European Journal of Physical Education and Sport Science ISSN: 2501 - 1235 ISSN-L: 2501 - 1235 Available on-line at: www.oapub.org/edu 10.5281/zenodo.55144 Volume 1│Issue 3│2016 THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LEADERSHIP STYLES AND THINKING STYLES SUCCESSFUL COACHES IN KHUZESTAN PROVINCE Akram Abbas Zadeh1*, Hekmat Angazi2 MA Sport Management, Kurdistan Science and Research Branch, 1 Islamic Azad University, Sanandaj, Iran MA Sport Management, Borujerd Branch, 2 Islamic Azad University, Borujerd, Iran Abstract: The research is aimed to investigate the relationship between humanistic and taskoriented leadership style with a five-thinking executive, legislative, judicial, liberal and conservative, with a success rate of successful coaches in Khuzestan province. Scale and Scale thinking style of leadership were used. After verifying the content validity of questionnaires by physical education teachers and management, validation questionnaires using Kronbach’s alpha coefficient, 0.73 and 0.657 calculated was used. The test used in this study was Friedman test and Spearman correlation coefficient. After studying the questionnaires filled by 23 coaches, it was concluded that there exists no significant relation between the task oriented leadership style and subscales of thinking styles of executive, legal, judicial, free and conservative. And that in terms of the relation between humanistic leadership style and subscales of thinking styles of legal, judicial and free and conservative; a significant relation exists only between the leadership style of humanistic and executive thinking style. Thus, due to the significant relationship between these two styles is suggested that coaches have two-way relationship with athletes and that they should express their goals to athletes in a clear and appropriate way. They should also have appropriate behaviors for realizing these goals through their team. In this regard, they will be able to achieve highest levels of success for themselves and their teams. Keywords: leadership style, thinking style, successful coaches Copyright © The Author(s). All Rights Reserved Published by Open Access Publishing Group ©2015. 90 Akram Abbas Zadeh, Hekmat Angazi THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LEADERSHIP STYLES AND THINKING STYLES SUCCESSFUL COACHES IN KHUZESTAN PROVINCE Introduction Success is one of the main goals in every human’s life and obtaining it depends on several factors. In this regard, athletic success is also dependent on several different factors one of which is having an expert leader. Of all the roles that a person can take in sports, such as athletes, coaches, managers, technical staff or the referee, the role of coach is probably the most difficult and demanding. Many people believe that many years should pass until a coach is trained for global competitions and therefore, training elite athletes requires training competent coaches. Fiedler after reviewing studies on leadership concludes that: 1. The leadership group of workers in conditions that is favorable or unfavorable for leadership do better. 2. Relationship-oriented leaders in positions of leadership are those who do better than average for their utility (Morhe 1998). Thinking styles which denote the preferred thinking style of a person will be a great help for selecting a competent person. “ccording to Sternberg’s theory of mental self-management 13 describes a style of thinking that are distinct in five dimensions: actions, shapes, levels, areas and trends (Zhang 2001 a). Each dimension is divided into different types of thinking styles: there are three types of actions in terms of performance: executive, legislative and judicial. The executive branch, actions, policies and rules established by the legislation is implemented by judicial sector in accuracy and compliance with applicable laws and regulations designed evaluates. His theory of subjective gravity manifested in four forms: monarchic (unipolar), hierarchic (democratic order, hierarchy), oligarchic (category democracy, oligarchy) and anarchic (anarchist, anarchy). Hierarchic people tend to adapt themselves to the organization. The oligarchs (category S) is interested, oriented and determined to do things at the same time, anarchist or anarchist issues to be considered a coincidence. His theory of subjective gravity is divided into two levels: global and holistic, local individuals prefer stuff in very broad and abstract examine. But local attention is narrow. Trends in mental selfgovernment theory on two types of categories: liberal and conservative. Liberal people like to think beyond existing laws and programs and to maximize change, but conservatives tend to adhere to the rules and existing programs and seeks to change are minimal (Sternberg 2001). In most theories regarding personal and leadership characteristics, education and having expert knowledge regarding management are considered as some of the most important characteristics of a manager. According to conditional theories of European Journal of Physical Education and Sport Science - Volume 1 │ Issue 3 │ 2016 91 Akram Abbas Zadeh, Hekmat Angazi THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LEADERSHIP