Katrien Fransen

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Verified

Katrien verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

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• PhD in Kinesiology, Master in Movement Sciences, Master in Physics, Teaching Certificate
• Associate Professor at KU Leuven

Objectives. Researchers have argued that leadership is one of the most important determinants of team effectiveness. The present study examined the extent to which the perceived quality of athlete leadership was related to the effectiveness of elite sports teams. Design. Three professional football teams (N = 135) participated in our study during t...

Some sports coaches believe that empowering the players in their team can undermine their own leadership status. In business organizations, however, recent theorizing on shared leadership refutes this belief by suggesting that the most effective leaders engage in behaviors to strengthen the leadership qualities of their followers. The present study...

High-quality leadership has been established as a key factor driving a team's competitive advantage. Besides the role of the coach, recent research has emphasized the importance of leadership provided by athletes within a team (i.e., athlete leaders). To unlock the potential benefits of athlete leadership, the development of leaders is therefore es...

While most leadership programs seek to develop the leadership qualities of the formal team leader, programs that aim to develop the leadership qualities of team members are rare. This article draws on insights from organisational and sport psychology to develop and introduce a new leadership development program — the 5R Shared Leadership Program (5...

In the present research we examine how the recognition of outstanding sports performance is shaped by shared social group membership. To this end, we conducted a large‐scale analysis over the last 28 years (since the Bosman ruling in 1995) of how the exogenous variable, players' social group membership (domestic vs. foreign players), predicts recog...

Identity leadership is the process through which leaders create, advance, represent, and embed a sense of ‘we’ and ‘us’ (i.e., social identities) within the teams they lead. This paper extends the existing sports psychology literature by investigating the relationship between identity leadership and athletes' mental health, as mediated by team iden...

The social identity approach to leadership contends that the most effective leaders represent, advance, create, and embed a shared social identity (i.e., a sense of ‘we’ and ‘us’) within the groups they lead. Building on previous research, our study examines whether the perceived identity leadership of coaches and athlete leaders is associated with...

Inspired by the social identity approach, recent work has emphasized the importance of identity leadership in temporary exercise groups to boost participation and performance. According to this social identity approach, effective identity leaders are those who can encourage their followers to think, feel, and act as part of the group rather than as...

Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1469029224001080 Elite athletes often make large personal sacrifices to pursue excellence, but there is insufficient support for them when they leave elite sport. Identity loss is central to athletes’ transition trajectories and hence the management of identity change is a crucial ar...

Identity leadership captures leaders efforts to create and promote a sense of shared group membership (i.e., a sense of “we” and of “us”) among followers. The present research report tests this claim by drawing on data from 26 countries that are part of the Global Identity Leadership Development (GILD) project to examine the relationship between po...

Most leadership studies primarily focus on formal leaders, often overlooking the influence of leaders within the team. While prior research has shown that peer leaders can have a beneficial impact on various team outcomes, it is yet unclear which peer leadership behaviors precisely foster a supportive and sustainable work environment. Building upon...

Identity leadership involves leaders creating and promoting a sense of shared group membership (a sense of 'we' and 'us') among followers. The present research report tests this claim by drawing on data from 26 countries that are part of the Global Identity Leadership Development (GILD) project to examine the relationship between political leaders'...

The leadership literature has mainly considered shared leadership as a unified concept, overlooking the fact that it comes in many forms. However, the shift to shared leadership may not always yield favorable outcomes (Mumford et al., 2012). Knowing the benefits and challenges of different shared leadership implementations is crucial as it can eith...

The social identity approach has become an important framework for understanding effective leadership. The present study is the first to longitudinally examine the relative impact of coaches’ and athlete leaders’ identity leadership on athletes’ identification with their team, as well as the subsequent relationships with key team and individual out...

Community-based walking groups constitute a promising avenue to increase both the levels of physical activity and the social connectedness of older adults. In addition, while peer-led walking groups seem to be as effective as professional-led programs, they are more cost-effective and socially integrative. In collaboration with a Flemish socio-cult...

Background With a rapidly ageing society, healthy ageing has become a key challenge for older adults. Engagement in physical activity, and particularly walking, is a key strategy that contributes to healthy ageing. The present study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of a group walking program for older adults that incorporates the 5R Shared Leadership...

Objectives: This is a protocol for a systematic scoping review. The objective of this review is to help identify, clarify and examine the available evidence on athlete leadership development. Introduction: Cross-sectional and experimental research indicates that athlete leaders in sport teams are key drivers of effective team functioning and their...

Objectives: This is a protocol for a systematic scoping review. The objective of this review is to help identify, clarify and examine the available evidence on athlete leadership development. Introduction: Cross-sectional and experimental research indicates that athlete leaders in sport teams are key drivers of effective team functioning and their...

