Recently, I had the pleasure of meeting with parents to discuss the progress of their children here at IFS. While I enjoyed talking about the players, on reflection, I should have spent more time talking about the parents.
If only they knew HOW valuable they are!
Parent-athlete relationships represent a key element of the youth sport experience. In addition to often being the primary reason for their child’s initial experiences with sport, parents are also important role models for youth’s attitudes and behaviours within sport.
Consistent with this perspective, teenagers who observe their parents exhibiting transformational leadership behaviours adopted similar behaviours on their sport teams. In turn, teenagers who employed these behaviours were rated by their peers and coaches as more effective, satisfying, and effort-evoking leaders.
Within the physical activity context, the mothers’ and fathers’ transformational parenting was positively linked with teenagers’ life satisfaction, as well as self-regulatory efficacy for physical activity and healthy eating. Taken together, these results highlight the utility of transformational leadership theory for understanding the role of parents in facilitating positive development in sport.
Another important social factor that may be positively influenced by transformational leadership is the quality of an athlete’s relationships with their peers. For instance, it has been found that effective peer leadership among teenage football players was associated with higher levels of task and social cohesion and collective efficacy. In addition, the influence of the team captain’s use of transformational leadership indicates that some transformational behaviours, (e.g. using individualised consideration, fostering acceptance of group goals, promoting teamwork and holding high performance expectations), facilitated task cohesion, while others (e.g. promoting teamwork and fostering acceptance of group goals) predicted social cohesion.
The Dynamic Process of Development Through Sport. Kinesiologia Slovenica, 20, 3, 14–26 (2014), ISSN 1318-2269
So what is Transformational Leadership?
The concept of transformational leadership was initially introduced by leadership expert and presidential biographer James MacGregor Burns. According to Burns, transformational leadership can be seen when, “leaders and followers make each other advance to a higher level of morality and motivation.” Through the strength of their vision and personality, transformational leaders are able to inspire followers to change expectations, perceptions, and motivations to work towards common goals.
Unlike in the transactional approach, it is not based on a “give and take” relationship, but on the leader’s personality, traits and ability to make a change through example, articulation of an energizing vision and challenging goals.
Transforming leaders are idealized in the sense that they are a moral exemplar of working towards the benefit of the team, organisation and/or community. Burns theorised that transforming and transactional leadership were mutually exclusive styles. Later, researcher Bernard M Bass expanded upon Burns’ original ideas to develop what is today referred to as Bass’ Transformational Leadership Theory. According to Bass, transformational leadership can be defined based on the impact that it has on followers. Transformational leaders, Bass suggested, garner trust, respect, and admiration from their followers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformational_leadership
Mel Freeman says
Thank you Matt! ?
Mel Freeman says
Oops scrap the ? !!!