STYLES AND THINKING STYLES SUCCESSFUL COACHES IN KHUZESTAN PROVINCE leadership, in addition to the personality and other things related to the leader himself, also other elements such as those related to followers and factors related to situation and condition are effective in terms of implementation of the most effective leadership style. Ershad (1998) in their research results indicated that is no significant relationship between human-oriented and task-oriented leadership style and degree level (P < 0.5). Jaberi (2000) also concluded that between humanism and task-oriented leadership style with individual characteristics such as age, education, coaching experience and coaching degree, is no significant relationship, also showed there is no significant difference between his leadership styles among league coaches category one and category two. The results of Fathi et al (2005) showed that there is no significant difference between leadership styles on world wrestling coaches. Also the attitude to succeed with relationship-oriented leadership style and there was a significant positive correlation. This means that the higher the level of relationship-oriented leadership style, the success rate increases. Martel, D. Branelle, J. Spalanzani, C. (1991) examined the impact of leadership style to the participation of women volleyball coaches trained throughout the season. The results showed that female athletes are consistent with the behavior that will help to achieve the desired objectives. Various studies have shown that factors such as culture, age, education, work experience, etc. parent’s styles, thinking styles affect the achieving of the proposed goals (Emamipoor, 2003). Moghtadaee and Atashpour (2003) by examining managers’ thinking style schools found are significant differences between male and female managers in terms of administrative thinking style. However, there is no significant difference between the managers’ thinking styles with different levels of education (Peyghambarnezhed 2004). In this regard, “bsaran and “tashpour 00 ’s research show that among males and females in terms of thinking styles, but the styles judgmental, holistic thinking there is no significant difference. Grigorinko & Strenberg (1993) and Grigorinko & Strenberg (1997) the role of thinking styles in academic achievement witted two groups of children participating in a summer school program at Yale studies. They showed, judicial and legal thinking styles positively contributes to student achievement, while administrative thinking style and academic achievement students has a negative correlation. Cano-Garcia, & Hughes (2000) and Zhang (2001 A) to study the relationship between thinking styles and academic achievement in students showed that students with executive thinking styles and academic achievement are more internal. Results of other studies Zhang (2001 B, 2001 C) and Zhang and Sternberg (1998) showed that the European Journal of Physical Education and Sport Science - Volume 1 │ Issue 3 │ 2016 92 Akram Abbas Zadeh, Hekmat Angazi THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LEADERSHIP STYLES AND THINKING STYLES SUCCESSFUL COACHES IN KHUZESTAN PROVINCE conservative and hierarchical thinking styles positively and productively creative styles (styles such as legal and judicial) are negative correlation with academic achievement. Methods The study was a descriptive survey and research on successful coaches Khuzestan province. After meeting the coaches all stages of the study were explained in the briefing to the participants by the researcher. The study used questionnaires to assess the leadership style of leadership styles questionnaire comprising questions ”urden’s & Metcash. This questionnaire is based on a five degrees Likert scale and it is aimed at self-evaluation in task-oriented and humanistic conditions. The study used questionnaires to assess the thinking style of thinking styles inventory that includes 40 questions by Sternberg and Wagner (1992). The questionnaire assessed every 8 ask a thinking style, and answered each question on a 7-point Likert scale is determined. The questionnaire was slightly manipulated by management sports professors. The reliability of the incorporated questionnaires of this research is calculated through Kronbach’s alpha method and the resultant values are respectively 0. and 0. . In addition, content validity of the questionnaires was determined through distribution of the questionnaire among 15 Ph. D. professors of management and planning field. Theoretical studies: the study of sport science resources available in libraries and using the Internet, and then set the class were extracted subjective data sources. Two questionnaires were used to collect data for field leadership styles , thinking styles were used. The researcher and his colleagues have made presence at domestic events during the years of 2014 and 2015 and distributed the questionnaires among coaches then collected the questionnaires back upon completion. To describe the results were used descriptive statistics (frequency tables, percentage and mean). For inferential analysis, findings and hypothesis testing inferential statistics were used Spearman