Players' Perceptions of Leadership Qualities for Coaches

Abstract This study was a quasi-experimental investigation of the relationship between players' perceptions of ideal and actual leadership behavior, team performance outcome, skill level, and educational level. The hypotheses were based on the path-goal leadership theory, proposed by House and Mitchell, and the life-cycle theory, proposed by Hersey and Blanchard. The Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire (Stogdill, 1963) was used to score 12 subscales of leader behavior. A 2 × 2 and a 2 × 4 analysis of variance were used to test the hypotheses. The results supported the path-goal theory demonstrating that losing coaches may not have clearly identified the path to success for their team members. The results did not support the life-cycle theory, but demonstrated that the range represented by educational level may not have been broad enough to allow for differences in maturity.