An examination of the temporal nature of shared athlete leadership: A longitudinal case study of a competitive youth male ice hockey team

Athlete leadership has been shown to be a shared practice. That is, numerous team members provide leadership through formal and informal leadership positions. Researchers have typically examined athlete leadership using cross-sectional designs, while largely ignoring the nature of this construct over time. Taking a longitudinal approach, the current study used social network analysis (SNA) to examine shared athlete leadership within a competitive, highly ranked youth male ice hockey team. Members of the team (N = 20) completed roster-based surveys related to task and social athlete leadership at five time points during the season. Density (i.e. the overallamountof leadership) and degree centralization (i.e. thedistributionof leadership) were the two network level measures used to examine the temporal nature of shared athlete leadership over the five time points. The findings demonstrated significant increases in the amount of task athlete leadership over the course of the season; however, task athlete leadership did not become more shared with time. Further, there were significant increases in both the amount of social athlete leadership within the team as well as the degree to which social leadership was shared among team members as the season progressed. The results of the current study shed light on the dynamic nature of athlete leadership and highlight the value of using longitudinal designs and SNA to examine shared athlete leadership.