STUDIES IN PHYSICAL CULTURE AND TOURISM

Vol. 12, No. 2, 2005

The present study analyses the role and goals of the leader in team sports games, on the basis of the leading player in basketball. It is difficult to define the concept of leader in team games. Most people use it intuitively, in a broad sense, without paying attention to its more specific meaning. In an attempt to define this concept we used a special working definition, which allowed us to cover all aspects of the team leader, taking into consideration the former, general meaning. Formally, we assumed that the leader in team games was a player who had certain, distinctive attributes (individual skills) that were discussed in our work.

In modern sport we often come across the concept of sport leader. It can be viewed from many different perspectives such as static, dynamic, praxeological, sociological, and psychological [1, 5, 6, 7, 9]. The earliest studies concerning the model of sports leadership were carried out in the 1960s and 1970s. [3, 8, 10, 18]. The researchers sought efficient methods of describing the leader’s most important attributes and patterns of behaviour depending on a situation. While implementing these methods in sport theory in the 1980s and 1990s, the researchers developed methods of identification of leaders in sports team games, including basketball. The most important studies included [2, 20, 17, 4, 15].

In formulating definitions of a leader different meanings of the term must be taken into account, depending on the level of detail. The definitions of a sports leader are connected with various tendencies of contemporary sport such as development of traditional, Olympic disciplines as well as formation of new ones. The concept of sport leader becomes extremely vital in sports team games. Team leader’s creativity is not a granted feature. It is often a constant process of self-development of sport and personal skills, which occurs in outstanding sport talents and during proper interpersonal cooperation in sport competition. Since the concept of leader is described using a wide range of patterns of behavior and achievements, it is necessary to include all the information for comparison with other players. Only in this way can the leader’s contribution to the team’s work and his role in each part of the game be determined. In development of sports leadership we can observe a constant increase of tactical and strategic duties accompanied by individual technical skills, and at the same time, a clear division of competencies during the game [16]. In the light of the above considerations it is important to define the leaders in team games, including basketball, taking into account the ability to get to know one another and to adjust oneself to different individuals who should become one during the game.

During sports rivalry in team games such as basketball we often deal with the concept of sports leader. During a basketball game, the leader is responsible for a great deal of actions [13], which can be characterized and quantified in an objective way. The role of the sports team leader also depends on his ability to lead and influence his fellow players in order to accomplish the assumed goal. In modern sport we can distinguish both the static and dynamic aspects of the sports leader.

In contemporary sport the concept of sport leader can be discussed from various standpoints. For example, the leader can be identified with an athlete with the highest results in a certain sport achieved over a defined time period (e.g., the leader of three-point shots during the entire playing season), or the best competitor at a certain time of sport competition (e.g. a winning cyclist in a certain part of a race) [19].

The aim of the following study is to present the most important functions and tasks of a sports leader of a basketball team as well as to characterize the basic features of leadership team sports games using basketball as an example. It is worth mentioning that until now no study concerning team games, especially basketball, has attempted at a direct behavior evaluation and objective analysis of the leader’s game. The present study tries to analyze the problem from such perspective.

Various tasks may be assigned to the formulated definitions of the leader, depending on the assumed degree of detail. The concentric model (Figure 1.) is one of such approaches, which suggests stratified consideration of the leader’s definiendum, i.e. from the general to the specific [14]. The concentric approach takes into consideration a number of miscellaneous aspects referring to the leader in sport as such. It includes the concept of the leader on the praxeological ground, then narrowing it down to the concept of sports leader, and finally focusing on a chosen sport (e.g. basketball leader) through specification of its characteristic attributes.

It should be noticed that the term “basketball leader” is a general name, as it refers to all basketball players defined in this way, due to a number of personal traits [21] such as:

Figure 1. The concentric model of sports leader’s definition

Taking the above attributes in consideration, it can be agreed that the content of the basketball leader definition is a set of features on the basis of which we are able to recognize any player as the designatum of that term, provided all the indicated traits are present. In such a case, a given set of traits is called a constituent set.

The leader, from the praxeological point of view, is an individual of high formal or informal authority, resulting from an exceptionally moulded set of predispositions as well as personal characteristics.

The process of leadership follows a different course, depending on a situation in which a player can be found, i.e. it is a dynamic relation of interaction and transformation between the leader and current circumstances [11]. The components of leaders’ management include other people being the leader’s tools of activity (players, activists, sponsors); tasks to be realized; specific cooperation rules in the sports team; organization (sports club) in which a collective activity takes place for which the leader is responsible.

Leadership of a sports team is mainly characterized by three variables:

a) position and extent of the leader’s power, measured by his entitlements in the team (e.g. deciding on financial bonuses, representing other players’ rights);

b) structure of the task which depends on the quality of the aim of team’s action (e.g. a ‘turning point’ of the match);

c) team’s readiness to stay under the leader’s influence, i.e. degree of trust, support and liking which the players give to their leader, considering his personal characteristics, high level of physical fitness, relations within the group and structure of the task.

