Problem Statement
Coach Stas Preczewski (Coach P.) of the Army Crew team for the United States Military Academy at West Point believes that he has a championship caliber team. His rowers worked hard throughout the entire off-season, focusing on their physical abilities and rowing technique, and were eager to begin training camp at the Atlanta Retreat. Here, Coach P. implemented a number of commonly employed methods for objectively ranking the rowers from top to bottom. The top eight would form the Varsity team, and the bottom eight would form the Junior Varsity (JV) team. While at training camp, Coach P. made his selections for each team. He then confirmed his results by pitting the Varsity and JV boats in a race that Varsity won handily. Upon leaving Atlanta, the coach was unaware of the challenges to soon arrive.
To Coach P.’s dismay, the Varsity boat’s impressive initial performance wasn’t an indicator for their future success. As the season progressed, his Varsity boat, consisting of the statistically highest quality rowers, would routinely lose in races against the JV boat. Since all the facts supported that the Varsity boat was comprised of the best rowers, the coach was dumbfounded as to what course of action was to be taken. As the JV team continued to defeat the Varsity throughout the season, the Varsity team struggled with various issues. The stress of their low performance combined with the humiliation of losing to an inferior team was a recipe for a disaster. As a result, the Varsity team members grew distant from one another and did not demonstrate the ability to work together as a productive unit. The JV team, on the other hand, bonded closely as a result of their dominance over the Varsity team. With four days remaining until the National Championship race, the Varsity members showed no signs of improvement and were at all-time low. Coach P. realized he needed to make some drastic changes, and he faced a tough decision. His Varsity team was emotionally devastated, perhaps irreparably, and hardly seemed fit to partake in the season’s culminating race. What could be done?
Analysis of Issues
The problems and issues the Army Crew Team are experiencing are having a drastic effect on their Varsity boat. The same team that “defeated the JV boat handily” at the beginning of the season and experienced “swing” almost immediately has progressively diminished throughout the season in terms of performance and shows a lack of communication skills. They now lose to the JV team on a regular basis. It’s important to note that the JV team is not getting faster, but the Varsity team is slowing down. On a well-functioning team, this would not be the case. The Varsity boat is comprised of the top eight athletes, and should be improving as the season advances.
The Varsity Army Crew Team’s issues were apparent almost immediately after Coach P. finished his selection process. By selecting them as Varsity members, Coach P. developed a psychological contract with them. This agreement set out mutual expectations for the team: Coach P. expected top-notch performance from his best eight rowers and in return the Varsity members expected to be treated well, given feedback, and receive proper guidance. These performance norms established by Coach P. were stressful for the Varsity and eventually took a toll on their performance. We can see this very early in the season when the Varsity were “unhappy and critical of one another” for not beating the JV boat by a greater margin. Coach P. thought this was just an indicator of the Varsity “striving for excellence,” when it was really a sign of ineffective communication and individualism. Conflict on a team is not necessarily a bad thing. However, in this case, they are experiencing a relationship conflict – one based on interpersonal incompatibilities, tension, and animosity towards others. Relationship conflicts almost always cause a team to be dysfunctional. As discussed earlier, synchronization in crew is crucial, but the Varsity team’s conflicts led to the team devolving into a working group, focusing on the individual aspects of rowing rather than their team as a whole.
The Varsity and JV teams are two examples of different functioning groups, and this can be examined by applying the group properties to each team’s behavior. To begin, each member of the group has a specific role. The Varsity team viewed their role as superior to their JV counterparts, and this perception lead to expectations for their performance at competitions and in practice. Along these lines, JV was the opposite. At the beginning of the season, they perceived themselves as inferior, and thus harbored low expectations when competing. In other words, the Varsity losing to the JV in practice races meant humiliation, as they were expected to win. If the JV lost to Varsity, then the JV team would most likely have been more accepting of that outcome, as their roles dictated that they were supposed to lose. As the season wore on and JV began to consistently defeat Varsity, the JV team began to change their views. They began seeing themselves as the dominant team, whereas the Varsity’s role perception of superiority remained and resulted in significant tension amongst the team. As a result, social arrangement norms were established because the Varsity felt like they were too good to be around their JV teammates. The social arrangement norms made socializing the two teams nearly impossible, and prevented them from helping one another to develop.
Yet, almost all sports teams experience conflict to certain degrees and eventually transition out of them. According to the five-stages of group developments, however, Varsity never managed to transition out of the storming stage to the norming stage. The norming stage is important to form a collective sense of identity and build collective expectations (norms) for behavior, and the Varsity team never reached this level due to their lack of motivation, poor communication channels, and inability to solve conflicts. As a result, unproductive conflict known as deviant behavior developed, and their group cohesiveness suffered. Group cohesiveness deals directly with the degree to which group members are attracted to one another and their motivation to remain in the group. For a crew team to be successful, it is imperative that the team operate as an effective and efficient unit, and the degree to which rowers are psychologically in tune with each other is one of the greatest factors contributing to whether or not a boat crew will experience success. The Varsity rowers, however, were so emotionally broken that they were hardly interested in completing the season. The cohesiveness that they once had in Atlanta had all but disappeared and they were left with little motivation to continue.
