ABSTRACT
The past two decades has seen an emergence of literature to support that coaches’ implementation of transformational coaching behaviours is associated with a number of athlete developmental outcomes in youth sport. More recently, scholars have advocated that coaches can learn to improve their use of transformational coaching in order to foster these developmental outcomes. To this end, the purpose of this chapter is to outline how coaches can monitor and improve their implementation of transformational coaching behaviours. First, this chapter discusses the theoretical and conceptual foundation of transformational coaching within the full-range leadership model. Second, the chapter provides an overview of the Coach Leadership Assessment System (CLAS), along with the research that uses this assessment tool to observe transformational coaching behaviours. Given that the CLAS is a comprehensive observational tool primarily designed for research, the third section of this chapter proposes and describes a simplified Global Rating scale adapted from the CLAS (CLAS-GR) that can be used by coaches, practitioners, and sport organisations to observe and monitor coaches’ leadership behaviours. In addition, this section suggests various complementary mechanisms wherein coaches can learn to improve their implementation of transformational behaviours, such as the use of mentoring relationships as an educational tool. Lastly, this chapter provides considerations for researchers and practitioners in the context of youth soccer.
