The role of identity leadership in promoting athletes' mental health: a cross-cultural study

Identity leadership is the process through which leaders create, advance, represent, and embed a sense of ‘we’ and ‘us’ (i.e., social identities) within the teams they lead. This paper extends the existing sports psychology literature by investigating the relationship between identity leadership and athletes' mental health, as mediated by team identification and social support. Additionally, the study explores the generalisability of these relationships across culturally diverse countries, as well as high and low-collectivistic cultures. To this end, we employed a large cross-sectional study design involving 2,861 athletes from 193 football (also known as soccer) teams across eight countries. Study results indicated that identity leadership on the part of coaches, team captains, and the best athlete leaders within the team was associated with greater feelings of ‘we-ness’ amongst athletes. This sense of ‘we-ness’ in turn correlated with athletes' increased perceptions of available social support for themselves and their team, ultimately contributing to enhanced well-being and reduced burnout. With some minor variation, these patterns were observed across all studied countries and across high and low-collectivistic cultures. In essence, identity leadership provided by coaches and athlete leaders was associated with better athlete mental health across geographical borders and cultures.