Leaders can perform in a variety of ways the first of which is autocratic leadership, this type of leadership sees that the leader themselves make all of the decisions effecting group members. Autocratic leaders will also be seen to dictate to the group, focusing only on what he / she believes will work with no help from others, this style is infrequently used because it can be thought of as being disrespectable to group members and portrays the captain or coach as being selfish etc. The opposite form of autocratic leadership is democratic leadership, this form of leadership is the total opposite to autocratic forms of leadership because the leader listens to the following group and listens to their thoughts and ideas, democratic leadership is popular as it allows group input and decision-making, when a leader uses such leadership types group individuals feel as if they are part if the group, can feel more wanted and involved.
Autocratic Democratic Autocratic
Most favourable Moderately favourable Least favourable situation situation situation
Warm relations Poor relations
Clear task Unclear task
Strong leader Weak leader
Element of danger
Another type of leadership is social support, this involves one-on-one individual reassurance and criticism this is also a very popular because the individual feedback can be more precise, and more useful to the specific team member. The penultimate type of leadership is rewarding this offers encouragement in the form of praise to a player or member of the team, there may be a player of the match award of most improved member of the month award, this type of leadership is widely used and this method has great motivational qualities. Finally laissez faire offers a laid-back, do nothing approach, this can sometimes be useful but should only be used with greatly experienced groups who are older in age and can be trusted to get on with the work that has been set.
I think that the greatest leaders are born and not nurtured, this is because you can learn something, but if you are not born with he natural talent to carry out this skill you can not optimise this talent and therefore cannot be as good at that specific skill as someone who has it naturally. Further more to be the furthermost leader at the top of their game leaders born with natural ability and that have achieved in their sport at the top standard will go on to be the greatest leaders in my eyes.
Great leaders in sport and people that I admire in sport’s are as follows, firstly Sir Steve Redgrave, he has won 5 Olympic gold medals Gold for the Coxed Fours in Los Angeles in 1984, followed by Gold with his previous partner Andy Holmes in the Coxless Pairs at Seoul in 1988, Gold with partner Matthew Pinsent for the Coxless Pairs at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 and of course, the famous win in the Coxless Fours at the Sydney Olympics. Redgrave had to train and compete whilst suffering with his life-long illness diabetes. I look up to Redgrave because he has survived and competed at the top of his sport for such a long time period and has beaten his illness to live his dreams and has shown his great personal qualities in both leading himself and most of all others. The second sporting person that I admire is Lance Armstrong, his story sounds like a huge Hollywood film but is unbelievably true, but his experiences with cancer has never mad him give up, they have done the quite the opposite, instead of cowering away he has fought back and has won the Tour de France 6 times since 1999. He has set up a new Cancer research foundation and has helped thousands of people fight through cancer, I think Lance Armstrong is one of the best leaders in the world because he is so good in his sport and has touched and helped the lives of thousands of people by using his own past experiences to understand and improve the live of people that have been exposed to cancer. some of the greatest leaders in the world have had to come through great illness’ and set backs to achieve what they have done and the set backs they have encountered has shown their true personality and leadership strengths.
To be a great leader I think that you have to have many qualities, the most important of which are charisma, motivation, experience and most of all fantastic communication skills, as well as this I think that the style that a leader takes on should be mainly democratic but along with that they should be able to offer social support and where appropriate laissez faire I think this is because an athlete should be given a bit of freedom where they can modify their session to how they feel, and I also think that social support should be used to break down an individuals competition performance, praise and constructive criticism can then be exchanged.
