Leadership: Attitudes of Today's Student-Athletes

Leadership relative to student-athletes is an important topic. From the coaches’ perspective, the most frequent questions I get are about leadership styles and how they translate (or don’t) to today’s student-athletes. From the student-athletes’ perspective, they are often looked upon as a next generation of business and other leaders. In my latest study, I surveyed about 1,800 student-athletes on their attitudes and thoughts about leadership.

Leadership Attributes

When asked to describe their own leadership attributes, the top characteristics that student-athletes say they embody are:

• Positive attitude (67%)

• Communication skills (59%)

• Ability to motivate others (52%)

Leadership is a Goal. 78% of student-athletes say it’s important to them to achieve a leadership role while in college. Nearly the same percent say it would be a source of disappointment if they were not able to achieve a leadership role in their career.

Fear of a Leadership Role

24% of student-athletes say they have a significant fear of failure that inhibits them (or may hinder them in the future) from seeking out leadership roles.

23% of student-athletes say they lack the confidence required to lead and hope to develop skills - while in school or after - to feel more secure in their abilities.

Attracted to a High Level of Responsibility

51% of student-athletes say they are attracted to leadership roles because of the higher level of responsibility they encompass.

Student-Athletes show little sign of backing away from the challenges posed by leadership roles. 51% of student-athletes say they are attracted to leadership roles because of the higher level of responsibility they encompass. 45% say they think leadership roles will allow them to help or coach others.

Distributed Leadership: A Final Thought for Coaches

While today’s student-athletes don’t call it out by name in the research I’ve done (and most don’t know the theory exists), the leadership style that they seem most connected to is a form of “distributed leadership.”

It’s an idea that has been studied extensively at MIT and is centered on the concept that leadership isn’t about rank, but about contributing and influencing an organization or group positively. The key difference in distributed leadership - applied to coaches and student-athletes - is that a student-athlete who is a leader today may become a follower tomorrow, and vice versa. The power in this theory is that a team or organization can grow stronger by capitalizing on different individual’s strengths based on the need of the organization at that moment.