Relationships between coach servant leadership, internal team environment, and shared athlete leadership: A social network approach

Although research has accumulated on the effects of shared athlete leadership, its antecedents, particularly the effects of coaches on shared athlete leadership, have rarely been examined. This study used a social network approach to examine the indirect role of the internal team environment in the association between coach servant leadership and shared athlete leadership. Data were collected from 44 teams consisting of 1,120 Japanese high-school athletes. Density, centralisation, and centrality variance were calculated to measure shared athlete leadership. The results show that teams with higher coach servant leadership had a better internal team environment and a higher density of shared athlete leadership. We also calculated the importance-weighted density (IWD) and found that coach servant leadership was related to shared athlete leadership-IWD via the internal team environment. This study deepens the current understanding of the antecedents of shared athlete leadership and demonstrates the effectiveness of coach servant leadership.