Leadership is important in influencing behaviour in sport.

        The interationist theory proposes that the personality of an individual is formed due to a combination of their innate traits and their interaction with the environment. This helps to explain the some of the weaknesses in the trait and social learning theories.

        Carron suggested that an individual in one of two ways: Emergent Leaders or Prescribed Leaders. Emergent leaders are ones which come from within the group because they are skilful or because the rest of the team selected them. Prescribed Leaders are appointed from an external source to a team.

        The Contingency Theory of Leadership proposes that the effectiveness of a leader is dependent on a combination of personality traits and the situation. Fiedler identified two types of leadership styles: The first one is concerned with task demands and is known as task orientated leadership, and the second is concerned with interpersonal behaviour of group members which is social oriented leadership. The task orientated style would be more effective in highly favourable or highly unfavourable conditions, whereas a person orientated style would be better employed in moderately favourable conditions. These are not mutually exclusive, and effective leadership requires both qualities, so the leader has to be flexible.

        Lewin et al divided leadership into three styles: Authoritarian (leaders are task oriented and are more doctorial in style. They make most of the decisions and tend to have commanding and directing approaches. They show little interest in the individuals making up the group); Democratic (leaders are person orientated and value the views of other group members. These leaders tend to share decisions and show a good deal of interest in the individuals of the group); Laissez Faire (leaders take very few decisions and give very little feedback. The individual group members mostly do as they wish).

The most popular view of leadership is that leaders learn to be leaders through social learning and interactions with their environment. Chelladurai’s multidimensional model of leadership suggests the characteristics of the situation, leader and the group members must be considered before adopting a particular leadership style. These three characteristics are Situation characteristics, Leader characteristics and Member characteristics. The three types of leader behaviour which affect the outcome are: Required Behaviour (depending on the situation and task); Actual Behaviour (leaders action in a situation); and Preferred Behaviour (what the group wants depending on its skills and goals). The more the elements of the model match each other, the more effective the leadership is likely to be. If the leadership qualities are what the group want and expect, then they are more likely to follow the leader. If the leadership style matches the situation, again leadership is likely to be more effective.