The Army Crew Team

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TEAM EFFECTIVENESS MODEL

 

•           Climate Of Trust

   This team lacked a climate of trust as it was evident by the way of criticism the members displayed individually when given a chance in self-critique time by the coach. This is in contrast to the junior varsity team who never singled out anyone but made global comments about details everyone needed to practice upon.

•           Performance Evaluation And Reward Systems

This was lacking for the varsity team since coach had employed a new risky technique wherein he carried out the weight work-outs during normal racing season. This lead to the expected low performance of the team during league and new York state championships. The team was dejected by the continued low performance . Due to lack of rewards and positive reinforcement, they were consistently de-motivated. while JV’s had nothing to lose, it was embarrassing for the varsity team to lose consistently.

COMPOSITION

•           Personality

The coach also made a note if the person in the team was a “pessimist or optimist” , “a leader or a follower” , “a team builder or a team disrupter”. However, we find that varsity team lacked a leader and several members were labeled as team disrupters while the junior varsity team had no team disrupters.

•           Member preferences

Also, the coach asked for critical e-mails to be forwarded to him and supportive  e-mails to be shared with each other . It was found that a few members of varsity were severely critical of others and were absolutely negative about their partners. Also, while writing to each other, the messages of varsity team were consistently negative towards themselves or team while JV’s messages were positive and supportive.

WORK DESIGN

•           Task Significance

Psychological modeling and conditioning plays an important role in the team performance . When CEP training technique was introduced by the coach, It was well received by the JV team but the varsity players were skeptical about it nad described it as “touchy-feely”.

PROCESS

•           Specific Goals

The JV team had a specific purpose in mind. Their motto was “not to lose” while the varsity players lacked a single and consistent motivation. Their motto varied from “row hard” , “never say die” , “finish clean”.

•           Social Loafing

     This is described as a tendency of an individual to put forward less efforts when working as a team than the efforts he would have put while working individually. As accused by the several members of the team, many people felt that they were the ones who were carrying the boat while others were slacking off.

                Conflict For The Coach