1. Laying the foundations for inspirational leadership: Establishing mutual trust, respect, and loyalty.
Sean Figgins1, Dr Matt Smith1, Dr Camilla Knight2, & Dr Iain Greenlees1
1Institute of Sport – University of Chichester
2Applied Sports, Technology, Exercise, and Medicine Research Centre – Swansea University

2. Inspiration (Thrash & Elliot, 2003; 2004)
Inspired ‘by’
Inspired ‘to’
Evocation
Transcendence
Motivation
Feeling of inspiration ascribed to something beyond the self.
Gaining awareness of better possibilities.
One is compelled to actualise new possibilities.

3. “The sporting arena is replete with examples and anecdotes of great inspirational coaches that have led teams to success, often in the face of adversity and against seemingly better opponents”
(Arthur, Hardy, & Woodman, 2012)
Knowledge surrounding the ways leaders inspire followers is limited & largely hypothetical.
(Frese et al., 2003; Mio et al., 2005)

4. Inspirational leadership in sport
Aims to explore inspiration in sport.
Specific focus on how leaders inspire athletes.

5. Showing the way forward Direct expressions of belief
Role-modelling
Showing the way forward
Direct expressions of belief
Inspirational leadership behaviours
Providing opportunities
Perceived expressions of belief
Providing support

6. Inspirational leader behaviours
What don’t we know?
Why do athletes perceive what leaders do as being inspirational?
Inspirational leader behaviours
Inspiration
What is the whole process?

7. Method Participants Data Collection Straussian Grounded Theory
Corbin & Strauss (2008)
Participants
22 Athletes (Mage = years)
15 Coaches (Mage = 39.9 years)
Purposefully sampled – info-rich
Data Collection
Semi-structured interviews – iterative process
Theoretical sampling – constantly reviewed as new concepts emerged.

8. Results
What factors do you think impact on the likelihood that you are inspired by your coach?
“I think it [trust] is probably the most important thing because if you lose trust in the players then you have kind of gone.”
(Athlete 11)
“I don’t think very often that somebody can come down to the track for the first week that they have met me and think “woah, he is an inspiring guy” I think it is more about establishing a relationship to a point where people can take influence from me and, therefore, hopefully be inspired by it.”
(Coach 1)

9. Establishing mutual trust, respect, & loyalty
Trust in coach competence
Personal trust and connection
Demonstrating trust in athlete(s) by encouraging responsibility
Embedding and/or representing group values

10. Trust in coach competence
“When someone says “if you’re inspired by your coach” one of the things that pops into my mind straight away is kind of their past and previous accomplishments I would kind of think they’ve produced this swimmer, they’ve managed to get this swimmer to the Olympic games, they’ve got 3 Olympic medals under their belt.” (Athlete 18)

11. Trust in coach competence
“What they do in general leaves you open to being inspired, because of the things they say. For example, in training if they tell you to do x and y and they change things, and let’s say you are doing a swimming session and you have made those changes and you see your times improving I suppose you can see it is actually having an effect then and there.” (Athlete 8)
“How do I think [trust] is developed? It probably starts I guess from them trusting, probably them having a good results, for sure, and it’s like “Hey, Brad [the coach] knows what he’s doing here.” Like, they trust me to get them to the start line in the best possible condition they can.”
(Coach 2)

12. Trust in coach competence
“I think it helps, initially; it counts diddly-fuck in a short space of time, it’ll count for nothing. Unless, the coach can translate it really well across, unless the coach can use his own experiences to improve and impart on his player I don’t think it buys you time, it gives you a start, it gives you an in So, it helps with the media it would help you get through a door.” (Coach 3)
“He [the coach] had the aura about him I had that respect for him, and he seemed like a nice guy He [the coach] lost my respect as well, just through the way he treated people. . . Just because they sort of weren’t performing at that level which he fit, he cut them off. He lost my respect Like if I don’t have respect for you then there is no way that you’re coaching me.” (Athlete 3)

13. Personal trust and connection
We had a lot more contact with each other which just developed and instead of things just turning into talking about goal ball we just talked about day-to-day things. So, from a very coach-respect relationship, which I still had and I do still have that respect for him, it is much more of a friendly level now. . . you learn not just the outside of people but you learn the inside, as well. (Athlete 9)

14. Personal trust and connection
But with the greatest respect to Steve [the coach], we never ever got along he very much, and I’m not just saying this because I wasn’t one of his favourites, but he very much had favourites in the squad and when he was kind of new to the squad it was all fine to begin with but then I reckon when we started to get to know him outside of [the sport] is probably when it started to, to go down, because I didn’t respect him so much as a person. I then found it difficult to then change my attitude towards him in a sport setting. (Athlete 20)

15. Personal trust and connection
I think a lot of time just being willing to listen and to little things. Like a lot of them will tell you like, you know, “I’ll tell you this, but don’t go and tell my parents” or whatever. And it’s making sure that if they do tell you that then obviously you, you stick to it and you don’t go back and tell their parents a lot of the time they just want to be able to offload their feelings to you. And kids are quite wary of doing that because a lot of the time they don’t want their parents to know how they’re feeling so you have to just be there for them to talk to you. And they need to know that can stay between the two of you, I think that’s important. (Coach 8)

16. Demonstrating trust
So, yeah I think overall there was that kind of lack of trust within the programme and respect because I felt as if the coaches kind of… they didn’t ultimately respect what the swimmers were doing in the pool and outside of the pool and what they had to kind of do to be these elite swimmers. So, there was that kind of lack of respect and trust between one another. (Athlete 18)

17. Demonstrating trust
You know, you are only one set of eyes, you are only one set of ears, you are only in one place at one time. So, the more people, other people you have got helping, supporting, driving as well, driving, stimulating, pushing, prodding, listening the better they are your shop floor, your shop stewards. They are supporting the message and filtering the message and being the go-between between the head coach and the players: if there is a problem; if they are not understanding; if they are training too hard; if they are not getting enough So, you are trying to coach people to be good senior players, empower them to intervene and things like that, look after the shirt, take the shirt on now. (Coach 3)

18. Discussion/implications
Coach competence
Personal connection can enhance/degrade trust
Empowering athletes demonstrates trust
Representing & embedding group values
Openness to inspiration

19. @SGFiggins | s.figgins@chi.ac.uk
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