Objectives: This is a protocol for a systematic scoping review. The objective of this review is to help identify, clarify and examine the available evidence on athlete leadership development. Introduction: Cross-sectional and experimental research indicates that athlete leaders in sport teams are key drivers of effective team functioning and their...

Objectives: This is a protocol for a systematic scoping review. The objective of this review is to help identify, clarify and examine the available evidence on athlete leadership development. Introduction: Cross-sectional and experimental research indicates that athlete leaders in sport teams are key drivers of effective team functioning and their...

Objectives: This is a protocol for a systematic scoping review. The objective of this review is to help identify, clarify and examine the available evidence on athlete leadership development. Introduction: Cross-sectional and experimental research indicates that athlete leaders in sport teams are key drivers of effective team functioning and their...

Objectives: This is a protocol for a systematic scoping review. The objective of this review is to help identify, clarify and examine the available evidence on athlete leadership development. Introduction: Cross-sectional and experimental research indicates that athlete leaders in sport teams are key drivers of effective team functioning and their...

Objectives: This is a protocol for a systematic scoping review. The objective of this review is to help identify, clarify and examine the available evidence on athlete leadership development. Introduction: Cross-sectional and experimental research indicates that athlete leaders in sport teams are key drivers of effective team functioning and their...

Objectives: This is a protocol for a systematic scoping review. The objective of this review is to help identify, clarify and examine the available evidence on athlete leadership development. Introduction: Cross-sectional and experimental research indicates that athlete leaders in sport teams are key drivers of effective team functioning and their...

Team identification and collective efficacy are important determinants of team functioning. A team’s collective efficacy is borne from its shared social identity and improved through iterative, interpersonal exchanges between teammates during training sessions and matches. Our study employed social network analyses to examine the impact of intra-te...

Background: With a rapidly ageing society, healthy ageing has become a key challenge. Engagement in physical activity, and particularly walking, is a key strategy that contributes to healthy ageing amongst older adults. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the efficacy of a group walking program for older adults that incorporates the 5...

Not applicable to this chapter

Leadership has been shown to be a fundamental factor influencing the performance of sport teams. Within these teams, leadership can be provided by coaches, formal athlete leaders, such as team captains, and other ‘informal’ athlete leaders. The role of the athlete leader in a team, either formal or informal, has been consistently reported over the...

A vast stream of empirical work has revealed that coach and athlete leadership are important determinants of sport teams’ functioning and performance. Although coaches have a direct impact on individual and team outcomes, they should also strive to stimulate athletes to take up leadership roles in a qualitative manner. Yet, the relation between coa...

Innovation is considered essential for today’s organizations to survive and thrive. Researchers have also stressed the importance of leadership as a driver of followers’ innovative work behavior (FIB). Yet despite a large amount of research, three areas remain understudied: (a) the relative importance of different forms of leadership for FIB; (b) t...

Innovation is considered essential for today’s organizations to survive and thrive. Researchers have also stressed the importance of leadership as a driver of followers’ innovative work behavior (FIB). Yet despite a large amount of research, three areas remain understudied: (a) the relative importance of different forms of leadership for FIB; (b) t...

Do leaders who build a sense of shared social identity in their teams thereby protect them from the adverse effects of workplace stress? This is a question that the present paper explores by testing the hypothesis that identity leadership contributes to stronger team identification among employees and, through this, is associated with reduced burno...

For many athletes, retirement from higher levels of competitive sport poses significant challenges. Research has shown that athletic identity is a key predictor of adjustment trajectories, but the mechanisms through which this affects outcomes are less clear. Added to this, there has been limited research on the role that wider social identities, a...

Objectives This study explored the relationships between identity leadership and social identification in sport teams over the course of a season using social network analysis. Methods Participants from 23 competitive sport teams (N = 388, Mage = 20.7 years) indicated the extent to which each of their teammates displayed various forms of identity...

Fransen, K. (2021). El poder del liderazgo de jugadores en equipos deportivos. In T. García-Calvo, F. M. Leo, & E. Cervelló (Eds.), Dirección de equipos deportivos (pp. 147-177). Tirant Lo Blanch. Fransen, K. (2021). The power of athlete leadership in sport teams. In T. García-Calvo, F. M. Leo, & E. Cervelló (Eds.), Sports teams management (pp. 1...

Objectives Although social identity has been linked to moral behaviour in past research, we know less about how the identity-enhancing behaviours of athlete leaders may relate to the experience of prosocial and antisocial behaviour between youth sport teammates. This study examined the relations between perceptions of athlete identity leadership an...

There seems to be some initial evidence that team captains are selected based on non-leadership factors such as team tenure, technical abilities, being the daughter of the club president, or playing position. This is concerning since players expect their ideal team captain to have superior motivational and social skills. Adding to this literature o...

