After conceptualizing the definition of leadership, one of the core components of leadership is “leadership occurs in groups” (Northouse, 2021). I have been playing ice hockey for over 18 years now and every year I am playing for a team that consists of 25 male ice hockey players. The hierarchy is very difficult and from what I have experienced only teams with a functioning environment are able to thrive and be successful. One core component of this functioning environment is a successful leader and a healthy environment between leader and followers.
Before every season a captain is chosen and made leader of the team together with two assistant captains. Often this is chosen by the coaching staff and not by the team. This clearly shows the difference between assigned and emergent leadership. Assigned leadership is when the coach is choosing who the captain is going to be based on his own opinion and emergent leadership is when the team gets to vote and choose who is best suitable to be the captain (Northouse, 2021). There have been many times where I have experienced that the captain chosen by the coach has not been the real leader of the team and the real leader has emerged by himself. The emergent leaders have often been, as described by the book Leadership: Theory and Practice by Northouse and found by Ellis and Fisher, to be verbally involved, informed, seeking others’ opinions, initiating new ideas, and being firm but not rigid (Ellis & Fisher, 1994) (Northouse, 2021).
A leader in teams should in my opinion be able to be dominant (Mann, 1959) and should be respected but should also have a certain degree of emotional intelligence (Zaccaro, Kemp, and Bader, 2017) in order to handle sensitive topics and be there for his/her players.
I believe that coaches often choose their own captain through maxims, as they often might know the person from coaching them in another team or they might have had another captain and they believe that he shares the same personality traits as the new captain. The coach often gives very little insight into the reasoning for his decision which makes it quite difficult to understand sometimes. When comparing this to leadership theory, the trait versus process leadership theory shows this clearly. Trait definition of leadership resembles the coach’s belief that the captain should be chosen based on traits and the process definition leadership theory resembles the emergent leader that is emerging from the players. (Northouse, 2021)
What is most important for me, is that the leader (captain) of the team works for the interests of the team and not his own interests. Often captains discuss with the coaches when the best time for off-days is. Most of the time the captain communicates with the team and asks everyone what they prefer, but I once had a captain that made this decision on his own. He asked his wife and decided to schedule the off-days so that they align with the times that his children had to attend primary school so that he was able to spend as much time as possible with them. It did not matter whether this schedule worked well for any other player. The captain had and used legitimate power to decide on his own (Northouse, 2021).
I find it highly important that the leader is at the center of group chance and embodies the will of the group which was shown by the classification system and scheme proposed by Bass in 2008. Only then is the environment between leader and followers healthy and only then do the players trust in the captain and follow him. This has an apparent effect on the performance of the team during practice and competition. The team that has won the championship each year has had a great leader and has had a team that trusted the leader. It gives the team a whole different bond between the players when trust is evident. Another aspect that I find very valuable is inclusive leadership which gives players the feeling that they belong to the team and nobody has the feeling that they are not valued or not welcome (Shore, Cleveland, & Sanchez, 2018).
If no great leader is present in a team, then that team is not a functioning team. This shows how important leadership is in groups and how without leadership many groups would lose in efficiency and success.
References:
Ellis, D. G., & Fisher, B. A. (1994). Small group decision making: Communication and the group process (4th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Mann, R. D. (1959). A review of the relationship between personality and performance in small groups. Psychological Bulletin, 56, 241–270.
Northouse, P. G. (2021). Leadership: Theory and practice. SAGE.
Shore, L. M., Cleveland, J. N., & Sanchez, D. (2018). Inclusive workplaces: A review and model. Human Resource Management Review, 28(2), 176–189.
Zaccaro, S. J., Kemp, C., & Bader, P. (2017). Leader traits and attributes. In J. Antonakis, A. T. Cianciolo, & R. J. Sternberg (Eds.), The nature of leadership (3rd ed., pp. 29–55). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.