All praise is due to Allah SWT, May
selawat and salam granted to our beloved Prophet Muhammad SAW to his family and
to all his noble companions (^_^)
To my beloved lecturer Dr. Hariyati Shahrima and my friends, alhamdulillah we
done one day sports psychology seminar! Perhaps we’ll always remember our memories
after graduate rite? (^_^)
Yes!
We did it! We love sports psychology!
One of the speaker who is Mr. Ahmad Nizar said “Book gives you direction,
works give you experience” . Yes it is true! I experienced it. It is really make sense to me and I’ll bring back this best quote!
All
right! Before I further explained about teamwork, let’s recap what is
leadership all about.
Previous entries, I have shared about leadership, style in leadership, behavioral theories in
leadership approach, the great man
theory: the trait approach as well as the interactional approach. So in this
entry I will add some more about this topic of leadership and further discuss
about new topic which is teamwork.
LEADERSHIP
Leadership broadly considered as the
behavioral process to influence individuals and groups in order to achieve set
goals. In sport setting this concept of leadership include decision-making
processes, motivational techniques, giving feedback, establishing interpersonal
relationship and directing the group or team with confidently or in other word
‘influence’ them. A leader should know where the group or team is going its
goals and objectives. Besides that, a
leader should provide guidelines or direction to the group or team clearly. It
is to make sure everybody in his or her group understands what is going to
achieve. For example, during the seminar
on one sport psychology, my head bureau of public relation had divided tasks to
each sub-committee clearly. He also gives some guidelines how to do the tasks
correctly. Hem, good!
What it’s
the difference between a manager and a leader?? (^_0)
A manager
takes care of such things as scheduling, budgeting and organizing, whereas a leader
is concerned more with the direction of an organization, including its goals
and objectives.
Next,
how leaders are chosen? Emm.. Usually leaders and coaches are appointed by
some authority. E.g. the athletic director (with some feedback from a search
committee) commonly selects coaches. It is not just simple selection by the
authority, but like I mentioned from my previous entries, there are some
characteristics of an effective leaders should have to take into account when
selecting a leader or a coach especially by looking leader’s leadership skills
or high ability in the particular sport.
In
addition, in leadership there are threat have been approaches that have been
discussed in previous entries which are trait
approach, behavioral approach as well as interactional approach.
What
do you understand from these approaches? (*_*)
First,
the trait approach assumes that
great leaders possess a set of universal personality traits. It is very
important that should have for effective leadership. E.g. a leader is an assertive
and ambitious person. Like Micheal Jordan would be a great leader not only on
the basketball court but also in other sports and aspects of life such as business
and community affairs. Second, the behavioral
approach assumes that a relatively universal set of behaviors characterizes
successful leaders. These behaviorists argued that anyone could be taught to become
a leader by simply learning the behaviors of other effective leaders. Thus,
unlike trait approach, the behavioral approach argues that leaders are made,
not born. Leaders have a variety of
personality traits but there is not specific traits that make a leader to be
success. Third, the interactional approach assumes that the interaction of the
situation is determined a leader to have an effective leadership. This approaches assumes that there is no one
best type of leader but the effective leadership style is depend on the
situation and qualities of the group’s members like having good relationship
with others.
What
is the Multidimensional Model of Sport
Leadership (MML)?
How can we
measure effective leadership in athletic
situation?
Using
an interactional approach, Chelladurai (1980) proposed this MML which is group performance
and member satisfaction is depend on how well three types of leader behavior
interrelated with three sets of characteristics which affects leader behavior. You can see the figure above.
Three types of
leader behavior are:
Required
behavior: this is the
behavior required by the situation, such as the type of sport, the goals to be
achieved.
§ Actual
behavior: this is what
the leader actually does and it is dependent on his or her characteristics,
such as experience
§ Preferred
behavior: this is what
the athlete wants the leader to do and it depends on the athlete’s own abilities,
personality, skill level and so on, as well as the demands of the particular
situation.
Three
characteristics which affect leader behavior:
§ Situational
characteristic: such as
whether the opposition is strong or weak
§ Leader
characteristic: such as
the leader’s level of experience, personality whether goal or relationship
orientated.
§ Group
member of characteristic:
such as experience, age or gender.
In others words,
if the coach does what is required in the situation, and this is what the
athletes want the coach to do, this is effective leadership.
Chelladurai
hypothesizes that a positive outcome that is high performance and group
satisfaction occurs if three aspects of leader behavior agree. If the leader
behaves appropriately for the particular situation and these behaviors match
the preferences of the group members, they will achieve their best performance
and feel satisfied. Thus, effective leadership can be varying depending on the
characteristics of the athlete and the situation. E.g. in the sport seminar recently, program
manager tells every head committees to have good communication and relations
with all sub-committees (work together) and sub-committees want this kind of
behavior in a leader. Therefore they perform the best performance and find
satisfaction. (^_^)
TEAMWORK
All right, now I’ll
explain about teamwork. It is very
important to us to well manage when we’re in a team or group. We belong to
groups such as our family, and if we play a team sport or belong to a sports
clubs, we also part of that group.
What it the definition of group
cohesion?
Carron, Brawley
and Widmeyer (1998) proposed that cohesion is “a dynamic process which is
reflected in the tendency for a group to stick together and remain united in
the pursuit of its instrument objectives and/or for the satisfaction of member
affective needs”.
There are two
general categories of group cohesion:
Factors associated with group cohesion
Carrol et.al (2005)
discussed the main correlate of cohesion in sports teams is environmental
factors (situational), personal factors, leadership factors, and team factors.
Environmental factors
Firstly the
environment factors include proximity.
Individuals, who are in close proximity physically close to each other, have a
greater tendency to have good bonding. Second environmental factors is distinctiveness which is refer to a set
of individuals when becomes more separate, more distinctive from others,
feelings of oneness and unity is increase. Third factors is team’s size which is the smaller the group
the greater the cohesion. Perhaps there is more opportunity for members to
interact.
Personal factors
Individual satisfaction is one of personal factors. It is
satisfaction with other team members. The greater satisfaction is generally
associated with better performance. Second
personal factor that related to cohesion is competitive state anxiety. Carron (1996) found that athletes who
perceived their teams to higher in task cohesion seemed to experience less
cognitive anxiety. This is because members of more cohesive teams could
experience less pressure to carry out the responsibilities of the group and
satisfy other members’ expectation. Third
is social loafing which is the term
used for the reduced that individual effort when working with others.
Leadership factors
It is related
with leadership styles. E.g. coaches who are engaging more democratic behaviors
will be more likely to have teams with higher cohesion.
Team factors
Cohesion is
influenced by a number of structural characteristics that emerge as the group
develops (e.g.roles and norms), processes that take place between group members
(e.g.,group goals, communication) and group performance outcomes.
Although these
factors are associated with group cohesion, the nature of this association is
not at all clear because, although successful performance leads to greater
group cohesion, providing feedback about group cohesion also improves
performance.
So, does
satisfaction with team members lead to success as a team which increases group
cohesion or give successful performance? (*_^)
It is safe to say
that a major reason for these factor relationships is due to their dependence
on each other. Rite? (^_^)