and Friedman tests. Spearman test due to the low number of subjects to determine the correlation between leadership styles and thinking styles and Friedman test was used for the ranking. In this study, the significant level of P < 0.5 intended data analysis was performed through the Software SPSS version 16. Results Spearman test data in relation to the thinking styles of leadership styles are shown in table 1, and interpretation of the results listed in this table. European Journal of Physical Education and Sport Science - Volume 1 │ Issue 3 │ 2016 93 Akram Abbas Zadeh, Hekmat Angazi THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LEADERSHIP STYLES AND THINKING STYLES SUCCESSFUL COACHES IN KHUZESTAN PROVINCE Table 1: The relationship between leadership styles and thinking styles by calculating the Spearman test Styles Correlation coefficient Humanist and legal Sig 0.159 0.469 -0.454 0.04 Humanist and judicial 0.135 0.54 Humanist and liberal -0.242 0.265 Humanist and conservative -0.74 0.738 Task-oriented and legal 0.065 0.77 Task-oriented and administrative 0.072 0.745 Task-oriented and judicial 0.094 0.669 Task-oriented and liberal 0.097 0.66 0.12 0.586 Humanist and administrative Task-oriented and conservative According to the result tables, there is a significant relationship only between humanistic leadership style and executive and there is no significant relationship and between leadership style and other styles of thinking. Information on Friedman in connection with the thinking styles of leadership styles are shown in the tables (2) and (3) and results are listed in the tables. Table 2: Friedman’s test result shows the preferred choice coach’s leadership styles Leadership styles Rank Humanistic leadership style 1.87 Task-oriented leadership style 1.13 With respect to the upper table, it can be concluded that humanistic leadership style was the most widely chosen leadership style by coaches. Table 3: Value and ranked by Friedman test is thinking styles through the coaches’ perspective Thinking Styles Rank Administrative thinking style 4.11 Legal thinking style 3.39 Judicial thinking style 3.35 Liberal thinking style 3.11 Conservative thinking style 1.04 According to table 3, the order of thinking styles based on their rankings is as follows: first, the executive thinking style, next the legal, judicial, free and conservative thinking styles. European Journal of Physical Education and Sport Science - Volume 1 │ Issue 3 │ 2016 94 Akram Abbas Zadeh, Hekmat Angazi THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LEADERSHIP STYLES AND THINKING STYLES SUCCESSFUL COACHES IN KHUZESTAN PROVINCE Discussion and Conclusion Implementing an efficient management style with respect to different occupational conditions and situations is considered as a crucial necessity for every manager (Hematinejad, 1995). From the view of players, the most frequently adopted leadership style by coaches is the humanistic leadership style (Bagheri, 2006). The coaches who were contemplating great importance to opinions and feelings (task-oriented leadership style) with the athletes had the best attitudes (Salmenin 1996). The result of this research which indicates the preference of humanistic leadership style over other leadership styles by coaches is different with the result obtained by Salmenin. Since the study was in season, coaches are required to motivate more active players embody humanistic leadership style. With respect to situations and conditions, a leader or coach selects an appropriate leadership style and continues until he or she identifies the suitable style. A coach should also determine the goals of the team or individual players as well as the level of maturity of players. With respect to the fact that thinking styles of legal and judicial have more contact with educational progression, can be superior choices. The result of the study is consistent with Cano-Garcia, & Hughes (2000) and Zhang (2001 A) and are in contradictory with previous results, Zhang (2001 B, 2001 C), Grigorinko & Strenberg (1993, 1997), Bernardo (2002). But the results of this research are totally inconsistent with a Kheyr and Ostovar research (2006). The contradiction could be due to the young age of the study subjects is Kheyr and Ostovar that should be applied to this style. However, each of these studies was conducted in different environments and on different people which can each be different than the other. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between leadership styles of thinking styles the result that there is a significant relationship between only the humanistic leadership style and performance level (P < .5) and there is no significant relationship between leadership style and other styles of thinking. In connection with this result, no study has been done that can be studied conflict and alignment. References 1. Absaran, M. (2004). The relationship between thinking styles and personality traits based on Big Five students of Islamic Azad University Khorasgan, industrial and institutional thesis, University of Khorasgan. 2. Alvani, M. (1998). General Manager, seventh printing, publishing skills, Tehran. 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