Athletes Perception of Coaches’ Leadership Style and Tendency to Cooperate among Competitive Teams [Percepción de los deportistas sobre el estilo de liderazgo de los entrenadores y la tendencia a cooperar en equipos competitivos]

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to discover the relationships between athletes’ perceived coach behaviors during training and competition, and cooperation via Bayesian network (BN). Professional male atheletes from several team sports (N = 158) completed the Portuguese version of the Leadership Scale for Sport and the Questionário de Cooperação Desportiva to assess cooperation. Relationships were identified between perceived coach behaviors in training and competition environments and with athletes tendency to cooperate. Overall, the findings support that in sports, coaching behaviours congruent with the athletes’ individual needs and adapted to the situational demands may promote prosocial behaviour.