

15. Charismatic Leaders Charismatic leaders inspire loyalty, enthusiasm, and high levels of performance. Charismatic leaders have a vision and a strong personal commitment to their goals; they communicate their goals to others, display self-confidence, and are viewed as able to make the radical changes needed in order to reach the goals. (continued)

16. Charismatic Leaders (continued) In our media-driven age, charismatic fits many contemporary leaders, including Robert Griffin III (football), LeBron James (basketball), Derek Jeter (baseball), David Beckham (soccer), and Tom Brady (football). Researchers Kent and Chelladurai found that charismatic leaders have a strong influence on employees’ commitment to the organization.

17. Transformational Leaders • Transformational leaders create significant changes as they foster relationships and commitment from their employees. • Pat Gillick of the Seattle Mariners is a transformational leader. When he arrived in 1999, the Mariners had just lost their three best and most popular players. Gillick was brought in to inspire the team and lead it to winning. He succeeded by finding players who were positive role models and who worked well together. Gillick also brought an attitude that winning should be fun—as he says, “Be positive. Be upbeat. Be supportive.”

18. Transactional and Symbolic Leaders • Transactional leaders emphasize exchange. Exchange is about rewarding jobs well done. • Symbolic leaders establish and maintain a strong organizational culture. An organization’s workforce learns the organization’s culture (shared values, beliefs, and assumptions of how workers should behave in the organization) through its leadership.

19. Vroom and Yetton • In the 1970s, Victor Vroom and Philip Yetton attempted to bridge the gap between leadership theory and managerial practice by developing a normative leadership model. • Normative leaders use one of five decision-making styles appropriate for the situation. Vroom and Yetton identified the five leadership styles. Two are autocratic (AI and AII), two are consultative (CI and CII), and one is group oriented (GII).

20. Coaching Styles The late Vince Lombardi, the legendary football coach, used AI-style leadership. Does the AI style work today? It depends. Pat Summitt’s leadership style is quite similar to Lombardi’s. So is Bill Parcells’, who took the New York Giants to Super Bowl victories in 1986 and 1990. Other coaches prefer GII-style leadership. Phil Jackson, coach of the NBA champions Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers, uses Zen-like philosophy to motivate and train his players. He has been blessed with superstar players, but he has also used a group attitude to produce results.

21. Substitutes for Leadership Substitutes for leadership eliminate the need for a leader. In certain circumstances, three characteristics can counteract or neutralize the efforts of leaders or render them unnecessary: • Characteristics of subordinates • Characteristics of the task • Characteristics of the organization