title: Is perceived athlete leadership quality related to team effectiveness? A comparison of three professional sports teams.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Researchers have argued that leadership is one of the most important determinants of team effectiveness. The present study examined the extent to which the perceived quality of athlete leadership was related to the effectiveness of elite sports teams.
  
  
  METHODS
  Three professional football teams (N=135) participated in our study during the preparation phase for the Australian 2016 season.
  
  
  METHODS
  Players and coaching staff were asked to assess players' leadership quality in four leadership roles (as task, motivational, social, and external leader) via an online survey. The leadership quality in each of these roles was then calculated in a social network analysis by averaging the indegree centralities of the three best leaders in that particular role. Participants also rated their team's performance and its functioning on multiple indicators.
  
  
  RESULTS
  As hypothesized, the team with the highest-quality athlete leadership on each of the four leadership roles excelled in all indicators of team effectiveness. More specifically, athletes in this team had a stronger shared sense of the team's purpose, they were more highly committed to realizing the team's goals, and they had a greater confidence in their team's abilities than athletes in the other teams. Moreover, this team demonstrated a higher task-involving and a lower ego-involving climate, and excelled on all measures of performance.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  High-quality athlete leadership is positively related to team effectiveness. Given the importance of high-quality athlete leadership, the study highlights the need for well-designed empirically-based leadership development programs.
authors.affiliation: Department of Kinesiology, KU Leuven, Belgium. Electronic address: Katrien.Fransen@kuleuven.be.
authors.forename: Katrien
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Fransen
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, Australia.
authors.forename: S Alexander
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Haslam
authors.affiliation: School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences, The University of Queensland, Australia.
authors.forename: Clifford J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Mallett
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, Australia.
authors.forename: Niklas K
authors.initials: NK
authors.lastname: Steffens
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, Australia.
authors.forename: Kim
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Peters
authors.affiliation: Department of Kinesiology, KU Leuven, Belgium.
authors.forename: Filip
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Boen
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D056352:Athletes / Q000523:psychology*; D054874:Athletic Performance / Q000523:psychology*; D001315:Australia; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005538:Football / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D007857:Leadership; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Football; Leadership roles; Peer leadership; Rugby; Shared leadership; Social network analysis