Colonel Stas Preczewski Case

Coach Steve Rocker is one of the most successful high school basketball coaches in Kentucky’s history. Coach Rocker was very successful in previous years. Strangely, this year was very different for him. For the first time in his professional life, he is falling short of his expectations, the community expectations, and the team’s expectations. His team lost a lot of games, but most importantly the boys had no motivation or desire to bring the team out of the rut they found themselves. His players have lost their will to win, their love for their teammates, and their passion to play. Coach Rocker’s motivational methods that have always worked before and resulted in success are now failing, and he doesn’t know why. He argues that his players have become selfish and bored with winning because they have been so successful in previous years. “And there’s no question that my guys have lost their drive to win because they’ve won so much in the past. Now all they want is individual ‘wins’…which just doesn’t cut it on a team” (Gongwer, 2010, p. 17).

Team Cohesion in the sport setting is the most important factor for group effectiveness, being influenced largely by leadership people. Homogenous attitudes and goals, personal sacrifice, and training and instructing coaching tactics are positively linked to team cohesion, and therefore performance. Cohesion is a dynamic and multidimensial process, and these methods could change depending on initial levels. By examining two scenarios of teams having significantly different levels of cohesion, it can be determined how these tactics are used in contrasting contexts. It was concluded the same tactics were used regardless of initial team cohesiveness, and performance was improved in both cases. A single coach administered these methods, but a case study revealed that multiple team leaders can change the different factors enhancing cohesion and still gets the same performance enhancements. Thus, cohesion does not have to rely on a single leader but multiple figures can have a combined effect.

The Varsity team lost to the Junior Varsity team because of their individualistic mindset. The coach of the Army Crew team admits to putting together the best crew athletes together on the Varsity team. As “Making Star Teams Out of Star Players” discusses, putting the best individuals together seems appropriate on paper, but often ignores the soft skills necessary to work together as a team. Because the coach focuses on the individual talents of the Varsity Crew team he creates an air of competitiveness within each member, instead of how they can work together. The goal of the team is not greater than that of the individual and no one wants to be the weakest link so they overcompensate their own skills. Every member of the Varsity crew team believes he is compensating for the other members and blames other members for the failure of the team, which shows a lack of team mentality and strong leadership. Through overcompensating, as stated in the case study, that throws off the balance of the boat because one member being off pace causes slower speeds. Also, through pitting the Varsity team against the Junior Varsity team it adds to the divisive culture within the whole Army Crew team.

Competition is a unique situation in life to analyze. If you can focus on the small details outside of the game, there’s a possibility that you can understand the way an athlete is performing and why a coach is behaving a certain way. In the heat of the moment, if not properly trained, one can not perform to their potential due to the pressure that the moment of competition can place on an individual. This can be just as much for coaches and how they react and act as much as it goes for player. Effective coaches know how to use the situation to their advantage and know what to do or how to react at the appropriate time. In this paper, I’ll examine the competition of the University of Wisconsin – Oshkosh Titans and the St. Thomas Tommies in a NCAA Division 3 playoff game. I’m watching this game from the UW-Oshkosh side, so I will be observing the UW-Oshkosh football team for the most part. With this competition between UW-Oshkosh and St. Thomas, I’ll break down this paper into four talking points and the effects of said points. These four points are pre-competition routine, feedback and reinforcement by coach, game flow and interruptions and then other thoughts and factors that I noticed during the game.

In the environment today, it is not unusual to see people working in teams to accomplish certain goals and tasks. During our youth, parents and teachers encourage us through various methods to work as part of a team. Whether a sports team, classroom team, or after school activities, parents and teachers and other authority figures start the introduction of working in teams and teaching the value of being able to work together to accomplish a common goal. As people progress through the various stages of their lives, everyone continues to strive to communicate. Communication is a part of everyday life. It may be overlooked in some areas, but when dealing with a team environment, communication is vital. One

Faced with an unfamiliar problem, Coach P, of the West Point Crew team, had a JV boat that was consistently outperforming the Varsity team on different measures. Upon preliminary analysis, it appears that the problem is simple: the selection of the varsity team was flawed and many of the athletes were misjudged and subsequently misplaced. However, the coach analyzed this possible flaw through seat races and even decided to demote varsity rowers to the JV team and JV rowers to the varsity team; the unlikely outcome was that the JV boat would win by even more, meaning that the demoted rower actually made the JV boat faster. This unlikely outcome revealed a deeper flaw within the Varsity team’s attitudes and motivations that sharply contrasted with those of the Junior Varsity team.

Having played a variety of team sports throughout my life, I saw a lot of parallels throughout the class work on team building between positive teamwork and success. Reading Five Dysfunctions of a Team and then applying what we learned from the reading into several team building exercise gave me a unique perspective on how to create and identify key team building skills.

The coach is focussed, determined, tenacious, hard – even ruthless- but never cruel. His resolve to overcome all obstacles and challenges in pursuit of the agreed goal is unshakeable. No matter how many setbacks, he has the resilience to keep coming back, to keep fighting. He always has heart for the fight. He persistently seeks for the advantage and no matter how small that is, he will seize it and maximise its value. He is devoted to

This directly translates into their studies and their lives. In these team sports, success or failure in competition depends on many variables. When these variables align through effective teamwork a successful play emerges as the teammates work together through coordination, communication and cohesion in training to achieve this result. Everyone has a role in the team and is expected to execute their task effectively. Any sort of individualism proves detrimental to the team as we all know, there is no “I” in

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Coach P.’s training program should have focused more on psychological variables and group processes earlier in the season. Instead, training was focused on improving individual team member performance. The Varsity team comprised of the eight top individual performers (Snook & Polzer, 2004). Mistrust between Varsity team members began developing following spring break. Lack of trust and other related psychological issues prevented the Varsity team from synchronizing their rowing even though they were the top individual performers.

The Army Crew Team is in utter frustration since the team that consisted of the top 8 members with excellent strength and condition, rowing technique, and psychological dimension kept frequently losing the JV team before the national championship race. Facing with this problem, Coach P. hold a meeting with the team members to discuss about the problems among the team. Now on, he has to make a decision among the choices of switching the Varsity and Junior Varsity boat, switching individual boat members or intervening to improve the Varsity boat’s performance.

In many aspects of our life, it is pervasive to work in a team. No matter in company, school, or another type of team it is necessary to be a part of a team and to achieve a team goal by corporations. People join a team with different personalities, goals, values, beliefs and needs. On the one hand, these differences can be a valuable quality of teams. On the other hand, these same differences inevitably lead to different levels of conflicts as well.

After undergoing a dramatic and angst-ridden season, the Victorian Korfball Senior Team is in need of significant transformation if there is any hope of fostering a high performance culture in the new season. Due to their history of conflict, the players in their present state lack any indications of cohesion. Selecting the right athletes for the new team will play a significant role in the baseline level of cohesion. Each of these areas can be addressed through a method of careful analysis via the Multidimensional Model of Leadership (Chelladurai & Saleh 1978), implementation of an appropriate intervention and the structuring of a consultative leadership environment.

written by Katzenbach and Smith called “The Discipline of Teams”. This article was written to