Describe important characteristics?

Selecting appropriate individuals for this study was based on specific criteria: first, on their

background and knowledge of the concept of leadership; and second, on their leadership

contributions to their sports organisations at the national and international levels. Data were

collected between January and April 2013 through in-depth interviews with 18 participants who

have different leadership roles: presidents of sports federations (boxing, football, basketball,

swimming, volleyball, gymnastics, and athletics), department managers (general relations in

four sports cities), board members, and Olympic coaches in Syria. The reason for selecting those

interviewees is twofold: their leadership role requires using a set of leadership competencies that

best fit particular leadership positions and responsibilities; and they are best to describe why

and how they need leadership competencies, given their experiences in different leadership roles.

More importantly, the interviewees were representative of a range of sports and roles, given the

awareness of their leadership needs. This was due to their work in several leadership roles in

different sports over their career. In addition, the interviewees were selected based on their

reputations at the national and international levels in sport settings. However, this author

attempted to include more interviewees in the study, but many of those approached declined to

take an active part in the study. For example, three interviewees were abroad, while two did not

have time for interviews. It is worth noting that this author avoided contacting other

interviewees, given their lack of leadership experience and to avoid any gap between those who

have no experience and those who are experienced leaders. This is because the purpose of the

study is not to compare leadership competencies among different leadership roles (experienced

and inexperienced leaders), but rather to identify, explore, and understand the predominant

leadership competencies and the purpose of their use in non-profit sports organisations, using

evidence from leaders who worked in different leadership positions in sport settings to build a

clear picture on the required competencies of sport leadership. The sample consisted of

13 males and 5 females aged between 39 and 56 years.

The study adopted a semi-structured interview protocol with an interview guide in two

parts. The first part used introductory questions to reinforce the relationship between the

researcher and the participants (see e.g. Musselwhite et al., 2006). The second part deployed

the key interview questions to cover the topic of this study. For example, what kind of

leadership behaviours and capabilities are perceived as a vital need for the internal

environment of your organisation? Why? And what are the leadership competencies that

best fit non-profit sports organisations? Why? What are the leadership competencies

required for all leadership positions (presidents of federations, departments'managers,

board members, and Olympic coaches) at non-profit sports organisations? Why?

Additionally, the researcher used cards that included the meta-competencies shown in

Table I to avoid missing any information not included in the interview questions.

The transcribed raw data have been read many times in order to ensure full

understanding of the whole data. It should be further noted that knowledge of the nature of

leadership behaviours and capabilities required for sport leadership positions tends to be

scarce; this has required a thematic interpretational content analysis, acting as the most

appropriate approach to understand and explore the nature of leadership competencies

required for sport leadership positions (Gibbs, 2010; Vaismoradi et al., 2013). This was

followed by the data analysis steps summarised by Gratton and Jones (2010). In this regard,

data reduction was the first step, extracting raw data themes relating to sport leadership

behaviours and capabilities required for sport leadership positions from each interview.

This was followed by identifying quotes that belong to the common themes, and categories

were classified as low-order themes, then all low-order themes were combined and compared

to identify high-order themes. This was followed by comparing all high-order themes to

25 words in length

Show response in APA style including page number or paragraph where results were discovered.

Author: Majd Megheirkouni

Reference: Megheirkouni, M. (2017). Leadership competencies: qualitative insight into non-profit sport organisations.International Journal of Public Leadership,13(3), 166-181. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijpl-11-2016-0047

Webpage: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Majd-Megheirkouni/publication/320721179_Leadership_competencies_qualitative_insight_into_non-profit_sport_organisations/links/5a54c7510f7e9b205de5388c/Leadership-competencies-qualitative-insight-into-non-profit-sport-organisations.pdf