Abstract
Chelladurai’s multidimensional model of leadership (MML) visualizes the complexity of how the actual executed leading style is influenced by different factors. The MML identifies three leadership behavior states – required, actual, and preferred – determined by situational, leader, and member characteristics. While the model offers valuable insights, questions remain about how specific coaching styles enhance group cohesion and how cohesion influences performance in high-performing sports teams. This study aims to address these gaps by examining the coaching styles most effective in fostering group cohesion to improve team performance within high-performing sports teams. Task cohesion, which emphasizes clear roles and shared objectives, has been shown to have a stronger impact on performance in competitive environments than social cohesion. However, cohesion alone is insufficient. High cognitive trust in the coach and a shared consensus on his leadership style are critical for translating cohesion into enhanced performance. Coaches play a pivotal role in in keeping the team in the vicious circle of enhanced performance. To achieve this, coaches must adopt a holistic approach to coaching, leveraging multiple styles to meet the dynamic needs of their teams. Transformational leadership emerges as a key factor, inspiring and aligning team members to achieve shared goals. To enhance group cohesion and, consequently, team performance, coaches of high-performing sports teams are advised to: 1) prioritize task cohesion over social cohesion, 2) build high cognitive trust by demonstrating expertise and reliability, and 3) adopt a holistic coaching approach tailored to team dynamics.
Key words: task cohesion, social cohesion, cognitive trust, consensus, leadership styles
Introduction
Phil Jackson, arguably the best coach the NBA has ever had, is the only coach who made the Chicago Bulls an NBA championship winning team. After winning six titles with the Bulls, he became the coach of the Los Angeles Lakers and directly won the NBA title with them as well. Jackson went on winning another four titles with the Lakers, giving him a record of eleven won NBA titles as a coach, making him the most decorated coach in the NBA. Jackson’s achievements have shown the world the key role a coach can have for a team, helping a team becoming much more than just the sum of its parts. How do we become a coach that is able to build high performing teams, like Jackson?
First, we must be mindful of the different ways in which a coach can lead a team. Chelladurai’s multidimensional model of leadership (MML), see figure 1, shows the complexity of how the actual executed leading style is influenced by different factors. The MML consists of three states of leadership behaviors: required (box 4), actual (box 5) and preferred (box 6) behavior (Chelladurai, 2007). The leadership behaviors are respectively shaped by situational characteristics (box 1), such as group goals, task types, and cultural context; leader characteristics (box 2), the traits of the leader, like experience and expertise; and member characteristics (box 3), the individual traits of the members in the team, such as personality and skill level (Chelladurai, 2007). Depending on the situational characteristics (box 1), the leader, the coach in this paper, must adjust his or her behavior (box 4) to be successful with the team (e.g., professional vs recreational). Preferred behaviors (box 6) reflect member preferences, influenced by individual traits. The actual behavior of the coach (box 5) arises from the coach’s own characteristics (box 2) but is also influenced by the alignment of required and preferred behaviors (box 4 & 6), and the received feedback, which is based on the outcomes of the satisfaction and performance of the team (box 7), highlighting the dynamic interplay between context, group needs, and leadership execution.
To measure this model, Chelladurai & Saleh (1980) developed the Leadership Scale for Sports (LSS). The LSS shows that coaching behaviors have 5 overarching coaching styles. Training and instruction, focuses on improving athletes' performance through physical training, skill acquisition, and tactical knowledge. Democratic, reflects the coach’s willingness to involve athletes in decision-making processes, including goal setting and achieving strategies. Autocratic, highlights the coach’s authority, requiring strict compliance with decisions and maintaining a more distant relationship with athletes. Social support, addresses how a coach satisfies athletes' interpersonal needs, either directly or by fostering a supportive environment. Positive feedback, emphasizes recognizing and appreciating athletes’ efforts and contributions. Chelladurai (2007) discusses that in working with the LSS there was still one facet missing to comprehend all dimensions of coaching behavior: transformational leadership. Transformational leadership is characterized by the ability to inspire and motivate followers to exceed their own self-interests for the sake of the organization (Hay, 2006; Chelladurai, 2007), and influences box 1, 2 and 3 in the MLL (Chelladurai, 2007). Figure 1 shows how transformational leadership is incorporated in the MLL.
The goal of these coaching styles is to build a team. Looking at group cohesion is a direct feedback mechanism for teambuilding, because team building results in enhanced group cohesion (Carron et al., 2002; APA Dictionary of Psychology, 2018). Group cohesion is “the unity or solidarity of a group, including the integration of the group for both social and task-related purposes” (APA Dictionary of Psychology, 2018), and a mediating factor to measure if the used coaching style results in enhanced performance (Mach et al., 2021; Liu, 2024). According to Grossman et al. (2021) performance increases when group cohesion increases. However, how this relationship shows up within high-performing sports teams remains a question. Furthermore, we remain in the dark how the coaching style can enhance the group cohesion.
