The Leadership Development Journey by Jen Vuhuong

Author:Jen Vuhuong
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Business Expert Press

Teamwork Activities

Unity is strength... when there is teamwork and collaboration, wonderful things can be achieved.

—Mattie Stepanek

Figure 5.4 The influence process of team-work activities

Apart from family, this study found that playing sports or leading sports teams significantly and positively influence a leader’s leadership development, particularly in increasing their self-confidence, competitiveness, teamwork, or leadership identity. Such findings partially support Murphy and John’s [19] research, which suggests that sports-related skills in early ages are transferable to leadership development in adulthood, for example: people skills [20], confidence [21], self-efficacy, and competitiveness [22].

The findings also differ from previous research, which suggests that sports have a potentially negative impact that reflects on one’s self-image [23], which is the feeling of having no social competence [24] and difficulty communicating with people outside of sports teams [25]. These contrasting findings in these previous researches may result from differences in individuals or team positions, and the present empirical study shows the influence of these differences on leadership development.

This study found that the leaders significantly influenced by sports are top performers and even captains of their sports teams. Another leader, Caroline, had an uneasy time recalling the influence of sports on her leadership development as she was not the captain but easily recalled her leadership identity being shaped from leading her Young Entrepreneurship team. It seems that the leadership abilities or identity learned from sports may have also resulted from feeling successful in some aspects and/or being recognized by having a chance to lead a team rather than solely the sports itself. Kim [26] suggests that team captains exhibit better leadership capability than non captains, while Huntrods et al. [27] argue that there is no clear difference in team captains and non captains in acquiring leadership positions.

Although not providing enough evidence to conclude that high-level performers are more significantly influenced by sports than low-level performers in leadership development, this study rather suggests that having opportunities to lead teams gives individuals the opportunities for exercising their leadership ability and styles and shaping their leadership identity. Hence, sports and teamwork activities should be incorporated in leadership programs and more children should be given the opportunity to lead in schools to embrace their leadership potential. Moreover, individual differences (levels of sports performance) and team position differences should be considered in leadership research and leadership development programs.

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