Athlete Leadership

Abstract

Abstract This chapter focuses on the emerging area of athlete leadership. The chapter examines the theories, methodologies, and interventions that have been used to study athlete leadership. Athlete leadership is defined as an athlete who occupies a formal or informal leadership role within the team and influences team members to achieve a common goal. When leadership is viewed from this perspective, all athletes have the opportunity to engage and provide leadership to their teammates. Researchers have applied various theories to understand and explain athlete leadership. At present, there is no gold-standard measure of athlete leadership behaviors that has been specifically developed to examine this construct. Further, there are only a handful of published articles that report on the development of athlete leadership. Consequently, the goal of this chapter is to highlight the opportunities that exist in the area of athlete leadership from theoretical, methodological, and applied perspectives.