LEADERSHIP AND TEAMWORK

 All praise is due to Allah SWT, May selawat and salam granted to our beloved Prophet Muhammad SAW to his family and to all his noble companions (^_^) 

To my beloved lecturer Dr. Hariyati Shahrima and my friends, alhamdulillah we done one day sports psychology seminar!  Perhaps we’ll always remember our memories after graduate rite? (^_^) 

Yes! We did it! We love sports psychology! 

One of the speaker who is Mr. Ahmad Nizar said  “Book gives you direction, works give you experience” . Yes it is true! I experienced it. It is really make sense to me and I’ll bring back this best quote! 

All right! Before I further explained about teamwork, let’s recap what is leadership all about.

Previous entries, I have shared about leadership,  style in leadership, behavioral theories in leadership approach,  the great man theory: the trait approach as well as the interactional approach. So in this entry I will add some more about this topic of leadership and further discuss about new topic which is teamwork.

LEADERSHIP

Leadership broadly considered as the behavioral process to influence individuals and groups in order to achieve set goals. In sport setting this concept of leadership include decision-making processes, motivational techniques, giving feedback, establishing interpersonal relationship and directing the group or team with confidently or in other word ‘influence’ them. A leader should know where the group or team is going its goals and objectives.  Besides that, a leader should provide guidelines or direction to the group or team clearly. It is to make sure everybody in his or her group understands what is going to achieve.  For example, during the seminar on one sport psychology, my head bureau of public relation had divided tasks to each sub-committee clearly. He also gives some guidelines how to do the tasks correctly. Hem, good!

What it’s the difference between a manager and a leader?? (^_0)

A manager takes care of such things as scheduling, budgeting and organizing, whereas a leader is concerned more with the direction of an organization, including its goals and objectives.

Next, how leaders are chosen? Emm..  Usually leaders and coaches are appointed by some authority. E.g. the athletic director (with some feedback from a search committee) commonly selects coaches. It is not just simple selection by the authority, but like I mentioned from my previous entries, there are some characteristics of an effective leaders should have to take into account when selecting a leader or a coach especially by looking leader’s leadership skills or high ability in the particular sport.

In addition, in leadership there are threat have been approaches that have been discussed in previous entries which are trait approach, behavioral approach as well as interactional approach. 

What do you understand from these approaches? (*_*) 

First, the trait approach assumes that great leaders possess a set of universal personality traits. It is very important that should have for effective leadership. E.g. a leader is an assertive and ambitious person. Like Micheal Jordan would be a great leader not only on the basketball court but also in other sports and aspects of life such as business and community affairs. Second, the behavioral approach assumes that a relatively universal set of behaviors characterizes successful leaders. These behaviorists argued that anyone could be taught to become a leader by simply learning the behaviors of other effective leaders. Thus, unlike trait approach, the behavioral approach argues that leaders are made, not born.  Leaders have a variety of personality traits but there is not specific traits that make a leader to be success.  Third, the interactional approach assumes that the interaction of the situation is determined a leader to have an effective leadership.  This approaches assumes that there is no one best type of leader but the effective leadership style is depend on the situation and qualities of the group’s members like having good relationship with others.

What is the Multidimensional Model of Sport Leadership (MML)?

How can we measure effective leadership in athletic situation? 

Using an interactional approach, Chelladurai (1980) proposed this MML which is group performance and member satisfaction is depend on how well three types of leader behavior interrelated with three sets of characteristics which affects leader behavior.  You can see the figure above. 

Three types of leader behavior are:    

Required behavior: this is the behavior required by the situation, such as the type of sport, the goals to be achieved.

§      Actual behavior: this is what the leader actually does and it is dependent on his or her characteristics, such as experience

§     Preferred behavior: this is what the athlete wants the leader to do and it depends on the athlete’s own abilities, personality, skill level and so on, as well as the demands of the particular situation.

Three characteristics which affect leader behavior:

§    Situational characteristic: such as whether the opposition is strong or weak

§    Leader characteristic: such as the leader’s level of experience, personality whether goal or relationship orientated.

§    Group member of characteristic: such as experience, age or gender.

In others words, if the coach does what is required in the situation, and this is what the athletes want the coach to do, this is effective leadership.

Chelladurai hypothesizes that a positive outcome that is high performance and group satisfaction occurs if three aspects of leader behavior agree. If the leader behaves appropriately for the particular situation and these behaviors match the preferences of the group members, they will achieve their best performance and feel satisfied. Thus, effective leadership can be varying depending on the characteristics of the athlete and the situation.  E.g. in the sport seminar recently, program manager tells every head committees to have good communication and relations with all sub-committees (work together) and sub-committees want this kind of behavior in a leader. Therefore they perform the best performance and find satisfaction. (^_^) 

TEAMWORK

All right, now I’ll explain about teamwork. It is very important to us to well manage when we’re in a team or group. We belong to groups such as our family, and if we play a team sport or belong to a sports clubs, we also part of that group.

  What it the definition of group cohesion?

Carron, Brawley and Widmeyer (1998) proposed that cohesion is “a dynamic process which is reflected in the tendency for a group to stick together and remain united in the pursuit of its instrument objectives and/or for the satisfaction of member affective needs”.

There are two general categories of group cohesion:  

 

Factors associated with group cohesion

Carrol et.al (2005) discussed the main correlate of cohesion in sports teams is environmental factors (situational), personal factors, leadership factors, and team factors.

Environmental factors

Firstly the environment factors include proximity. Individuals, who are in close proximity physically close to each other, have a greater tendency to have good bonding. Second environmental factors is distinctiveness which is refer to a set of individuals when becomes more separate, more distinctive from others, feelings of oneness and unity is increase. Third factors is team’s size which is the smaller the group the greater the cohesion. Perhaps there is more opportunity for members to interact. 

Personal factors

Individual satisfaction is one of personal factors. It is satisfaction with other team members. The greater satisfaction is generally associated with better performance.  Second personal factor that related to cohesion is competitive state anxiety. Carron (1996) found that athletes who perceived their teams to higher in task cohesion seemed to experience less cognitive anxiety. This is because members of more cohesive teams could experience less pressure to carry out the responsibilities of the group and satisfy other members’ expectation.  Third is social loafing which is the term used for the reduced that individual effort when working with others.

Leadership factors

It is related with leadership styles. E.g. coaches who are engaging more democratic behaviors will be more likely to have teams with higher cohesion.

Team factors

Cohesion is influenced by a number of structural characteristics that emerge as the group develops (e.g.roles and norms), processes that take place between group members (e.g.,group goals, communication) and group performance outcomes.

Although these factors are associated with group cohesion, the nature of this association is not at all clear because, although successful performance leads to greater group cohesion, providing feedback about group cohesion also improves performance.

So, does satisfaction with team members lead to success as a team which increases group cohesion or give successful performance? (*_^)

It is safe to say that a major reason for these factor relationships is due to their dependence on each other. Rite? (^_^)