Relationship between coaching leadership styles and athletic stress in team sports from universities of Tehran

The current paper aims to investigate the relationship between coaches' leadership styles and athletes' stress in team sports from universities of Tehran (Iran). An applied-correlational descriptive-survey method is applied. The statistical population includes 300 male and female athletes from handball and volleyball teams in universities of Tehran during the academic year 2011-2012. The sample is 169 subjects chosen by the Krejecie-Morgan table method. Three questionnaires of personality characteristics, stress, and leadership scale for sports (L.S.S) are used to collect data. Research reliability is determined by Cronbach's alpha test for the questionnaires of stress (α = 0.872) and leadership scale for sports (α = 0.721). Data analysis is carried out through Kolmogorov– Smirnoff (KS) test in order to determine normal distribution for data. Moreover, Pearson's correlation coefficient test is applied to measure research hypotheses. Results of Pearson test show that there is significant relationship between athletic stress and coaching leadership styles of democratic (r=0.22, p=0.003) and autocratic (r=0.30, p=0.001) in team sports in universities of Tehran. Increasing scores with coaches' democratic and autocratic leadership styles is followed by increasing scores with athletes' stress in team sports. Due to the presence of significant relationship between autocratic leadership style and stress in team sports, it is recommended to establish appropriate training courses for coaches, so that their improper behaviors associated with autocratic style leading to increased stress among athletes can be removed. Furthermore, alternative styles of leadership must be applied in amateur and professional levels