TOP-DOWN OR SHARED LEADERSHIP ? EXAMINING DIFFERENCES IN ATHLETE LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOURS BASED ON LEADERSHIP STATUS IN SPORT

The purpose of this study was to examine differences in athlete leadership behaviours based on one’s athlete leader status. Intercollegiate athletes (N = 299) self-identified their leadership status (i.e., formal leader, informal leader, follower) and rated the frequency of their own leadership behaviours. Results revealed that formal athlete leaders engaged in Training and Instruction more often than informal athlete leaders; with informal athlete leaders reporting higher frequencies than followers. Further, formal and informal athlete leaders reported engaging in Social Support more often than followers. These findings provide preliminary evidence of a top-down approach to leadership among athletes. No differences were found for Democratic Behaviour and Positive Feedback, suggesting that athlete leadership also is distributed among teammates. Results highlight important practical implications for sport practitioners in regard to athlete leader development.


INTRODUCE
There is an emerging consensus in the sport literature that athlete leadership is important for both individual and team outcomes.Specifically, the behaviour of athlete leaders positively contribute to player satisfaction/enjoyment ( (Callow et al., 2009).Given these positive benefits, it would appear worthwhile to examine factors which may impact the behaviour athlete leaders display.One such factor may be an athlete's leadership status on the team, as researchers have identified multiple athlete leadership roles which exist in sport (Cro-zier, Loughead, & Munroe-Chandler, 2013; Fransen, Coffee, et al., 2014;Loughead, Hardy, & Eys, 2006).
In particular, status reflects the amount of importance or prestige an individual possesses or is accorded by virtue of their position in relation to others (Jacob & Carron, 1998).As such, individuals within a group setting can be categorized hierarchically according to their perceived status in comparison to others.In other words, those who have greater status would be positioned higher on the status hierarchy than someone with lower status.In sport, four major sources of status (Jacob Johnson, 2004) have been identified, which include an individual's physical attributes (e.g., performance, experience, role as leader, playing position), psychological attributes (e.g., positive attitude, fostering team spirit), demographic attributes (e.g., age, in-87 come), and relationships with external others (e.g., parental support).Although it can be argued that all four sources of status are important for sport teams, the present study focused on the physical attribute of an athlete's role on the team, and in particular the role of being an athlete leader.In fact, the role as leader is one of the most important sources of status endorsed by team sport athletes (Jacob & Carron, 1998).
In their study, Jacob and Carron (1998) used captains or co-captains to define the role as leader.This frame of reference is of particular interest given that being an athlete leader can be more than simply being prescribed a leadership role such as being named as team captain.Rather, athlete leadership is a complex, dynamic process in which the leadership roles within teams is assumed by multiple athletes (Bucci, Bloom, Loughead, & Caron, 2012; Crozier et al., 2013; Fransen, Vanbeselaere, De Cuyper, Vande Broek, & Boen, 2014).The notion that leadership roles can be occupied by numerous individuals is rooted within the approach of leadership being shared or distributed (Pearce & Conger, 2003).The concept of shared leadership is in contrast to the traditional approach where one person is in charge with others following.This traditional top-down approach has dominated the research of leadership within sport which has examined the role of the coach as leader.Only in the past decade has research been paid to understanding shared leadership in sport, such that both coaches and athletes can provide leadership within the team (Loughead & Hardy, 2005).
In regard to athlete leadership specifically, the role of athlete leader is defined as an athlete occupying a formal or informal role within a team who influences other team members toward achieving a common goal (Loughead et al., 2006).This definition highlights that leadership roles can be shared or broadly distributed among members of the team, and that two types of athlete leader roles exist.Formal leaders are those individuals designated as leaders by the organization or team (e.g., captains), whereas informal leaders are those individuals who emerge as leaders through experience and interactions with other team members.Since this definition of athlete leader was proposed, a third role which has been acknowledged by researchers is the role of the athlete non-leader (i.e., the follower) (Crozier et al., 2013).
