How Leadership Styles of College Coaches Affect Student-Athlete Satisfaction

Volume 1, No. 1
Online ISSN: 3071-0898

© The authors. This article is published under the terms of the Creative Commons 4.0 License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

How Leadership Styles of College Coaches Affect Student-Athlete Satisfaction

CONFERENCE ABSTRACT

Joshuah Miller* and Tamara Avant⁺

School of Health Sciences, Barton College, Wilson, NC, USA
*Student author, ⁺Faculty mentor

CITATION

Miller, Joshuah; & Avant, Tamara. (2026). How leadership styles of college coaches affect student-athlete satisfaction [Conference abstract]. Barton Journal, 1(1), 188–189. https://bartonjournal.org/vol-1-no-1/2026-cat4-article-no-034

Abstract

This research focused on the foundation of organizational management and leadership and correlated it with college athletics. Throughout this research, the main question that was posed is how do leadership styles affect student-athlete well-being? Participants were 42 student athletes, both male and female, on various athletic teams. A modified version of Mefi and Asoba’s (2021) Leadership Styles and Employee Job Satisfaction Scale was used to assess coaches’ leadership style and how coaches made them feel personally, using a 5-point Likert scale. In general, the positive correlation of player satisfaction between head coaches and assistant coaches was significant, r(30) = 0.534, p < .002. Overall, participants were satisfied with their head coaches (M = 3.565, SD = 0.478) and their assistant coaches (M = 3.53, SD = 0.326). The relationship of player satisfaction and leadership styles followed the same pattern for head and assistant coaches. Athletes were least satisfied with autocratic leadership styles, [r(30) = 0.05, p = 0.791 for assistant coaches, r(41) = -0.21, p = 0.183 for head coaches]. Athletes were most satisfied with transactional leadership styles, [r(30) = 0.82, p < 0.0001 for assistant coaches, r(41) = 0.822, p = 0.0001 for head coaches]. This data will be presented pertaining to each individual athletic team and their satisfaction, and implications will be discussed.

Keywords: coaching, leadership, student-athlete, satisfaction

References

Mefi, Nteboheng P.; & Asoba, Samson N. (2021). Leadership styles and employee job satisfaction: A case of head of departments in Walter Sisulu University. Academy of Entrepreneurship Journal, 27(4s), 1–497. https://www.abacademies.org/articles/leadership-styles-and-employee-job-satisfaction-a-case-of-head-of-departments-in-walter-sisulu-university-10942.html

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