Servant leadership and athletic performance in high school sports

Sports Management

The basic focus and point of the article being reviewed is easy to see from the title. Indeed, the focus is servant leadership and how it can and should be applied when it comes to people that operate and lead within the sports paradigm. The article does nothing short of portray this as a guiding principle and way of doing things for coaches across the spectrum. However, the article clearly makes it a point to suggest, in mentioning a firm like AT&T, that the applications of this process and paradigm are not just for the sports and coaching sphere. The article reflects that the prior dominant models and forms of leadership, which include traditional, autocratic and hierarchal models, are giving way to new forms and facets of leadership. The article defines servant leaders as those that put the interests of the employees or players (depending on the application) above those that they personally hold. Rather than demand or expect that the subordinates follow and adhere to them, the coach or leader does the opposite and clearly inverts the usual state of affairs that are seen in most organizations (Rieke, Hammermeister, & Chase, 2008).

The authors of the article did a study to prove all of this to be effective. There were 195 male high school players on twenty different teams and they ranged from fifteen to nineteen years old. The Revised Servant Leadership Profile for Sport (RSLP-S) was the mathematical model used for analysis. The data analysis itself was completed using MANOVA analysis tactics. One of the major results to take seriously was the correlation to perceived performance, wins and losses. Also important are the humility subscale and other performance variables, although those three were all non-significant results. The conclusion furthers this string by saying that servant leaders doing their job well leads to more intrinsic motivation, more satisfaction with the sport experience, more mental toughness and they perform better as a team and individually than students who were not in such an arrangement (Rieke, Hammermeister, & Chase, 2008).

Analysis & Application

To apply this to a sports or sports career setting, one need not stretch the imagination all that far. There are a lot of team leaders and coaches that seem to teach and lead through domination or even fear. This turns the idea of that being the way to go on its head. Indeed, the idea that being a servant rather than a borderline-tyrant is perhaps a new one to some but it makes sense that an inspiring and properly motivated leader will do better than one that demands compliance and is perhaps less reasonable or fair to the people involved. To be sure, being too lackadaisical and less than strict can lead to bad consequences. However, being less assertive and brusque while instilling the proper values clearly has its advantages if the study summarized in the article is any indication. If the players (or employees) realize that the coach is there for them, wants to see them develop and is not going to rule through fear, they are therefore much more motivated to perform and commit to the ideology and mission of the group rather than being turned off or intimidated by what is going on. As for a leader that is emblematic of the servant leadership style, one example clearly has to be Tony Dungy and his prior work as an NFL coach. While he surely had his requirements and such as part of his job as a National Football League coach, he also clearly had the interests and priorities of his players at heart at the end of the day. Indeed, the servant leadership style is really another manifestation of the balance between being too soft and being too harsh on players. The proper values and outcomes are stressed but in a way that shows deference and allegiance to the outcomes of the team and the players in particular rather than the personal glory and prestige of the coach (Rieke, Hammermeister, & Chase, 2008)