The present study was guided by Locke's (2003) integrated model of leadership developed in organizational psychology, which proposes that shared leadership involves both upward or downward hierarchical influence and lateral influence.When applied to athlete leadership, the hierarchical influence would indicate that captains and assistant captains (formal types of leaders) are recognized as the highest source of athlete leadership status, followed by informal athlete leaders, and then by followers (i.e., hierarchical influence).As for the lateral influence of the model, team members are viewed as being equal and interdependent with each other (regardless of status).Several assumptions are associated with Locke's model.The first is that all team members are not created equally based on their status -formal leaders have greater status than informal leaders, and both types of athlete leaders having greater status than followers.The second assumption is that both lateral and hierarchical influence contributes to team effectiveness and should not be considered mutually exclusive (Pearce & Sims, 2002).
While Locke's (2003) integrated model of leadership has not been examined, to our knowledge, in relation to athlete leadership, research has indicated that a formal hierarchy does exist in sport, which provides structure regarding how individuals should enact their roles (Benson, Hardy, & Eys, 2016).Further, there is some evidence highlighting the models applicability, in that certain athlete leadership roles (i.e., formal and informal) may provide differing and/or similar types of leadership behaviours to their team.In a qualitative examination of the benefits associated with the presence of formal and informal athlete leaders, Crozier et al. (2013) reported that task leadership behaviours were cited as a benefit associated with formal leaders (e.g., captains) but not for informal leaders.In contrast, the results further identified the leadership behaviours of encouraging teammates and seeking input from teammates as important behaviours of both formal and informal leaders.While these findings suggest that formal and informal leaders are beneficial in that they provide different but also similar leadership behaviours to their team, it was not able to assess the relative frequency of behaviour that the different leadership roles exhibit.
Further, with some exceptions (e.g., Benson, Hardy, & Eys, 2016) there has been little research to date examining the role of followers in sport.From organizational psychology we know that followers are associated with having less responsibilities than leaders (Vanderslice, 1988) and that they are viewed and feel less important than those who occupy leadership roles (Hoption, Christie, & Barling, 2012).However, what the above results fail to indicate is whether athletes (leaders and followers) engage in similar or different amounts of leadership behaviours contingent on their leadership role (status).Determining which behaviours athletes in different leadership roles perceive themselves to display would provide practical knowledge for professionals working with athletes (i.e., coaches, sport psychologists).In particular, knowing which athletes (i.e., roles) are displaying specific leadership behaviours would allow practitioners to develop leadership training programs tailored specifically for an entire sport team.Currently, much of the leadership training athletes receive is catered toward the formal leader (Gould & Voelker, 2010).However, informal leaders also act as a primary source of leadership to many athletes (Fransen, Vanbeselaere, et al., 2014), and thus should be provided opportunities to enhance their leadership skills.
In terms of the leadership behaviours of interest to the current study, although a variety of measures have been used to assess athlete leadership, the Leadership Scale for Sports (LSS; Chelladurai & Saleh, 1980) has shown strong psychometric properties compared to other measures modified to assess athlete leader behaviours (Loughead, 2017).In particular, the LSS measures five dimensions of leadership behaviour: Training and Instruction (improve athletic performance); Positive Feedback (recognize and reward good performance); Social Support (show a concern for the welfare of team members); Democratic Behaviour (allow team members to participate in decision-making); and Autocratic Behaviour (make decisions independently of team members).
