Perception of football coaches towards their coaching leadership behavior

Football is the most popular sporting event in the world. It is practiced by every individual with no cultural and gender barriers. The main purpose of this study was to investigate the perception of football coaches towards their own leadership behavior and whether their perception differ due to age, educational background, experience and level of license. Football coaches in the Amhara league football competition were recruited as the respondents in the study. Even though 32 head coaches were selected as a sample of a study from 32 Amhara league football clubs, only 26 head coaches participated in the current study, due to coaches’ exclusion criteria. Self-prepared and adapted questionnaires were used to collect the data. SPSS software version 20 is used to analyze the collected data. Descriptive statistics (mean, percent and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (ANOVA) were used for data analysis. The perception of coaches’ towards their own soccer specific leadership behavior was found higher (scale mean =4.17±.50). Furthermore, the ANOVA test stated that there is no significant difference found between the subscale's mean scores (F (13, 28) = 2.012, p=0.533). A one-way ANOVA test was conducted to compare the mean differences among the 14 sub scores of soccer specific leadership behavior between ages, educational background, coaching experience and level of license of coaches. As the result indicates that, there was no significant difference among the fourteen sub scores of coaches’ leadership behavior (3) = 1.146, P = 0.354, F (3) = 1.656, P = .207, F (2) = .756, P = 0.481 and F (4) = 1.196, P = 0.346 at P< .05 level respectively. This shows that even though coaches are in different age groups, different education levels, different coaching experience and license level, they have the same understanding of their leadership behavior. In conclusion, the coaches have a positive perception towards their own soccer specific leadership behavior. Coaches perceived as they often implement all the leadership behavior, but they are not implementing all the leadership behavior always. Having the above conclusion, it is that the coaches let themselves master all soccer-specific leadership behaviors so that they will lead the players effectively to let them reach their playing potential. Finally, future research has to be conducted on the factors that enhance players’ performance other than treated in the current study.