A cross-level moderating effect of team trust on the relationship between transformational leadership and cohesion

ABSTRACT

We draw on the concept of the shared mental model to explain the cross-level direct and moderating effects of team trust on the relationship between coach transformational leadership and cohesion. Using hierarchical linear modelling, we analysed 597 national level high school and university volleyball players to test our research model. Our results revealed that, (a) at the individual level, coach transformational leadership has a positive effect on athletes’ perceptions on cohesion and (b) team trust, a group-level construct, is positively related to social cohesion and moderates the coach transformational leadership-cohesion relationship. The moderating effect demonstrates that the positive effect of coach transformational leadership on cohesion could be enhanced when high levels of team trust are shared within the group. Implications for coach education and sport psychology in terms of theory and research are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Transformational leadership
• cohesion
• team trust
• multi-level
• shared mental model

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Note that there is some debate about the effects of transformational leadership as related to sport (see Cruickshank & Collins, 2016; Mills & Boardley, 2017). Although the epistemology of transformational leadership can be considered flawed, the leadership literature is in agreement that transformational leadership is a useful theory to conduct theory-driven empirical research in sport (e.g. Antonakis, 2012; Bass & Riggio, 2006; Kao & Tsai, 2016; Stenling & Tafvelin, 2014).

² The cross-level interactions with a raw and group-mean centred transformational leadership were examined in the case of team trust’s occasionally interacting with the group-mean of transformational leadership rather than with the transformational leadership slope between team trust and cohesion (Bliese, Maltarich, & Hendricks, 2018). Both cross-level interactions are significant, which means that the group-mean of transformational leadership is suitable for the present study.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology [MOST 106-2410-H007-075]; Taiwan, and Sue Tien Educational Fund, College of Education, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan;Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan [MOST 106-2410-H-007-075 -]; Sue Tien Educational Fund, College of Education, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan. [2017-2018].