"Our captain sacrifices himself for us". How self-sacrifice affects cohesion, team identification and self-efficacy.

Team identification is one of the most important factors in defining one’s identity. It is defined as the extent to which an individual team member identifies with a specific organizational team rather than social groups in general. It motivates members to behave in accordance with the group’s interests and strengthens the ties between members. A topic that has recently attracted increasing attention from organizational researchers is the self-sacrifice of leaders. Leaders who display self-sacrificial behavior are considered by their followers to be more effective, charismatic, and legitimate than are self-benefiting leaders. To date, relatively little is known about the mediators of the effects of self-sacrifice on group (i.e. cohesion, team identification) and individual (i.e. self-efficacy, self-competence factors). Within a team sport context (soccer and water polo sports teams), two studies (532 participants) were conducted. In the first, through a correlational approach, the role of self-sacrifice as a predictor of cohesion, team identification, self-efficacy and self-competence was analyzed. In the second study, team identification and self-sacrifice were investigated using an experimental approach. The results highlighted the fundamental role of the leader's self-sacrifice in improving key aspects of the group's life.