Is identity leadership provided by coaches and athlete leaders associated with performance? A cross-cultural study in football teams

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 a range of key performance indicators (notably team and individual performance and effort) through team identification and team cohesion. We also examine if these relationships are generalisable across WEIRD (Westernised, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, and Democratic) and non-WEIRD countries while looking at whether they vary as a function of national culture (i.e., ingroup collectivism). To this end, we collected data from 3,135 football players across 211 teams in nine countries who engaged in an average of 4.02 sessions per week (SD = 2.03). Data were analysed using multilevel (multigroup) regressions and indicated that coaches’ and athlete leaders’ perceived identity leadership was associated with all performance indicators via both team identification and cohesion. For the most part, these relationships held across WEIRD and non-WEIRD countries. However, we also found some evidence that the relationships between identity leadership and performance varied cross-culturally and were generally stronger in countries high on ingroup collectivism. Together, these data suggest that identity leaders—across geographical and cultural borders—can make teams more effective and that they achieve this by leveraging ‘our’ strength in ways that make ‘us’ more cohesive.