A Study of the Leadership Role-Identity and Self-Expectation of the National Team Badminton Coach in Taiwan

The purpose of the research was to investigate the leadership role positioning of the badminton coaches, leader behavior, and self-expectation, from the viewpoint of the coaches, players and government sponsors, through the use of a mixed methodology. There were three subjects of this research: (a) twenty national badminton coaches in Taiwan; (b) seven sports government sponsors in Taiwan; (c) 100 players in Taiwan’s national badminton team. The findings of this study are as follows: (a) most of the coaches think the role of the national coach is very important; (b) perception of coaches is that winning is considered to be the priority and the majority of coaches enjoy their jobs; (c) majority of coaches use a flexible leadership style; (d) majority of coaches believe in the importance of planning and coaches also prefer the use of training camps using quantitative recording and observation systems for evaluation. Comparisons found many differences between junior coaching and senior coaching: self-expectation, tasks and value, leadership approach and training approach, survey results show, that junior coaches use a systematic way of training and leading players while senior coaches use traditional, experiential ways of training and leading players, study results show a distinct contrast between the players’ perceptions of junior coaches and senior coaches in their leadership and training styles. There were few differences between coaches and government sponsors in their opinions of the role o f leadership, training and goals. All were directed toward positive benefits for the sports team. This research has indicated the need for positive self-expectation and role-identity of national coaches. It has provided insight and direction toward the setting of clear role functions for coaches of future teams. The author suggests that living in a multi-dimensional modern society, the training environment, the leadership position that a coach faces is complex and multivariate. The coach should balance the characteristics of the job and the role he is playing to cope with multiple expectations and requests. As a national coach of the modern era, he/she must be current relative to research in the best practices and leadership skills in coaching in order to become a successful coach-leader of the national badminton team