The “I” in team: Coach incivility,coach gender,and team performance in women’s basketball teams

Incivility is common across many sport contexts, yet empirical examination of its influence is lacking, especially when it comes to the influence of incivility on team emergent states and performance. The purpose of the present study was to address this topic by investigating the effects of leader incivility toward team members on team outcomes. The authors also examined team cohesion and psychological safety as potential mediators of the leader incivility-performance relationship and leader gender as a moderator of these mediational relationships. Participants included players from 52 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I female college basketball teams whose experiences of incivility were aggregated to the team level. As predicted, results revealed that leader incivility related to lower team cohesion, lower psychological safety, and lower objective team performance. Additionally, psychological safety mediated the incivility-performance relationship, as hypothesized. Based on these findings, the authors point to several implications, including emphasizing civility among leaders, instituting organizational policies designed to deter incivility, establishing reporting mechanisms, and implementing interventions and training.