Sports leadership on the field conjures up all sorts of expectations—with the main one being success. When a sporting team loses a game, you may hear coaches say: “We did not have the mental ability to win”, “There was no team unity and nobody stood up to lead”, or “There just seemed to be a lack of leadership accountability”.

When you ask a coach to explain their comments about leadership, you get all sorts of answers—mainly from the technical aspects of the sport.

Sports leadership intelligence is still in its infancy and while leadership behavior is well advanced in business in the private and public arena, a lot more work is required to develop the correlation between leadership behavior (on-field) and improved sporting performance.

ERN PRENTICE has had an extensive career in Human Resource management, including line operations and corporate roles. He is currently a consultant on leadership and management development covering the design and delivery of programs for frontline and managerial level groups in middle to large organizations. His publications cover journal articles on Human Resource Management issues and one major text on Frontline Management (Empowering Supervisors) with co-author Gordon Rabey

has over 18 years experience as a strategy consultant, (including positions with three of the world’s premier consulting firms and his own successful consulting business). He has spent most of his professional career advising companies around the globe. He has brought his many years of strategy and business experience together, with his unique insights into human behavior gained as a clinical psychologist, to continue supporting corporate leaders with services in leadership development.