This study aims to address these gaps by examining the coaching styles most effective in fostering group cohesion to improve performance within high-performing sports teams. Group cohesion is a mediating factor to measure if the used coaching style results in enhanced performance (Mach et al., 2021; Liu, 2014). Therefore, I will first shine light on the relationship group cohesion has on performance in professional sports teams (R1). Second, I will discuss what the effects are of different coaching styles on group cohesion (R2). The construction of this paper is visualized in figure 2. In the light of the discussed topics, I will give a framework that coaches can use to equip themselves with the tools to make a high performing team out of every group of individuals.
Group cohesion and performance
According to Carron et al. (2002) and Mach et al. (2021) group cohesion has a reciprocal relationship with performance, which means that when group cohesion enhances also performance improves, and when the performance gets better also group cohesion increases. So, creating this unity in the group is important, because it gets the team in a vicious circle of enhanced performances, what every high performing team wants to achieve. Carron et al. (2002) did a meta-analysis comprising 46 studies containing 9.988 athletes and 1.044 teams, to clarify how group cohesion affects the performance. Their findings show the importance of understanding the contextual nature of group cohesion and its variables. Group cohesion has the strongest relationships with performance in professional sports teams compared to the recreational level. The two variables group cohesion consists of, task and social cohesion, both impact performance in distinct manners. Task cohesion focuses on achieving specific objectives and social cohesion focuses on fostering interpersonal relationship and unity within the team. The results of Carron et al. (2002) did show that, even though task and social cohesion both have a positive relationship with performance, task cohesion has a stronger connection to performance in competitive environments than social cohesion. Based on these results, Carron et al. (2002) recommend focusing on having clear role definitions, enhancing interpersonal interactions among teammates, and fostering a unified team culture focused on shared goals for enhancing group cohesion and with it the performance.
However, the findings of Benson et al. (2016) showed that the relationship between group cohesion and team performance is more complex than previously thought. The results indicated that team performance positively predicated task and social cohesion, suggesting that higher-performing teams experience more group cohesion. However, task and social cohesion did not predict team performance, after controlling for earlier performance scores. The finding that enhancing group cohesion does not directly lead to improved team performance was also found by Abrantes et al. (2020). They investigated how team tenure, group cohesion, and trust in a coach impacted team performance in sport. The researchers surveyed 668 players, the age ranging from 18-37 years, from 73 teams (51 male teams and 22 female teams) playing at professional or top amateur basketball level in Catalonia. In the analysis of their results, it turned out that team cohesion has no significant effect on team performance. Abrantes et al. (2020) also explored what the role of cognitive and affective trust in the coach was on team performance. The results showed that the positive interaction between team cohesion and performance is enhanced when there is high cognitive trust and low affective trust in the coach. High cognitive trust means that players trust their coach’s expertise. Low affective trust means less emotional connection with the coach, which require teams to rely more on their cohesiveness for successful performance, creating a situation where shared responsibility among team members becomes critical to navigating challenges. The findings underscore that simply fostering team cohesion is insufficient for boosting performance, it must be aligned with establishing high cognitive trust in the coach, who serves as a pivotal figure for guiding the team.
In the search of better understanding of the relationship between group cohesion and team performance, Park et al. (2021) found that this is best explained in a quadratic model instead of a linear model. This study showed that in the beginning group cohesion has a positive relation with team performance, it can enhance cooperation and trust among team members, creating a robust environment conducive to achieving common objectives. However, when group cohesion becomes excessively strong, it can negatively impact team performance. This can be illustrated by an inverted U-shaped relationship between group cohesion and team performance, showing that too much cohesion can be counterproductive. Park et al. (2021) suggest that this may occur because team members prioritize maintaining harmony and being agreeable with one another, which diminishes their willingness to hold each other accountable for performance outcomes. The authors got their results by analyzing two decades of data (1997-2018) of 10 teams in the Korean Basketball League. To determine group cohesion, Park et al. (2021) investigated the number of school ties in the team, if players graduated from the same high-school or university. School ties play a major role in selecting players for the team in Korean culture, more than the actual abilities of the player. The validity of measuring group cohesion this way is questionable. Considering the above, it has become clear that group cohesion is a dynamic variable. Therefore, it is not likely that group cohesion remains a representative value based on whether players already knew each other before becoming teammates. It would therefore be interesting to investigate if the inverted-U relationship between group cohesion and team performance will still be found if group cohesion is measured through the Group Environment Questionnaire (GEQ), like in the studies of Carron et al. (2002) and Abrantes et al. (2020), and Benson et al. (2016), who used a youth variant of the GEQ.
