Preferred Coaches’ Leadership Styles of Malaysian Football Teams

Abstract

Coach’s leadership style has a great effect on performance and coach–athlete relationship in a team. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to assess players’ preferences for their coaches’ leadership styles as well as to evaluate the congruence between players’ preferences and the respective coaches’ actual behaviour in line with the multidimensional model of leadership. Successful and less successful football coaches (n = 16) and players (n = 200) of the Malaysia Super League and Malaysia Premier League were identified to participate in the refined questionnaire survey. The five dimensions measured were training and instruction (TI), democratic behaviour (DB), autocratic behaviour (AB), social support (SS) and positive feedback (PF). Descriptive statistics of the 5 dimensions showed high means for successful (M = 4.25; 4.15; 2.51; 4.10; and 4.13) and less successful (M = 4.30; 4.21; 2.51; 4.20; and 4.22) teams, respectively. Multiple regression analyses were applied to evaluate the congruency between players and coaches. The results indicated that there was a congruence in dimension between successful and less successful football teams with statistical readings of DB of t(108) = 2.009 (p < 0.05) and t(108) = 2.544 (p < 0.05). This study revealed an important finding, especially in the congruence of coach–athlete relationships, which demonstrate equal influence towards DB in order to perform. This study has contributed a significant body of knowledge to coaching science.