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Coaching and Effective Leaders: An Overview and Recommended Research Agenda

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Coaching for Human Development and Performance in Sports

Abstract

This chapter is about sports coaching and implications for future research, with specific attention being given to the area of leadership in coaching. Foundational information about leadership is provided. The leadership content is connected to the areas of relational exchanges and culture development. A brief overview of these areas and how they connect to leadership in coaching is an important precursor to the identification of limitations present in the coaching research literature. Without first understanding the basics of leadership and how it impacts essential organizational and team processes such as relationship and cultural building, it is difficult to arrive at recommendations for improving the study of sport coaches as organizational (team) leaders. The chapter also focuses on social effectiveness to introduce readers to an understudied yet essential area of scholarly inquiry that would greatly enhance the leadership effectiveness of coaches. Social effectiveness research is summarized before singling out the concept of political skill as a social effectiveness construct that may hold particular significance to the advancement of leadership and coaching research. The chapter concludes with a brief overview of coaching research and the presentation of an agenda for improving the study of social effectiveness and leadership in the sport sciences.

A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.

– John C. Maxwell

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Magnusen, M., Kim, J.W., Robinson, M. (2020). Coaching and Effective Leaders: An Overview and Recommended Research Agenda. In: Resende, R., Gomes, A.R. (eds) Coaching for Human Development and Performance in Sports. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63912-9_21

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