Therefore, the purpose of the current study was to examine whether there are differences between an individual's leadership behaviours within team sports depending on one's self-rated athlete leadership status.On the one hand, Locke's (2003) integrated model of leadership would suggest differences in leadership behaviours based on an individual's status (i.e., top-down approach).As research has indicated that formal leaders are cited more frequently than informal leaders as performing task-oriented functions (Fransen, Vanbeselaere, et al., 2014;Loughead et al., 2006), it was hypothesized that athlete leaders would differ in the frequency in which they reported engaging in Training and Instruction behaviours.Further, as captains have indicated they use autocratic techniques (as part of their role, see Dupuis, Bloom, & Loughead, 2006), it was hypothesized that formal athlete leaders would engage in more Autocratic Behaviour compared to informal leaders.On the other hand, the model also suggests there is the possibility that leadership is shared and there would be no differences based on status (i.e., shared approach).Given that research has reported athlete leaders, regardless of formal/informal status, are beneficial as they provide support to teammates as well as seek input from teammates (Crozier et al., 2013), it was hypothesized that frequency of Social Support, Positive Feedback, and Democratic Behaviour would not differ based on athlete leader status, such that these behaviours are shared similarly among athlete leaders.Last, as there is evidence in organizational literature that followers view themselves as having less responsibilities (Vanderslice, 1988) and are less important than leaders (Hoption et al., 2012) it was predicted that followers may engage in leadership behaviours to a lesser extent than athlete leaders.However, as there is a paucity of research in sport examining followers, no a priori hypotheses were advanced for which specific leadership behaviours would differ from those of the athlete leaders.

Participants
A total of 299 intercollegiate athletes (90 male, 209 female) from both college and university intercollegiate teams participated in the study.All participants competed in either the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) Association or the Ontario Colleges Athletic Association (OCAA) and were members of interdependent sports teams that included basketball (n = 43), ice hockey (n = 122), and volleyball (n = 134).The mean age of the participants was 20.71 years (SD = 2.07).The participants had been involved with their current team for an average of 2.17 years (SD = 1.19).

Measures
Athlete leader status.Athlete leader status was determined by the participant self-identifying the leadership role they occupied on their current team.Participants were presented with a description of a formal athlete leader (i.e., an athlete that is selected by the team or coach to be in a leadership position, such as captain, co-captain or assistant captain) and an informal athlete leader (i.e., established through interactions with team members, not formally appointed by coach or team).The participants were asked to select one of these two athlete leadership roles as it applied to them.If a participant did not select either of these two options, they were classified as a follower.This method has been used in previous research in order to categorize athletes into the leadership role they perceived themselves as occupying (Crozier et al., 2013;Martin, Balderson, Hawkins, Wilson, & Bruner, 2016).Although we acknowledge the discrete nature of this categorization, this method was deemed appropriate for classifying athletes into their self-rated leadership status for this study.Similar categorization methods have been used in research examining starting status (i.e., whether they are a player who begins the competition on the playing surface and typically receives regular playing time; Eys, Carron, Bray, & Beauchamp, 2003) whereby self-rated starting status was a variable of interest (Jeffery-Tosoni, Eys, Schinke, & Lewko, 2011).In this study, results indicated that 67 (22.4%) participants identified themselves as a formal athlete leader, 135 (45.1%) as an informal athlete leader, and 98 (32.5%) were classified as an athlete non-leader.The leadership dispersion found in the current study using a self-selection method of leadership is similar to what research has found in previous studies (Crozier et al., 2013;Fransen, Coffee, et al., 2014;Fransen, Vanbeselaere, et al., 2014).
Athlete leader behaviours.The participants self-rated their own leadership behaviours using the Leadership Scale for Sports (LSS; Chelladurai & Saleh, 1980).The LSS has typically been used to measure transactional coaching behaviours but has been used effectively to assess athlete leadership behaviours (Loughead & Hardy, 2005; Vincer & Loughead, 2010).In addition, the LSS has shown strong psychometric properties compared to other measures that have been modified when assessing athlete leader behaviours (Loughead, 2017).The LSS is a 40-item inventory that measures five types of leadership behaviours.The Training and Instruction dimension consists of 13 items and assesses leadership behaviour aimed at improving athletic performance (e.g., "I explain to team members the techniques and tactics of the sport").Positive Feedback contains five items and reflects the tendency to reinforce behaviour by recognizing and rewarding good performances (e.g., "I express appreciation when a team member performs well").The dimension of Social Support consists of eight items and reflects the degree to which an individual shows concern for the welfare of his/her teammates (e.g., "I help team members with their personal problems").The Democratic Behaviour dimension consists of nine items and reflects the extent an individual allows participation from teammates in decision-making (e.g., "I let fellow team members share in decision making").Autocratic Behaviour includes five items and represents the tendency to make decisions independently from the team (e.g., "I work relatively independent of other team members").All items were scored on a 5-point Likert type scale anchored by 1 (never) and 5 (always).The LSS has demonstrated convergent (Paradis & Loughead, 2012) and discriminant (Vincer & Loughead, 2010) validity, as well as acceptable internal reliability values when assessing 90 athlete leadership behaviours in athletes (Loughead & Hardy, 2005;Vincer & Loughead, 2010).Thus, this inventory is measuring its targeted constructs making it a viable tool for measuring leadership behaviours in athletes.For the current study, it should also be noted that the athlete leadership dimension of Autocratic Behaviour had an alpha coefficient of .61 and was removed from further analyses.