Group cohesion and coaching style
Research of Abrantes et al. (2020) already slightly touched the topic of the pivotal role the coach has, by showing the importance of cognitive trust in the coach for boosting team performance. In this part of the article I will elaborate on the pivotal role of the coach, by discussing what should or should not be done to enhance group cohesion. Kim & Cruz (2016) conducted a meta-analysis involving 24 studies that embody 5906 athletes, aged between 13-35 years, centered on LSS to explore the correlation between coaching behaviors and group cohesion. The findings indicated that the coaching style that contributes most significant to group cohesion (both task and social cohesion) is training and instruction, but also democratic, social support and positive feedback have significant positive correlations. Conversely, a negative correlation was found between an autocractic style and group cohesion. Kim & Cruz (2016) therefore conclude that, because all coaching styles have a relationships with group cohesion, the coaching styles should be viewed together, instead of separately.
The findings of González-García et al. (2022) revealed some unexpected results that contradict the research of Kim & Cruz (2016). González-García et al. (2022) had 296 competitive athletes (average age 22 years), ranging from reginal to international level, complete the LSS. Democratic coaching behavior was found to negatively predict task cohesion, while authoritarian coaching behavior positively influenced social cohesion. Carron et al. (2002) showed that social cohesion has less impact on performance in competitive settings than task cohesion. Therefore, these findings could actually contribute to a holistic coaching approach, like Kim & Cruz (2016) suggest, and that we should not focus on only using democratic or authoritarian coaching style. Furthermore, González-García et al. (2022) found that positive feedback positively predict task cohesion. The authors did not find significant relationships between other coaching styles and group cohesion, unlike Kim & Cruz (2016). González-García et al. (2022) discus that the sampled athletes might prefer more directive and demanding coaching styles instead of the participative approach often advocated in sports psychology. The authors suggest that coaches should focus on providing explicit guidance, technical feedback, and maintaining a structured approach in training to foster task cohesion effectively.
Transformational leadership is characterized by the ability to inspire, motivate and establish meaningful relationships with team members (Mach et al., 2021). Mach et al. (2021) aimed to better understand the relationship between transformational leadership and performance in professional sports through focusing on team cohesion as a mediating factor. The researchers analyzed data from 690 athletes (average age is 25,5 years) across 59 teams in interactive sports leagues, such as basketball and handball, in Spain. The findings of Mach et al. (2021) indicate that transformational leadership indirectly boosts team performance, manifested through enhanced team cohesion, and this effect is intensified when a team has experienced strong prior performance or victories. Furthermore, the strength of team consensus regarding the coach’s transformational leadership significantly affects this relationship, uniformity in this perception lead to heightened cohesion and, consequently, on performance. The authors propose a framework that emphasizes on the shared consensus on the coach’s perceived leadership style. When consensus is high, members are more likely to share goals, fostering a cooperative team climate that enhances performance.
Conclusion
The aim of this study was to examine which the coaching styles are most effective in fostering group cohesion to improve performance within high-performing sports teams. Research demonstrates that task and social cohesion positively influence team performance, but task cohesion has a stronger impact in competitive settings (Carron et al., 2002). However, fostering cohesion alone is insufficient, high cognitive trust in the coach and shared consensus regarding the coach’s perceived leadership style are essential for translating cohesion into enhanced performance (Abrantes et al., 2020; Mach et al., 2021). Interestingly, overly strong cohesion may harm performance due to reduced accountability, suggesting an inverted U-shaped relationship between cohesion and performance (Park et al., 2021). Future research using the GEQ to measure group cohesion in high-performing sports teams is needed to determine if too much cohesion indeed hinders performance. According to Carron et al. (2002) and Mach et al. (2021) group cohesion has a reciprocal relationship with performance, where increased cohesion enhances performance and vice versa. This highlights the pivotal role the coach has in keeping the team in this vicious circle of enhanced performances. To achieve this, coaches must view coaching styles holistically. Transformational leadership emerges as a key driver of performance through its impact on team cohesion, especially when paired with recent team successes.
Framework for sports practice
In the light of the above, I would advise coaches of high-performance sports teams to do the following three things to enhance group cohesion and consequently enhance team performance: 1) Foster task cohesion over social cohesion: emphasize clear role definitions and responsibilities for each team member; and focus on shared team goals and objectives to align efforts towards achieving success. 2) Build high cognitive trust: demonstrate expertise in your coaching methods to earn players' confidence. 3) Holistic coaching: reflect and gather regular feedback to become adaptable in your leadership style and recognize the value of tailoring your approach to the contextual information and the team's specific needs.
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