The Role Of Leadership In Managing People In Sport And Leisure Organisations - Essay Example

A critical evaluation of the role of leadership in managing people in sport and leisure organisations Table of Contents HRM in Sport and Leisure 3 Role of Leadership in sport and leisure 4 Leadership theory 6 Performance Management 7 Performance Appraisal 8 Reference 9 HRM in Sport and Leisure The sport and leisure industry are increasingly becoming competitive from the last decade. Human resource Management has an important part to play in sport and leisure industry in order to manage the resources and the people. We can find that commercial sector, which are the industries engaged in manufacturing, transportation invest in the public sector, which offers to the society high quality health and fitness opportunities in sport and leisure industry. In sport and leisure industry, the competition with the other industries has increased in regional, national and international areas. To expand the competitive market it is needed to apply the effective management principles for the management of people. The reasons behind the success of football clubs in India are the worldwide fans and the advance technology in broadcasting the football game all over India. To increase the awareness among the customers and meeting their expectations, funds should be available to run the industry and attract the commercial sector investors. Human resource managers are facing the challenges to meet the rising expectation of the customers and providing them services in order to exist in the competitive market. The sport and leisure industry will enjoy the competitive advantage only when it is the only one, which can meet the customer expectations, improving the quality, and creating awareness on consumer rights (Robinson, 2005, p.1-2). As the trends are changing, Human Resource Management processes the changes in the organisation structure, systems and cost reduction programs. Managing the people in the sport organisation helps the manager to acquire the skills and to be a good leader to help the new talents face the challenges in sport and leisure sectors. The sport and leisure industry will enjoy the competitive advantage only when it is the only one, which can meet the customer expectations, improving the quality, and creating awareness on consumer rights (Wolsey, Minten & Abrams, 2011). Role of Leadership in sport and leisure The leaders in the sports industry have to face lot of challenges in leading his team to reach the goal. A good leader is needed, who is confident enough to lead his team and encourage them to achieve the goal. In sports industry, a leader will be the one who is providing direction, encouragement and authority to evoke desired behaviours. For example, in the Minnesota Timberwolves organisation, like many sports organisations, the leader will play his role in catalysing the learning process among the followers, as well as creating environment that contributes to improved organisations. The experience and the style of the leader will influence which HRM programmes are communicated, implemented and are effective. If we talk about the culture of the organisation, the leader should be flexible enough to work in that environment. Sports organisations like Minnesota Timberwolves, Vikings, Twins vary with the culture and environment so the leader need to understand the cultural factors and the environment where he has to coordinate the activities of his group. We can find that Minnesota Timberwolves is leading behind the Vikings and Twins since the economic environment is found to be low. The reason behind the success of Vikings is that they are only focussed on winning and continuously increasing their fan following, they are concerned only with the game and winning attitude which they carry with themselves. These are the factors, which are missing in Minnesota Timberwolves (Hooser, 2009). In Australia, women are taking the initiative to lead their team. Women are facing the challenges when engaging in leadership roles in sports. It is known that due to family commitments, cost and time constraints, they are unable to see themselves as the emerging leaders but breaking the barriers there are still left some large number of women who have emerged as effective leaders in different fields. When it comes to decision making, they consult with others before reaching to a conclusion since they believe the suggestions of others are much effective. Therefore, the sporting club and organisations are helping women to become better leaders than men, so it is important to have a mentor who can guide them at every stage to face the challenges while making any decisions or breaking the barriers and setting up goals in order to help the women build their career in sports sector (Gunning, n.d.). Many theorists attempted to distinguish between a leader and a manager. A person can emerge as a leader but a manager is put into his position by appointment. A leader may or may not have the formal authority but a manager has the authority. Therefore, according to Beech (2002) a manager can apply his skills in leadership but it is not necessary all leaders will emerge as managers. So in managing the football the role of leadership and management both involved since it includes the core responsibilities such as selecting the team, making strategy plans etc.(Crust & Lawrence, 2006). Free-rein leadership style applied in sports and leisure industry considered effective since in this type of leadership, it is believed that a leader is best when people barely know that he exists. The leader provides materials, information and facilities to his men to enable them to accomplish group objectives. The important authority based models of leadership are Robert Tannenbaums model and Rensis Likert Model. Therefore, the model represented by Robert Tannenbaums, describes the area of authority enjoyed by leader on one side and the area of freedom enjoyed by the subordinate on another side. The characteristic of leadership is followed by making decision and announcing it to subordinates. A leader makes decision and pushes his subordinates to accept it. There are different leadership styles like participative style, Autocratic style etc, which create a difference while playing the role of leadership and management. Leadership theory Leadership has been analysed through different approaches and leadership styles. The leisure and sports industry encourage leadership development in youths and adults. Through leisure activities like hobbies, exercise, sports, gardening, crafts, health etc a child develops his/her leadership skills and builds his career in sports and leisure sectors. The adult leaders represent themselves as a role model in front of the children so that they can acquire the skills of leadership. Therefore, to help the youths and the children in sports and leisure industry, it is necessary to adopt the approaches and different styles of leadership. It is necessary to understand the different styles of leadership and the impact the leadership styles will have on a person trying