Procedure
Following university ethical approval, coaches were contacted via e-mail seeking permission to survey their athletes.After each coach had given permission, a convenient time was set to meet with the athletes prior to or after a practice session.At this meeting, the purpose of the study was explained to the athletes.Confidentiality of individual responses was assured with the primary researcher administering the questionnaires (i.e., demographic details, athlete leader status, and LSS) in separate unmarked envelopes.Completed questionnaires were placed back into the envelope to further ensure confidentiality.The return of the questionnaires signified consent to participate in the study and completion of the questionnaires took approximately 15 minutes.In addition, all participants were given the opportunity to fill out a ballot for a chance to win a $50 gift certificate to a sporting goods store as an incentive to participate in the study.

Data Analysis
In order to address the study's purpose, a MANOVA was conducted to examine if formal athlete leaders, informal athlete leaders, and athlete followers would differ in the frequency in which they displayed certain leadership behaviours.An athlete's self-rated leadership status served as the independent variable, with the four remaining dimensions of the LSS serving as dependent variables.As the distribution among leadership statuses were unequal, the Pillai's trace statistic was examined as it is considered the most robust statistic when data violates MANOVA assumptions (i.e., equal cell sizes; Olson, 1974).If significant, to determine which specific athlete leadership behaviours differed in relation to athlete leader status, post-hoc analyses were conducted.Post-hoc univariate ANOVAs have typically been used to determine where the differences are found in a MANOVA (Huberty & Morris, 1989 Huberty & Morris, 1989).In order to account for correlated dependent variables in a MANOVA design, Tonidandel and LeBreton (2013) have applied the technique of relative weight analysis (Johnson, 2000) to the post-hoc assessment of significant MANOVAs.Relative weight analysis uses a variable transformation approach that creates a set of new variables that is maximally related to the original variables but are orthogonal (uncorrelated) to one another.Thus, relative weight analysis allows researchers to evaluate the relationship between the independent variable (i.e., athlete leader status) and the dependent variables (i.e., athlete leadership behaviours) while taking into account the intercorrelations among the dependent variables.Thus, relative weight analysis (Tonidandel & LeBreton, 2011) was conducted using the R statistical package (R Core Team, 2013) to control for potential intercorrelations between the four athlete leadership behaviours.The relative weights associated with each dependent variable (i.e., athlete leadership behaviours) represented a measure of relative effect size (i.e., the percentage of variance accounted for in each dependent variable by the independent variable; Tonidandel & LeBreton, 2013).Further, in order to account for family-wise error with four dependent variables, a Bonferroni adjustment was applied (p = .05/4< .0125) to a Tukey post-hoc comparison with strict confidence intervals (99% confidence interval [CI]).

Descriptive Statistics
Table 1 contains the means, standard deviations, and alpha coefficients of the variables examined in the present study.In general, the means suggest that these athletes perceived themselves as providing medium to high frequencies of leadership behaviours (means ranged from 3.00 to 4.29, a 5-point scale).Table 2 contains the correlation coefficients between the four athlete leadership behaviours.

