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| Men's Soccer Coach Ben Schneweis talking to one of his players. Photo by: Cobber SID |
According to an article written by Callow and colleagues in 2009, transformational leadership “involves the building of relationships with followers based on three different types of exchanges: personal, emotional, and inspirational.” In recent years, institutions throughout the country have started to form to this style of leadership, especially the aspect of relationship building. Here at Concordia, multiple coaches are starting to form to this style of leadership. Transformational leaders have an ultimate goal of changing a program [whether it’s right away or over time] while always presenting their values, ideas, rules, etc. in a positive manner to their athletes. Positive environments have a higher chance of leading a program to success, which is the goal of both the coach and athletes, along with the higher-position holders in the athletic department.
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| Head Football Coach Terry Horan hugging a senior after a game. Photo by: Cobber SID |
Coaches at Concordia have started to take on a more transformational leadership style, especially in more recent years. One, upon many intriguing findings, was that a lot consider themselves as a “player’s coach," meaning they adapt and accommodate [to a certain degree] to their players’ wants and needs. Terry Horan, Concordia’s head football coach, said, “For me, it’s always about the kids and about them having a great experience.”
With that being said, coaches also stress how important individual relationships are with their athletes. At the Division III level, it is prohibited to give athletic scholarships out, so in technical terms, athletes are paying to play their sport. “Relationships with your athletes are extremely important—that’s why you become a coach. If you’re in it for fame and glory, you’re in the wrong business. Seeing kids grow over their four, sometimes five, years is rewarding,” said women’s ice hockey coach Maureen Greiner.
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| Head Women's Ice Hockey Coach Maureen Greiner smiling at a player. Photo by: Cobber SID |
I really enjoyed this article because it incorporated the research and personal perspectives of those who work in coaching/leadership roles.
ReplyDeleteI found this article to really interesting because it was something I had been curious about throughout my life as an athlete. You do a great job at displaying the coaches more as humans because I think a lot of times, athletes will view them as all knowing and it is hard to relate. It is an interesting perspective to think of athletics from the coaches view point. I also really enjoy how you relate it to Concordia by interviewing coaches here and including pictures from our teams.
ReplyDeleteIt would be interesting to study how the relationship between coaches and their players differ at the various levels of NCAA athletics based on power. Obviously at the D3 level the players have much more collective power because they all could quit at any time and suffer no real consequence other than possibly annoyance that they don't get to play the sport they love anymore. On the other hand, D1 coaches always have scholarships to dangle over players. And although college athletes often don't get a fair chance to use their scholarship to actually get a comparable education to those who don't play sports, the knowledge that you could lose your ability to get a degree at any moment is probably quite daunting.
ReplyDeleteAfter learning more about managers, and managerial traits, I thought it was interesting to make connections between what is considered a good manager, and what is a good coach. There are a lot of similarities, and it was cool to read about some of the tactics the coaches on our campus have with their teams. I am wondering if teams can thrive still if their coaches may lack some important leadership skills? If they do, is that the point of having captains?
ReplyDeleteI liked the structure of this post and the way you incorporated local pictures of Concordia couches. It would be interesting to have a small student athlete perspective on how couches motivate them through their leadership. What can coach's do to ensure that student athletes are balancing the three S's? Are there steps in place now or does it wary based on individual coaches?
ReplyDeleteThis article really highlights the different perspectives of coaches and players. I really appreciated your approach with the emphasis of transformational leaderships, but would like to see this analysis more with other coaching styles as well to provide greater context. Also, I think exploring the ideal of player's coach and the coaches viewpoint vs the teams could be an interesting point, because I know a lot of coaches that think they are a player's coach, but the team disagrees. Finally, I understand the 400 wordlist hinders this, but I think adding context about the different divisions in college and the contrasting styles would be a good thing to add to the blog.
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