Leadership plays an essential part in creating competitive advantage and well-being among employees. One way in which formal leaders can deal with the variety of responsibilities that comes with their role is to share their responsibilities with team members (i.e., shared leadership). Although there is abundant literature on how high-quality peer l...

Overtraining, exhaustion, and burnout are widely recognized problems amongst elite athletes. The present research addresses this issue by exploring the extent to which high-quality athlete leadership is associated with elite athletes’ health and burnout. Participants (120 male athletes from three top-division Australian football teams) were asked t...

Objectives High-quality leadership is often regarded as one of the main sources of competitive advantage. Especially within sport teams, a team’s leadership structure has historically been considered to be stable across the season, with the coach and team captain as the formal, and often sole, leaders. In line with recent organizational research, t...

Emotional contagion has been recognized as a variable influencing individual behaviour and team functioning. In particular, leaders within the team have been suggested to have a significant impact on their teammates through the expression of their emotions. As a result, the aim of this study was to provide greater insight into how different athlete...

Objectives: Leadership has been suggested to be a key factor in gaining a competitive advantage as a team, with shared leadership being a better predictor of team functioning than vertical leadership. Although the benefits of shared leadership are well-documented, evidence about how to implement a shared leadership structure remains sparse. This l...

Objectives: An emerging body of evidence indicates that, in addition to the coach, athlete leaders within a team are vital for a sports team's success. Sports teams are therefore keen to know which attributes are distinctly characteristic of high-quality leaders on and off the field. The present study aims to shed more light on this question. Met...

Much importance has been assigned to the role of the team captain. In this article, we test whether today’s team captains live up to these high expectations. Furthermore, we provide greater insight into the selection procedures leading to a captain’s appointment and assess how this process impacts upon the captain’s perceived leadership qualities....

This study aimed to analyze the number of task, social and external athlete leaders within sports teams, and to examine the effectiveness of different leadership structures in male and female teams. The participants were 317 male and 214 female soccer players belonging to 18 teams playing in the third highest male division and to 13 teams playing i...

Objectives: To assess whether social capital benefits older adults’ self-rated health and well-being and whether physical activity mediates this relation. Methods: A survey study was conducted among members of a sociocultural organization (age ≥55 years), both cross-sectionally (baseline Time 1; N = 959) and longitudinally (3-year follow-up Time 2;...

The aim of this study was to explore the lived experiences of the coach in relation to the perceived function of captains in professional rugby union. Participants were eight elite male rugby coaches purposefully sampled for this study. Participants were interviewed individually to gain an understanding of their experiences and perceptions of the r...

Recent theorizing applying the social identity approach to leadership proposes a four‐dimensional model of identity leadership that centres on leaders’ management of a shared sense of ‘we’ and ‘us’. This research validates a scale assessing this model – the Identity Leadership Inventory ( ILI ). We present results from an international project with...

Purpose Grounded in the Cognitive Evaluation Theory, the present experiment aimed to compare the relative impact of competence support provided by coaches versus athlete leaders on players’ competence satisfaction, intrinsic motivation, and performance. Methods We recruited 18 existing competitive male basketball teams (i.e., 126 players) to parti...

Based on Self-Determination Theory, the present study adopts a helicopter-perspective towards motivating (i.e., autonomy support, structure) and demotivating coaching (i.e., control, chaos). Among five independent samples, consisting of individual and team sport coaches (N = 893; Mage = 37.83 years) and athletes (N = 377; Mage = 17.46 years), Multi...

The aim of this experiment was to study the growth-promoting and adverse impact of athlete leaders’ competence–supportive and–thwarting behavior on the motivation and performance of team members. Male soccer players (N = 144; MAge = 14.2) were allocated to ad-hoc teams of five soccer players. These teams participated in two sessions, being randomly...

Dataset including variables at the individual level. (SAV)

Dataset including variables at the team level. (SAV)

In Flanders the term flandrien refers to cyclists who display a strong work ethic, great perseverance, are powerful and who perform best in adverse weather conditions. Until the 1960s, only leading cyclists originating from the province of West- and East-Flanders were considered as flandriens. After 1960, the media extended the use of this term to...

The importance of high-quality leadership for team effectiveness is widely recognized, with recent viewpoints arguing shared leadership to be a more powerful predictor than vertical leadership. To identify changes in leadership structures over time, we longitudinally tracked the leadership structure of 27 newly-formed teams (N = 195), all having an...

Grounded in the Cognitive Evaluation Theory, a mini-theory of Self-Determination Theory, this experimental field study sought to examine the impact of competence support of both coaches and athlete leaders on athletes’ competence satisfaction, intrinsic motivation, and subjective as well as objective performance. Male basketball players (N = 120) w...

