Organizational Behavior - the Army Crew

ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR

THE ARMY CREW

CONTEXT

ORGANIZATION CHART

• Coaches (Novices, intermediate and master according to the years of experience)

SEATS DESCRIPTION

1 & 2 Bow seats, place kickers, self motivated and loners, rarely speak

3 & 4 Similar to 5 & 6, they complete the engine room for the boat

5 & 6 Strongest members with generally poorer technique, the team captain

7 Good follower from the 8, perfect pair, leads the starboard side of the boat

8 Stroke seat, crucial for the rhythm, not as strong, attitude never quit!

SKILLS

• With the boat races, the variables required for achieving top performance are: strength and coordination, rowing techniques, psychological dimensions, and program organizations.

• To succeed in the sport of rowing, the members need to develop not just as individuals, but also as a team.

• Crew relies heavily on team work and requires the 8 members of the boat to move synchronously in order to archive maximum performance.

• Exhaustion in a long race make it feels impossible to keep up the team's unrelenting pace but trust among members of a team is very important.

• When one person deviates from the pace it is important for the other seven not to respond but just trust that the person out of rhythm corrects her /himself because if they try to respond, they do it in different ways changing the synchronism and therefore leading to failure.

• The best boat is one in which rowers adapt to each other 's imperfect strokes by refraining from adjusting their techniques toward compensation for an error committed to avoid unstable rowing. The person causing an error ought to correct it in the next stroke to allow the boat to regain balance and maximum speed. Winning a crew race requires rowers to fight against reaching their physical threshold while making the fewest technical mistakes on any stroke.

MANAGEMENT STYLE

• Coaches will have different variable considerations. In this case according to the team selection criterion used proper consideration on technique, strength and conditioning had been put in place.

• The team selection criterion was on the measurement of speed, strength and coordination. Individual rowing skills measured using the ergo meter machine include individual strength, technique and endurance. The coach's seat racing method of assessing the systematic data of a rower's skills while coordinating with teammates is a good way of calibrating each individual as per ranks in accordance with the measured performance.

• Coach P, has only have on consideration the physical skills in order to select the team members.

VALUES

• Trust for synchrony and endurance: Trust as the psychological variable for performance is what deprived off the varsity team their win. The weak link applies not just to rowing technique but also to individual 's threshold physical failure.

• There needs to be a high level of trust and confidence among the team members resulting in enhanced personal and group confidence. A tremendous amount of harmonized collaboration of individual efforts is required to reach synchronization in rowing.

QUESTIONS

1. Why does the varsity team lose to the JV team?

Even the rigorous selection process, the Varsity team loses to the JV team because they don't know how to work as a team, the V boat is rather a group of individuals than a team. There were no leader on the team but several team disrupters. In my opinion the team members were not ready to take the responsibility for their mistakes "I'm the one who is carrying the boat". It appears that there is a more successful crew team than stringing together the best individual performers.

2. Why should coach P. have done differently earlier in the season to resolve this problem?

The coach P made should not establish a higher status for V boat. They had nothing to gain trough competition, whether the JV boat has nothing to lose. I think at the beginning it appears that he just selected the team members of the V boat by the physical skills and performance instead