Team Success
A successful team that I have been
involved with in my life would have to be my high school lacrosse team. My team
was made up of around 40 members ranging from freshman, which there were few
of, to seniors, which made up over half of the team. This was the varsity level
so at this stage it was a cut sport. The team was comprised of the best
lacrosse players at the school. The other levels at my high school was
freshman, JV1 and JV2. Since varsity was the highest level it was very
competitive and very intense. Our school took lacrosse very seriously and it
was a pretty big deal.
The
leadership of the team was broken down onto a couple levels. There was the head
coach, who was a teacher at the school, three assistant coaches, who were both
college students playing lacrosse at a nearby college and school faculty, and captains
of the team, who were seniors with high level of skill. Since we were in a very
competitive division in lacrosse it reflected to how we had to prepare for our
games. We had practice every weekday, with Tuesday and Thursday having two practices
a day, and games on Saturday.
Relating my
experience to that of chapter five in “Reforming Organizations” I would say
that my team experienced both the “One Boss”, and “Simple Hierarchy”
configuration mentioned in this chapter. I would say this mainly based on how
our practices would go. The “One Boss” is our head coach, who would direct
practices and tell us who had to do what. He also had created his weekly plan
for practices, game strategies, call plays, etc. he did everything that you
would expect the leader of a team to do. That is why I would say that we had
elements of the “one boss” configuration.
The other
configuration that I would say we resembled is that of a “simple hierarchy” we
resembled this because of the fact that information, respect and work came from
the top down. Starting with the head coach, then the assistants, then captains,
then the rest of the team. How practices would work is that the head coach
would create an overall plan for how the day was going to go and then have the
assistant coaches break the team down into groups based on positions and run
drills with them. The youngest kids on the team obviously always got the short
stick and had to carry equipment, move goals, etc. but overall the
configuration of a hierarchy definitely resembled how the team worked.
A
configuration that was mentioned in this chapter, and that I did not mention
earlier is that of a “circle network” I don’t know if this fully described the
configuration of the team but it definitely has something to do with the team. There
were many different subgroups on the team involving those of captains, offense,
defense, young guys, and seniors. These subgroups are people on the team who
would spend a lot of time together on and off the field and had grown very
close to each other. These groups would spend a lot of time together without
the influence of the coach around and would close enough to where they could
spot each other’s weaknesses and improve each other’s game in different ways
than traditional practice could.
At the end
of the day there is a lot of different ways that a team could be successful. In
my situation we did not win the state championship, which some would say is not
successful, but we did gain a lot more. We improved our game a lot, had a lot
of fun, and made a lot of good friendships. We also promoted the game enough
that our lacrosse team has doubled in size since.
I'm going to respond bottom up. I am glad you mentioned friendships. Yours is the first post to do so. I wonder if you can expand on that. Does regarding your teammates as friends have an impact on team function? If so, can you explain why? Also, do you remain in contact with some of your teammates even if they don't go to the U of I? Then you might also talk about whether you were friends with any of them before you started to play lacrosse. I've not participated in that sport - ever, so wonder how you get started in it and what the attraction is early on. You could also elaborate on that.
ReplyDeleteThe next thing you might discuss is whether practice is fun or if it is only the competitions that are fun. If practice is fun there is no puzzle to solve from an economic incentive perspective, but if there is some drudge/pain to practice then how to make practice effective is an interesting economic problem. So you might expand on that. You also said the younger players have to do some grunt work and you said that would "obviously" be the case. But in terms of the economics, maybe it isn't so obvious. So you might discuss why the practice exists.
I like to distinguish leadership from management. You used leadership where I'd have used management. So the other thing you might consider a bit is what the different between the two are and if effective teams have many (all) of the team members as leaders. If so, how does that work?
most of the friendships i made in lacrosse were made on the practice field. this is because of all the time that we spent together. even though we went our separate ways we still keep in contact and reflect on past stories of us playing together. you mentioned in class how the oakland A's would fight with each other back in the day and for us i would say it was the opposite. the friendly competition made us work harder in practice because we always wanted to one-up each other. elaborating on the practices, i would say that in general they were not fun, but we made them fun. it was constant drilling and repetition to be perfect, but we were able to make them fun. in terms of the younger players doing the grunt work, it was more of tradition and fun than anything else. we played it off as a right of passage because someone had to do it, and they were the low man on the totem pole.
DeleteTo elaborate on Professor Arvan's leadership comment: leadership can come in many forms and from many different people. Leaders motivate their peers to perform at their best. Similarly, perhaps the friendship that was formed between your teammates strengthened the leadership's ability to influence. Maybe think about what role players on the team did that could be considered good leadership.
ReplyDelete