Based on the principles of the Social Identity Approach (SIA), the present experiment aimed to examine the impact of communicating descriptive age norms on older adults' autonomous motivation to exercise. Under the cover of a marketing study, older adults (n = 120; age = 65-70 years) participated in a newly created exercise activity, 'Pattern Stepp...

Although coaches and players recognize the importance of leaders within the team, research on athlete leadership is sparse. The present study expands knowledge of athlete leadership by refining the current classification and exploring the importance of the team captain. An on-line survey was completed by 4451 players and coaches within nine differe...

Objectives. Researchers have argued that leadership is one of the most important determinants of team effectiveness. The present study examined the extent to which the perceived quality of athlete leadership was related to the effectiveness of elite sports teams. Design. Three professional football teams (N = 135) participated in our study during t...

During the last decade, team confidence has received more and more attention in the sport psychology literature. Research has demonstrated that athletes who are more confident in their team’s abilities exert more effort, set more challenging goals, are more resilient when facing adversities, and ultimately perform better. This article reviews the e...

This chapter outlines the broad variety of contexts in which sport psychology can be used to foster team function, including goal setting and establishment of expectations at the beginning of the season, developing athlete leadership skills and motivational coaching ability during practices and games, and dealing with interpersonal conflicts. It of...

This multi-study paper reports the development and initial validation of an inventory for the Characteristics of Resilience in Sports Teams (CREST). In four related studies, 1225 athletes from Belgium and the United Kingdom were sampled. The first study provided content validity for an initial item set. The second study explored the factor structur...

Social identity research shows that leadership is a process of group identity development but has not examined how leaders can manage group identities in the workplace. The 5R leadership development program addresses this issue. This takes leaders through a five-stage process of (1) Readying: explaining the importance of social identity processes f...

Research aims. The present article provides a comprehensive examination of the relationship between playing position and leadership in sport. More particularly, it explores links between leadership and a player’s interactional centrality — defined as the degree to which their playing position provides opportunities for interaction with other team m...

The valid percentage of high-level, low-level, and youth athlete leaders playing in a central playing position within each of the examined sports (Study 1). (DOCX)

The playing positions of appointed athlete leaders and the team captain in the different sports (Study 1). (DOCX)

The valid percentage of male and female athlete leaders playing on a central playing position within each of the examined sports (Study 1). (DOCX)

The present research examines the impact of leaders’ confidence in their team on the team confidence and performance of their teammates. In an experiment involving newly assembled soccer teams, we manipulated the team confidence expressed by the team leader (high vs. neutral vs. low) and assessed team members’ responses and performance as they unfo...

The present study used a sample of team sport athletes (N = 343) to investigate to what extent the leadership quality of the coach and the athlete leaders was related to athletes’ team confidence and team cohesion. The findings demonstrated that the leadership quality of both coaches and athlete leaders predicted a unique part of the variance of te...

In order for a sports team to function optimally, it is essential to avoid motivational losses due to working in a group, also known as social loafing. Ideally, team members can even show an increase in individual effort because of working in a group, which is labeled social laboring. The present study investigated the impact of the leadership qual...

Leadership is a fundamental aspect of sports performance, particularly within team sport environments. Over the past 25 years there has been significant research exploring the role of the coach/manager in this regard. However, this only represents one aspect of leadership within the sporting domain. Equally important, although far less examined is...

Two studies investigated the structure of different athlete leadership networks and its relationship to cohesion using Social Network Analysis. In Study 1, we examined the relationship between a general leadership quality network and task and social cohesion as measured by the Group Environment Questionnaire. In Study 2, we investigated the leaders...

Effective leadership is perceived as a key factor for optimal team functioning. The present study aimed to identify the characteristics of athlete leaders with respect to four different leadership roles (i.e., task leader, motivational leader, social leader, and external leader), while recognizing the surrounding team context. Furthermore, we aimed...

Leaders do not operate in social vacuums, but are imbedded in a web of interpersonal relationships with their teammates and coach. The present manuscript is the first to use social network analysis to provide more insight in the leadership structure within sports teams. Two studies were conducted, including respectively 25 teams (N = 308; Mage = 24...

This research aimed to introduce Social Network Analysis as a novel technique in sports teams to identify the attributes of high-quality athlete leadership, both at the individual and at the team level. Study 1 included 25 sports teams (N = 308 athletes) and focused on athletes’ general leadership quality. Study 2 comprised 21 sports teams (N = 267...

The purpose of the present study was to explore the relationships between athletes’ perceived coach behaviors during training and competition, and collective efficacy. Elite female handball players in Norway (N = 113) completed the Leadership Scale for Sport (LSS), the Coaching Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ), and the Collective Efficacy Questionnaire...

The present manuscript extends previous research on the reciprocal relation between team confidence and perceived team performance in two ways. First, we distinguished between two types of team confidence; process-oriented collective efficacy and outcome-oriented team outcome confidence. Second, we assessed both types not only before and after the...