May parents’ evaluation of the servant leadership style of sport coaches predict their commitment to the sport club?
Keywords:
servant leadership style, coaches, team sports, loyalty, parents of athletesAbstract
Adopting the servant leadership style helps create strong interpersonal relationships between team members and the leader, create a shared vision in which all team members actively participate, and increase team members' levels of commitment to the leader. The aim of this research was to evaluate the helpful leadership style of the coaches of a sports club, as perceived by the parents of the participating children. A primary data collection was carried out from 114 parents of children who participate in the sports of football and volleyball in a club active in Thessaloniki. The Revised Servant Leadership Profile for Sport (RSLP-S) questionnaire, developed by Hammermeister et al. (2008), was chosen to collect the servant leadership assessment data. The results showed that the parents of the children who participate in the academies and the competitive sections of the club under study positively evaluate all three factors of the helpful leadership style of the club's coaches and very positively their dedication to it. The results of the research can be used by associations providing children's exercise and recreation programs in order to create staff training programs focused on the servant leadership style.
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