Research on leader styles has yielded a great deal of conceptions that make it possible to classify and evaluate their efficiency, (e.g. Brown, Likert, Hersey and Blanchard’s theory, or Blak and Mouton’s theory). The efficiency of the leader’s activity in team sports games is determined, however, by the fact of having a set of special abilities resulting from the specificity of a sports group and processes occurring within the confines of that group (e.g. cooperation, individualization, competition and synergy). Eliminating or moderating a conflict should be one of the most crucial skills of every sports leader. Conflicts in the team result from conscious experiencing strong emotions that accompany sports rivalry and disturb careful, matter-of-fact thinking and action. Conflicts disorganize work and disintegrate the team. Sometimes, however, players themselves are the cause of conflicts in their team. This may happen due to an inappropriate way of leading the team and some undesired personality traits (e.g. authoritarian susceptibilities, dogmatism, lack of communication abilities, low stress tolerance). If the team is led in an autocratic way, the leader has an extremely high self-esteem and regards his fellow players as inferior. He will find his needs and goals to be more important than his colleagues’. And thus, the leader will aim at satisfying his own goals, by manipulating others and not bothering to understand his fellow players’ needs and aspirations.

In order to exercise control over a conflict and settle a dispute the team leader must be judicious, purposeful and consistent in his actions. In settling a conflict the following methods can be used: mitigating the conflict, settling the dispute arbitrarily, compromising and integrating.

Some conflict situations, particularly those that take place during the match, may stimulate the team’s progress and creativity; but when they happen too often they may lead to frustration, hostility, decrease of the leader and team’s play efficiency, disintegration, and lack of cooperation. The leader should constantly assess whether the conflict is too strong or still acceptable. In this way, he has control both over the course of the conflict and its development.

Quick and right decision-taking is another desired skill of the basketball leader. The team leader needs to recognize decisions that are indispensable and identify a set of feasible possibilities of their realization on the court. Next, he makes the decision, taking into consideration the possibilities he has and anticipated circumstances of an activity. Situations that may take place on the court generate various ways of decision making by the leader. The majority of them can be classified into two categories: programmed and unprogrammed decisions.

Programmed decisions are made according to written or unwritten principles, procedures and conventions characteristic of a given sports game as well as from generally accepted norms in the team. On the basis of them, the leader finds it easier to make a decision in recurring situations, by limiting the number of possibilities or excluding some of them. Programmed decisions are used to solve recurring problems and they limit the player’s freedom to a certain degree as they allow for fewer possibilities of choosing the course of action. The team leader most often deals with this type of decisions when solving off-the-court problems. (e.g. establishing the rules for the players’ preparation to the match or training; the players’ contacts with the media).

Unprogrammed decisions are made by the team leader in exceptional or untypical cases. Usually, they concern training or court situations (e.g. in the so-called ‘turning points’ of the match, the leader has to decide himself which game action to choose).

When a problem appears too rarely to be the subject of separate established principles of conduct, or when a problem is too important to treat it as a matter of routine, it is necessary for the team leader to take an unprogrammed decision. It seems that the team leader’s ability to make an unprogrammed decision is very important and determines his position in the team’s hierarchy and structure.

When making a decision every leader needs to consider various options. Many of them are associated with circumstances which are hard to predict or define in a clear-cut way (e.g. the lineup for the last quarter of the match).

Situations which require decision-taking can be put on a scale ranging from certainty (when the leader can fully predict the future order of events), through risky situations, to uncertainty (when there is only a very limited possibility of prediction).

Decision-taking in the certainty conditions takes places when the leader has precise, measurable and credible information about the effects of choosing each of the considered possibilities (e.g. an analysis of the so-called ‘information capacity’ of the opposite team’s basketball game actions in the series of their recent matches, lets the leader choose the optimal tactical-strategic variant for the current competition).

Decision-taking in the risky conditions takes places when the leader cannot for certain predict the effects of choosing a given option, but has enough information to define the probability of achieving the desired goal (e.g. during the half-time the leader suggests that the players decide on a certain defensive play so as to take over the ball as quickly as possible, although it might lead to a quick loss of points as well).

Decision-taking in the uncertainty conditions occurs when little is known about the possible individual actions and their effects. Uncertainty could result from the following circumstances: the leader may deal with exterior circumstances which are beyond his control or he or she may have no access to information of the strategic meaning (e.g. lack of access to the database on sports achievements of their current rival). Thus, quite often, the leader finds decision-taking very difficult. This is a matter he needs to work on and improve throughout his career all the time in order to become more knowledgeable and experienced as a player.

To work out his own tactics of decision-taking, the leader may find the following skills helpful: analytical, logical and conceptual thinking; excellent knowledge of specifications of a given team sports game; intuition; creativity; mental resistance; open-mindedness; and positive attitude.

One of the most important roles in any group is the role of a leader. In modern sport competition, especially in team games, a broad perspective on participation of each player in to fulfil their tasks is very crucial [1, 10, 12, 16, 17]. The quality of a player’s leadership influences the way in which teams and sport organizations adjust themselves to challenges. Rapid transformations in contemporary sport, enforce constant evaluation of the leaders. At present, we need leaders who understand the goals and the mission of their sport teams, and who are able to develop excellent sport skills in order to complete strategic objectives. In direct relationships, often very personal, a leader must be capable of working alone and at the same time feature abilities to cooperate with the whole team to achieve the goals. Players with such an attitude are characterized by the sense of independence and are eager to improve their skills, keen on their sport discipline, looking for new ways to improve their tactical and technical skills and trying to find new training methods. They are very competitive and aim at mastery of their sport [6, 20]. On the basis of numerous studies [2, 7, 8, 15] we should admit that certain features and patterns of behaviour describing leaders in team games are constant and connected with personalities, temperament, intelligence level and high motivation of success.