The Moderating Effect of Athletes’ Personal Values on the Relationship between Coaches’ Leadership Behaviors and the Personal and Social Skills of Young Basketball Players

Abstract

Transformational coaching has been shown to increase the personal and social skills of adolescent athletes. Nevertheless, the latter’s dispositional characteristics, such us personal values, could have a moderating effect on this relationship. The main objective of this work was to examine perceptions of coaches’ transformational behaviors and the modulation of athletes’ personal values in their relationship with personal and social skills development. Adolescents (n = 309) of both genders (81.9% male) aged 13–19 years (M = 16.10; SD = 1.70) from 16 different basketball clubs participated in the study. All participants completed a socio-demographic questionnaire, the Transformational Coaching Questionnaire, the Portrait Values Questionnaire—Revised, and the Youth Experiences Survey for Sport. Results showed that, controlling for age and gender, transformational behaviors that highlight individual differences within the team, especially through fostering autonomy and creative thinking (i.e., intellectual stimulation), create contexts in which their athletes can develop personal and social skills to their fullest. However, in players with high self-transcendence and low self-enhancement, the increase in intellectual stimulation was not associated with higher personal and social skills, but social focus transformational behaviors (i.e., idealized influence and inspirational motivation) were. This study contributes to the field of positive adolescent development by showing evidence of both the individual and the social focus of transformational leadership behaviors to maximize personal and social skills, depending on which values their athletes consider important.