Investigation of perceived leadership characteristics of wrestling coaches and leadership characteristics that actually exist: The case of Adana province

Today, the concept of leadership, which is an indispensable part of every field of expertise, comes across in every society and in every professional group. Coaches can also have many tasks and powers that fall within the responsibility of a leader for the determined goals. The important question in this obligation is to analyze how these behaviors are perceived by the coaches through the eyes of the athletes in the following position. In this research, it is aimed to examine the perceived leadership characteristics of wrestling coaches working in Adana province and the leadership characteristics that actually exist. For this purpose, the personal information form and the Sports Leadership Scale, developed by Challedurai and Saleh (1980) and adapted in Turkish by Unutmaz ve Gençer (2014), were used to determine the demographic information of the participants and were applied to athletes and coaches. There are five sub-dimensions in the scale consisting of a total of forty items: Education and Information, Autocratic Behavior, Democratic Behavior, Social Supportive and Positive Interpreters. The relationship between the actual leadership behaviors of the coaches and the leadership behaviors perceived by the athletes was evaluated according to these five sub-dimensions and the relationship between them was tried to be determined. In addition, it was examined whether the leadership perceptions of athletes differ according to age, educational status and professional sports year. According to the findings obtained as a result of the research, it was found that the level of education had a significant relationship between the athlete's perception of democratic leadership and educational type leadership dimensions and the actual behavior of the coach, and it was found that the athlete's perception did not differ according to age and professional athletic year (p<0,05; p<0,01).