Main Findings
The overall MANOVA revealed a significant multivariate effect for leadership status, Pillai's trace = .138,F(8, 588) = 5.447, p < .001,η 2 = .069,indicating that an athlete's self-rated leadership status significantly differentiated the self-rated frequency of leadership behaviours.The results of the relative weight analysis are presented in Table 3, and show that the independent variable of athlete leader status was significantly different for the athlete leadership behaviours of Training and Instruction (e.g., providing instruction to teammates to help increase performance), and Social Support (e.g., helping a teammate through a difficult time).Using the Tukey procedure for planned comparison post-hoc analysis, we found that athlete leaders who self-rated themselves as being a formal leader also perceived themselves as engaging in significantly more Training and Instruction than informal athlete leaders (p < .01;CI = .04,.61)and followers (p < .001,CI = .29,.90).Similarly, informal athlete leaders perceived themselves to use more Training and Instruc-tion than followers (p < .01,CI = .02,.52).As for the athlete leadership behaviour of Social Support, it was found that self-rated formal athlete leaders (p < .001,CI = .14,.67)and informal athlete leaders (p < .01,CI = .03,.47)perceived themselves displaying this leadership behaviour to a greater extent than followers.No other differences were found (see Figure 1).

DISCUSSION
In this research study, we examined whether an athlete's leadership status differentiated an individual's self-rated leadership behaviours in sport teams.A MANOVA, with relative weight analysis (Tonidandel & LeBreton, 2013) and planned comparison post-hoc tests were conducted to examine differences in behaviour based on athlete self-rated leadership status (i.e., formal, informal, and non-leader).Results will be discussed in relation to Locke's (2003) integrated model of leadership.
First, results lend support to the top-down approach of leadership in Locke's (2003) model, as athlete leadership status differentiated two dimensions of athlete leader behaviours.In support of our hypotheses, it was found that formal athlete leaders reported using Training and Instruction leadership behaviours more frequently than informal athlete leaders and followers, with informal athlete leaders displaying it more than athlete followers.In regard to formal athlete leaders, this may not be surprising, as captains and assistant captains are often selected based upon their skill level or sport-specific experience (Loughead & Hardy, 2005; Moran & Weiss, 2006; Price & Weiss, 2011), suggesting they would have the knowledge to provide task instruction.Further, research has found that majority of athletes who perform task-oriented functions (e.g., provide tactical decision-making) occupy a formal leadership role (Loughead et al., 2006).In relation to informal athlete leaders, results provide support for the task-oriented function in which emergent leaders may provide.While supporting previous work indicating that both formal and informal leaders provide task-oriented functions within teams (Fransen, Vanbeselaere, et al., 2014), the current study revealed that informal leaders do so to a lesser degree than formal leaders, but to a greater degree than followers.
Results also indicated that both formal and informal athlete leaders were found to provide more Social Support (i.e., concern for the welfare of others) compared to followers.While in contrast to our hypotheses, results do align with previous work which indicated that both designated leaders (i.e., formal) and emergent leaders (i.e., informal) provide social functions (e.g., promotes good relations among team members, deals with conflicts between teammates, is trusted by team members) within the team (Fransen, Vanbeselaere, et al., 2014;Loughead et al., 2006).Re-sults of the current study add to the extant literature by highlighting that formal and informal leaders reported using social support behaviours to a similar degree, yet to a greater degree than the athletes considered followers.This finding is novel when looking at the frequency of athlete leader behaviours.
While providing some evidence that leadership status can differentiate the behaviours of athlete leaders, the results also indicated that two of the athlete leader behaviours did not differ between statuses.As such, results also provide support for the shared leadership approach within Locke's (2003) model.Specifically, results indicated that both Democratic Behaviour and Positive Feedback were displayed equally among athletes.In essence, all athletes reported consulting with their teammates before making a decision that affected the group, while also rewarding teammates for good performances.Although this finding may seem somewhat intuitive, as both democratic decision-making and positive feedback would be desirable among athletes regardless of status, this was the first study to our knowledge to statistically examine whether differences would emerge in leadership behaviours among athletes.As no differences emerged for these two behaviours, results provide additional insight into the shared nature of leadership in sport.
