When the going gets tough: the impact of coaches' and athletes' leadership on team resilience and the development of mental skills in youth sport teams

Athletes’ resilience refers to the psychological processes that protect individuals from potential performance decrements when the stakes are high. At team level, a sports team’s resilience refers to the processes that protect the group, as a whole, from stressors collectively encountered. It has been found that a team’s resilience is more than the sum of the individual athletes’ resilience. Team resilience is rather determined by the group’s structure, mastery approach, social capital, and collective efficacy. For example, resilient sports teams are characterized by the way the group, as a whole, keeps communicating under pressure, upholds a focus on what is important, supports team members in pressurized situations, and exhibits a collective confidence in the ability to withstand pressure.

Despite the small amount of qualitative research on resilience in sports teams, no measurement tool currently exists to quantitatively monitor team resilience. Therefore, the first aim of this research project is to develop such a measurement tool.

Second, resilience has been reported as an outcome of context and coach behaviours in different ways. Some scholars advise to safeguard athletes from negative experiences and pressuring situations. Other scholars specifically termed negative experiences as prerequisites to develop resilience. Therefore, the second aim of this research project is to explore whether team resilience is best built by challenging athletes with setbacks or by protecting them from pressuring situations. Moreover, the specific relation between individual and team resilience and the impact of athletes’ motivation and persistence needs to be explored.

Third, the shared leadership of coaches and athletes has also been explicated to underpin a team’s resilience. Nonetheless, the effect of athlete leadership on the development of psychosocial competencies has not yet been investigated in sports teams. Therefore, the third aim of this research project is to explore the specific contribution of athlete leadership.

In conclusion, this research project intends to clarify in sports teams how coaches’ and athletes’ leadership affects team resilience and the development of psychosocial competencies like individual resilience, emotional control, and perseverance. It is designed as a part of the Motivational Coaching Project. The Flemish Government provides the necessary funding.