Leadership in Sports

In order to structure my thesis I will centralize it around the book The student leadership challenge by Kouzes and Posner. It is a book that outlines ‘The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership’ that are common when leaders are able to make amazing things happen. The goal of the book is to demonstrate how any person can be a leader regardless of age and experience. Therefore, another goal of my thesis is to investigate how much some of the top coaches in USC athletics use this model whether implicitly or explicitly for themselves and the leaders on their team. The questions will force the coaches to use examples from their past and present experiences. They will also make the coaches think and reflect about their careers in regards to their best moments, what they have learned the most and what they can improve upon. My decision to interview coaches was due to the fact that they have had the most experience with leadership personally but also with inspiring it within their players. Therefore, I thought they would have an interesting and unique view on the subject in order to ask these leadership questions. Additionally, I feel as though I can learn the most from them because of their lengthy careers as coaches and I want to learn the most possible about leadership so I can apply it in my life. Finally, being a student athlete allows me to have a certain access to some of the best coaches USC has to offer so I wanted to take advantage of this privilege