Most intriguingly, an examination of the means indicated that regardless of whether the participants self-identified as an athlete leader (formal/informal) or athlete non-leader (follower), all three groups rated the frequency of their leadership behaviours relatively high (i.e., above the mid-point on a five-point scale, see Table 1).Although we found significant differences for two of the leadership behaviours, the overall finding suggests that leadership is distributed among the team, such that all team members perceive themselves as engaging in leadership behaviours, regardless of if they are a leader or follower.In addition to research that has suggested every team member at some point occupies a role of followership (Benson et al., 2016), the current study adds to that knowledge by revealing that every team member, including followers, at some point perceives themselves as engaging in behaviours typically considered leadership behaviours.
Taken together, the results support Locke's (2003) integrated model of leadership when applied to athlete leadership in sport.Specifically, Locke's model indicates a top-down approach, whereby individuals 94 who have greater status (e.g., CEO or team captain) have the capacity to influence others who have lower status (e.g., employee or teammate).Further, the model also suggests that leadership can be distributed among individuals.That is, leadership can be "shared", and is a dynamic mutual process involving the emergence of both formal and informal leaders (Pearce, Manz, & Sims, 2009).Within the framework of shared leadership, all team members have the potential to be a leader contingent on the situation and the capacities of the individuals within that situation.Team members provide leadership when their background and strengths are required and will relinquish leadership to others when they are needed (Manz, Pearce, Mott, Henson, & Sims, 2013).Top-down or hierarchical leadership is still present with some individuals holding positions of responsibility (e.g., team captains) and making decisions when required, but the leadership process is fluid and can shift to other individuals (Locke, 2003;Manz et al., 2013).This aligns with research in organizational psychology, where group tasks were achieved through collective leadership (where a number of individuals emerged as leaders to guide a group through specific challenges; Friedrich et al., 2009).In sum, the findings from the present study indicate that both approaches to leadership (i.e., top-down, shared) are present within athlete leadership.
Given that all athletes engaged in leadership behaviours regardless of leadership status, the findings of this research have important implications for sport practitioners and researchers.More specifically, as athlete leadership behaviours have been positively related to perceptions of cohesion ( (Price & Weiss, 2013), it would follow that leadership behaviours be fostered in all athletes in order to influence individual and group outcomes.Therefore, coaches and sport psychology consultants should be aware of how athletes' behaviours can influence aspects of the team environment and should provide opportunities for all athletes to develop their leadership abilities.For example, all athletes could be provided the opportunity to attend leadership development workshops to enhance their leadership skills.By allowing all athletes to develop leadership behaviours, athletes may begin to feel as though their leadership contributions to the team are benefiting the entire group.The results of this study further supports this idea by indicating that followers also viewed themselves as displaying leadership behaviours to a similar degree as their leader counterparts.In fact, recent research has found that athletes, regardless of leadership status, who attended leadership workshops over the course of a season, engaged in leadership behaviours more frequently and had greater perceptions of task motivational climate and athlete satisfaction at the end of the season (Duguay, Loughead, & Munroe-Chandler, 2016).Taken together, these findings suggest that followers may have the ability to influence the team environment, even if they do not regard themselves as a leader.
While the results of this research contribute to the athlete leadership literature, it is not without its limitations.The use of self-report measures may have resulted in response bias in terms of social desirability.In order to minimize this limitation, the questionnaires were distributed and returned to the investigator in unmarked envelopes and were completed independently by the athletes.Further, having self-rated measures for both predictor and criterion variables may have contributed to common method bias (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee, & Podsakoff, 2003).While having coach-or peer-assessed leadership status/behaviours will avoid this issue in future work, results still provide an interesting insight into athletes' self-perceptions concerning leadership behaviours.Specifically, regardless of an individuals' self-perceived leadership role (i.e., formal, informal, follower), all athletes' perceived themselves as displaying leadership behaviours.
