The Role of Social Effectiveness in Leadership: A Critical Review and Lessons for Sport Management

The concept of social effectiveness tends to be explained in terms of individual's ability to identify, comprehend, and attain effective social networks that can produce advantageous career and life outcomes. Researchers have repeatedly demonstrated that a strong connection between social effectiveness and leadership effectiveness exists. However, while most undergraduate and graduate sport management skills textbooks include a chapter or several chapters about leadership, few devote more than several pages to social effectiveness constructs. Contemporary sport pedagogy articles about teaching leadership also do not explore the important connection between social effectiveness and leadership adequately. Therefore, given the salience of social effectiveness to leadership as well as the need for more complete investigations of the manner by which leaders engage in effective leadership behaviors, the present review critically examines social effectiveness as a means to successful sport leadership and proposes specific pedagogical practices for sport management educators.