“We are a team of leaders”: Relational leadership in professional sport
- Publication Type:
- Thesis
- Issue Date:
- 2022
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Existing sport management research typically explores leadership from an entity perspective. The entity perspective studies leadership through distinct entities, such as leaders and followers (Uhl-Bien, 2006). This view is limited as it ignores variabilities like context, emergence, and dynamic social influences (Crevani et al., 2010). In contrast, relationality is concerned with the construction of leadership through interactions in social contexts (Fairhurst & Uhl-Bien, 2012). This perspective concerns how leadership is constructed through the ongoing negotiation of meanings in interactions (Ospina & Sorenson, 2006). This approach presents opportunities for improving leadership theory, practice, and development in professional sports. Opportunities include recognizing the importance of experience for leadership, how leadership is produced through social interaction, and how shared understanding constructed in social contexts influences leadership practice. The organization selected for the research project was a professional netball club competing in the Australian Super Netball League. Data were collected through observations, interviews, focus group interviews, and video analysis over one year. An interesting problem was presented on the first day of data gathering when the captain proclaimed, “we are a team of leaders.” This statement contradicted the traditional conceptualization of leadership, where an individual or leadership group assumed that role, presenting an empirical mystery for exploration (Alvesson & Kärreman, 2011). An abductive data analysis process was followed, involving iterations of moving between existing relational leadership literature and the empirical material to explain leadership in the organization (Alvesson & Kärreman, 2011). The completed research project was presented as a compilation of three research papers.
The key findings are presented in three related research papers. First, leadership is continually constructed through interactions and meaning-making. Some interactions are implicit between people because of established shared understanding. Therefore, leadership practices are interdependent and continuously constructed and reconstructed. Second, through dialogue, shared understanding is developed, enabling relational leadership development. These meanings are constructed by engaging in dialogue with group members to make sense of the past, present, and future. Finally, leadership is practiced with others through relational processes in everyday work. Such as the case of leading-by-example, where some actions demonstrate good leadership and are emulated by others within the social context. The contribution of this project is theoretical, albeit with practical recommendations for leadership practice and development in the context of professional sport.
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