Further, as it is obvious within a team who is a formal leader (either they are a captain or they are not), individuals may have self-rated as an informal leader, so as not to be viewed as a follower (which may be associated with negative connotations).In order to circumvent this bias, participants were asked to read the definitions of the two leadership roles and then instructed to indicate whether they perceived themselves as being either a formal or informal leader.Individuals were also instructed to continue to the next section if they did not perceive themselves as occupying either of the leadership roles (i.e., leave the leadership role section blank).In this sense, participants were unaware that they would be categorized as a "follower" in this study if they opted to not choose one of the two options, as the follower was not a choice presented to the participants.This choice was excluded in order to reduce the chance that participants would rate themselves as an informal leader to avoid being characterized as a "follower." Another limitation relates to the low internal consistency value found for the athlete leadership behaviour of Autocratic Behaviour.Thus, we were unable to examine whether this leadership behaviour might differ based on athlete leadership status.This low value has been reported in previous coaching leadership research (Murray, 2006;Westre & Weiss, 1991) and athlete leadership research (Paradis & Loughead, 2012).The low alpha value found may be the result of utilizing an inventory (i.e., LSS) that was originally designed to examine coaching leadership behaviours (Chelladurai & Saleh, 1980).Although responses to the athlete leader version of the LSS have supported its validity and reliability (Vincer & Loughead, 2010), previous studies examined athletes' perceptions of their peers' leader behaviours, whereas we measured athletes' perceptions of their own leadership behaviours.Therefore, the items reflecting the dimension of Autocratic Behaviour may have been perceived as a negative behaviour and participants did not want to identify themselves as engaging in this type of behaviour.Conversely, the dimension of Autocratic Behaviour simply may not correctly reflect leadership behaviours displayed by athletes.Therefore, future research should examine whether the Autocratic Behaviour dimension of the LSS is relevant to athlete leaders.
Though the present study provides insight into leadership behaviours of athletes occupying different leadership roles, future directions can be suggested.This research was focused on examining the physical status attribute of leadership role (Jacob & Carron, 1996).Given that other attributes have been deemed to be important indicators of status, such as experience (Jacob & Carron, 1996), future research may wish to examine whether this variable distinguishes athlete leadership behaviours.For instance, Canadian intercollegiate sport is characterized by a five year eligibility rule for athletes.It would be interesting to determine which leadership behaviours are being used most frequently by athletes based on their eligibility at the intercollegiate level (1st year, 2nd year, 3rd year, and so on).This would help to determine which leadership behaviours should be targeted for intervention at different experience levels.
Although the purpose of the current study was to determine whether differences in leadership behaviour can be found based on leadership status, only four possible leadership behaviours were examined.As this study provides initial evidence that leadership occurs in both a hierarchical and lateral direction, future work may provide additional insight into this relationship by examining other athlete leader behaviours that have been identified (e.g., transformational leadership).
In summary, the results provided support for Locke's (2003) integrated model of leadership as applied to athlete leadership.In particular, athlete leadership occurs in the traditional top-down approach, whereby those with greater status sometimes engaged in more leadership behaviours than those with lower status.However, the results also suggested that leadership is distributed among team members, such that individuals who did not identify themselves as a leader (i.e., followers) were providing similar levels of leadership behaviours.However, the mean ratings of leadership behaviour from all athletes were above the mid-point, suggesting that all athletes engage in leadership-type behaviours regardless of leadership status.As formal and informal athlete leader behaviours have been the focus of previous athlete leadership research, results indicate that followers' behaviours should also be taken into consideration in future research.

Table 1 .
Means and standard deviations for the leader behaviour dimensions distinguished by leadership status a Scores for the athlete leadership behaviours range from 1-5, with higher numbers representing a greater frequency *Dimension was deleted from further analyses due to low alpha value; Standard deviations are contained within the parentheses underneath their respective means.

Table 3 .
Relative weights and confidence intervals for each dependent variable 95% Confidence Interval a Note.* indicates the relative weight significantly different from zero at p < .05; a If zero is not included, relative weight is significant