to develop himself as an effective leader. Leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Winston Churchill to Martin Luther King set the examples in front of the youths to be a good leader. The Behavioural approach in leadership can help on study leadership behaviour from three points of view that is motivation, supervision, and authority. In motivation leader emphasises on rewards to motivate the subordinates. In supervision leadership, style can be either employee- oriented or production-oriented. Last but not the least, in authority leadership style can be autocratic, democratic or free rein. The application of free-rein leadership style will be effective in sports and leisure industry sector since it allows his team to make decisions and giving ideas related to strategy plans for the game. The Contingency approach is effective in all situations since the effectiveness of any style depends upon its appropriateness to the situation. The trait theory approach will be effective to apply when it helps the leader to identify the qualities, which are needed to lead the team (Doyle & Smith, 2001). In 2003, Fassel adopted the coaching leadership style, which helped his team a lot when it came to involving everyone in participative decision making. Players like Tom Coughlin adopted the autocratic leadership style approach. When there is a crisis this type of leadership can give quick results. It works well with the employees who have low tolerance for ambiguity and thrive under clear, achievable directives. There are some mantras for success in sport and leisure industry sector, which applies to all leadership situations like seeing everyone with equal respect and equality, sharing ideas and making plans with the players, guiding the players towards the goal. Transformational leadership will be effective when the leader have to manage the status quo and transforming the whole organisation and the individual according to the situation. This style of leadership is known to be inspirational leadership (Watt, n.d., p.77-78). Performance Management Performance management refers to the entire process of appraising the performance, giving feedback to the employees, and offering rewards or punishments to them. In the sports and leisure, industry performance plays a vital role when it comes to assessing the performance of the players. In order to exist in the competitive market it is essential to manage the performance of the team and keep the winning attitude among them. In case of football, basketball, cricket and other games high performance is required in order to attract the commercial investors and worldwide fans. Performance Management is one of the important functions in Human Resource Management, which will help the sports organisation to assess the performance of the team through different performance appraisal techniques. When it comes to assess the performance of the team at the end of the day, managers are required to design an appraisal programme to judge the performance of each team members through a particular rating analysis. By evaluating the performance of the each team member, it will be easy enough to understand the performance of the each team player. Ultimately, performance management analyse and creates a link between the employee performance and performance of the overall organisation. After studying the performance management practices in sports organisation the results indicate that none of the sector in this industry are superior to others since it shows the communication among the individuals, and evaluating the performance of the employees (MacLean, 2009). Performance Appraisal Performance Appraisal is assessing the individual’s performance in a systematic way, the performance of a individuals are measured by the tools and techniques based on the factors such as required job knowledge in a particular field, leadership abilities to lead the team, cooperation among the group etc. Each individual should have the potential to perform good in future. Performance appraisal in sports and leisure sector helps in job analysis and creating new employment opportunities for the new talents in this sector. In the sports and leisure industry performance of the employee is conducted by using MBO (MacLean, 2001). Performance appraisal is conducted to assess the training and development needs of the team. The organisation provides feedback to the individual players regarding their performance and provides guidance for the purpose of their development in their better performance in future. Performance appraisal is conducted through the ranking method; paired comparison method .These methods are useful in assessing the performance of the employee. Therefore performance appraisal is followed by defining the appraisal to the appraisee, then establishing the objectives to be considered when assessing training programs, finally conducting a performance interview with the individual players by using the appraisal data for different hr activities (Gaurav, n.d., p.4-6). Reference Crust, L. & Lawrence, I. (2006). A review of leadership in sport. [Pdf]. Available at : http://www.athleticinsight.com/Vol8Iss4/FootballManager.htm#Roles. [ Accessed on April25, 2012]. Doyle, M. E. & Smith, M. K.  (2001).Classical Leadership. [Online]. Available at : http://www.infed.org/leadership/traditional_leadership.htm. [ Accessed on April 25, 2012]. Gaurav, A. ( No Date). Performance Appraisal System. [Online]. Available at : http://iitgn.academia.edu/AnchitGaurav/Papers/348075/Performance_Appraisal_System. [Accessed on April 25, 2012]. Gunning, L. (No Date). How Women Lead. [Online]. Available at: http://www.ausport.gov.au/sportscoachmag/coaching_processes/how_women_lead_part_1. [Accessed on April 25, 2012]. Hooser, R. (2009). Leadership in Sport Organization. [Online]. Available at: http://blog.lib.umn.edu/kinitf/smg3143/2009/11/leadership-in-sport-organizations.html. [Accessed on April 25, 2012] MacLean, J. (2001). Performance Appraisal for Sport and Recreation Managers. [Online]. Available at : http://books.google.co.in/books/about/Performance_Appraisal_for_Sport_and_Recr.html?id=BRwVPs4NEtsC&redir_esc=y. [Accessed on April 25, 2012] Maclean, J. (2009). Auditing performance management practices. [Online]. Available at: http://www.inderscience.com/search/index.php?action=record&rec_id=23239. [Accessed on April 25, 2012] Robinson, L. (2005). Sport and Leisure Management. [Pdf]. Available at : http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/hlst/documents/resource_guides/sport_leisure_mgt.pdf. [Accessed on April 25, 2012] Watt, D. C. ( No Date). Sports Management and Administration. [Online]. Available at: http://books.google.co.in/books?id=Bip2JX_a_1EC&pg=PA96&lpg=PA96&dq=application+of+performance+appraisal+in+sports+sector:edu&source=bl&ots=SV9XpJiLkA&sig=Sh9LLHMOO3oDo4io78EPmeeCWz. [Accessed on April 25, 2012] Wolsey, C., Minten, S. & Abrams, J. (2011). Human Resource Management in Sport and Leisure Industry. [Online]. Available at: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415421799/. [Accessed on April25, 2012]. Read More