Army Crew Team Case Study Analysis
As a student of the Leading Teams in Organizations class at Lipscomb University, I’m required to answer questions regarding the Harvard Business School Case titled “The Army Crew Team”. The case write-up describes a coach’s dilemma regarding an underperforming Varsity Crew team. The Varsity team is consistently losing to the Junior Varsity (JV) team forcing its coach to consider taking drastic actions four days before the National championship. The coach is considering the following three options: switching the Varsity and JV teams, switching individual boat members, or intervening to improve the Varsity team’s performance (Snook & Polzer, 2004). The coach should switch the Varsity and JV teams and allow the more cohesive team to compete as the Varsity team in the National championship. The following are questions and answers regarding The Army Crew Team Case.
Why does the Varsity Team lose to the JV Team?
The Varsity team loses to the JV team due to several reasons. First, the Varsity team is not a cohesive group. Members of the varsity team focus on themselves and not the team as a whole. This is evidence by team members being critical of one another and not sitting together in team meetings. Conversely, the JV team is focused on team processes and doesn’t want to let team members down. For example, team members did not criticize one another individually during self-critique sessions. Instead, the JV team members made global comments that everyone needed to practice. Secondly, the Varsity team suffered from not having a clear leader in the boat that motivated the team, set the racing strategy, and corrected rowing technique. Thirdly, the Varsity team suffered from the presence ...
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...JV team’s advantage was its ability to perform as a cohesive group and synchronize rowing (Snook & Polzer, 2004). As a result of this and the short amount of time before the championship, the coach should allow the JV team to participate as the Varsity team. However, both teams relate well to other organizational teams and provide valuable examples for team leaders.
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when selecting the rowers should have taken into consideration both the psychological (personality types and traits) and the physical aspects (strength, speed, stamina, & coordination) and experimented the results of various combinations by mixing these aspects. He should have identified the growing internal conflicts and tried to look into the matter in the initial stages. Coach P from the beginning has focused on ascertaining his belief whether the Varsity team he chose is highly competent or not. Quantitatively, the members were highly competent in their individual abilities. Coach P. had several opportunities to counter this during the Atlanta Retreat. However, he failed to take actions on their failure as a team and waited to resolve it only in the end, just three days before the national games. The Army Varsity Crew is a dysfunctional group. They’ve not yet reached the Norming phase where trust among the members has largely been achieved. The coach should have made sure the structure and composition of the teams were properly made long before the seat races have started. The lack of presence of strong motivator in the Varsity team should have been met to give them a
The purpose of this paper is to give a review of the book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by author, Patrick Lencioni and provide teams and team members with a sense of the strengths and weaknesses that can be used to make or break teams in certain areas. The following will give you a summary of Patrick Lencioni’s teamwork model and how it can be a road map for your team and your leadership skills.
Lastly, in youth competitive sports you can learn how to win and lose politely, which is important to the feelings of your competitors. Even though teens can learn these skills in school and in their household, competitive sports provide another way for children to interact and experience how to use life skills in the real world. Another example from the article, “ Pros and Cons of Sports Competition at the Highschool Level,” it
On the other hand, JV team had no team disrupters which made them succeed in every game. Seeing the kind of emails the teams have exchanged within each other shows that JV team was highly motivated as a team, but in contrast, Varsity team focused only on weaknesses of each other and only focused on themselves and personal performance which made them lose to JV team. Coach P. should communicate with Varsity team to know the flaws and differences they as a team are facing. As mentioned in HBR article “Managing Teams for High Performance”, “The leader must empower the team as a whole, so as to create a climate where the team feels encouraged.”
Varsity sports play one of the largest roles in the modern school system. They can one of the most influential parts of a youngling’s experience. However, with that comes great challenges and sociological issues embedded into the sports that show conflict and adversity in certain times. After reviewing some of these issues the true structure of varsity sports may be identified, and possibly reviewed.
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The journal article, “What does sport mean to you? Fun and other preferences for adolescents’ sport participation” claims that fun, social aspects, masculinity, and identity are the main reasons youth participate in sports (Skille and Østera˚ s, 360). Oftentimes, athletes forget they are on the same team, and they start to form cliques or groups based around who has the best bench press or 40 meter dash time. As a result, teammates start to compete with each other instead of working towards the same goal. For instance, one coaching journal article claims that “moral reasoning” in youth is determined through “collective norms” or group behaviors that the coach has a hand in influencing (Shields, LaVoi, Bredemeier, Power, 748-749). A proper coaching environment should therefore revolve around a fun, supportive, and collective environment where success is encouraged through the full support of the team. This support can further be developed through proper positive mindfulness and code of conduct guidelines set forth by the coach; for instance, hazing should be discouraged and proper communication and helpfulness among teammates should be
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Coaching is the first insight I had from the book. The coaching styles seem to vary just as much as they do for school level rowing. With varying coaches, coxes varying styles, and ways which they interact with the rowers. Rowing for Wentworth I Had two main coaches, Peter Abbott, and Dudley Storey, both had very different approach to how they communicated with us, and what they wanted us to do at training etc. The hard work, no sympathy approach came from Dudley Storey, who was an Olympic champion in the 1968 Mexico games and in the 1972 Munich Games achieving silver. Dudley also coached Olympic crews and selected New Zealand crews for years. Dudley had a huge passion for hard work, to him there was no compromise. In ‘The Kiwi pair’
In David Wright’s “The Myths and Realities of Teamwork,” (Wright, D., 2013), he outlines six myths that are ubiquitous and perpetuated by many people. Here is a short examination of all six.
When we think of the word team, individually many different ideas may come to mind about what a team really is. Some may think of an NFL team (Tennessee Titans), an NBA team (Sacramento Kings), or a NASA astronaut team with such pioneers as Edwin Aldrin, Jr. and Neil Armstrong as members. You might even think of the U.S. Navy, Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, or Marines as teams. In fact they all are, and they have a great deal in common as teams. However, for the purposes of this paper I will examine the characteristics of work teams, as they apply to organizations and I will supply answers to the following questions: What is a team? Where did the team concept come from? What are the types of teams? What are the advantages and disadvantages of having teams in organizations? What does it take to make a team effective?
Teams are a major source of companies in these coming years. Teams are Heroes (Collins, 2009-08-27). Everyone wants to be a hero, therefore we need to build, follow, and be effective team members and effective team leaders.