Development and Evaluation of Alternatives
Coach P. is a mere four days from the National Championship races and faces the task of putting forth the best possible crew team. The stress and personality conflicts, which have consumed the Varsity rowers after countless losses to a team they perceive as inferior, must be solved. Coach P. has three identifiable solutions that could be implemented, but choosing is difficult due the degree of uncertainty involved with each case. The first option is to stick with the status quo and rely on his data for which rowers are the best. The second option is to intervene on a more drastic level and consider strategies that were once viewed as risky. The last, and most radical, option is to switch the JV and Varsity teams, as the JV has certainly demonstrated that they are a capable team and arguably more deserving of the opportunity to race on the National championship level. Each path has significant risks associated with it.
The first, and least risky, option would be for the coach to maintain the direction he has gone all season and continue to rely on his data. All of Coach P.’s data supports that his current eight Varsity rowers are the best; he just has to bring it out in them in practice. He frequently has Varsity race JV in practice, a strategy he implemented as a means to instill competition and improve both teams (primarily Varsity). However, the practices had the opposite effect of decreasing Varsity’s abilities and motivation level primarily because they were expected to win and felt humiliated losing to JV. To decrease the deep-rooted role perception of both teams, the coach might consider shuffling the rowers during practice, as this will alleviate some pf the pressure for the Varsity rowers. It will also allow each Varsity rower to win a handful of races, as with the shuffling it is likely that each rower will experience both victory and defeat. These small wins could have the effect of lowering tension and reducing finger pointing amongst the Varsity rowers, which would substantially aid their team efficacy.
There a couple drawbacks to this plan, however. To begin, the Varsity may not see significant improvement in only four days of a new practice format, as this is a very short time frame to hope for realistic improvement. Furthermore, the personality conflicts that have surfaced between the JV and Varsity team may limit the effectiveness of this strategy. Additionally, given the state of Varsity’s group cohesiveness, it may prove impossible for them to collaborate together effectively at any near point in the future. Varsity has deep-rooted personality conflicts, and getting them to work together when relations are tense could prove impossible. If Varsity’s problems were not solved and they raced poorly in the National championship race, then Coach P. would also look incompetent for having not made different decisions.
The next option would involve shuffling the boats at practice as well, but for a different purpose. Coach P. would make it known to the entire team that nobody has a guaranteed spot on Varsity. In other words, open tryouts. Now, before making this announcement, Coach P. should consult his current Varsity team and confirm his belief in them as a whole, informing them that he expects them all to make the Varsity boat again. After all, his data points to them being the best, and it is in his best interest to motivate his statistically best rowers. However, if Coach P. does find a better combination of rowers, then he should go with them. This option has many of the same risks and rewards of the first option. Both options require Coach P. to run practice differently, but differ in how Coach P. would be open to altering the Varsity roster. However, if Coach P. replaces one or more Varsity members, there is always the possibility that the JV members will not perform well enough under pressure and will cause the Varsity boat to slow down even further at the National Championships.
The final, and most drastic, option would be to switch the Varsity and JV boats if no better combinations can be found. The JV team has certainly done all they can to prove themselves as the best rowers, and their dedication, team efficacy, and ability to consistently outperform a boat comprised of superior athletes cannot be denied. In addition, there is precedent for switching the two teams, as a former crew coach at Cornell successfully took a similar action. Unfortunately, this action has desperation written all over it. All of the Coach’s data suggests that he already has the best rowers selected, and if JV succumbed to the pressure of a high stakes race, as they have in the past, his decision to make the switch would look foolish. In addition, if Coach P.’s goal is to retain any of his current Varsity athletes for the next season, then thoroughly embarrassing Varsity by demoting them all would not be prudent.
Recommended Actions
Taking everything into consideration, our recommended action is to intervene to improve the Varsity boat’s performance. We believe this action will provide the greatest overall benefit to the team if it is successful. All of the Varsity members are physically capable of performing at the highest standard, Coach P. just needs to intervene and work on the psychological factors. Considering Coach P. only has four days before the National championship, he will have to take action immediately. And, since it is such a limited amount of time, we developed a fall back plan in case his intervention fails. If the intervention fails, we will move to one of our alternative options and completely switch the JV and Varsity boats. The entire team will be notified of this immediately and it will give the Varsity team motivation to change their ways and work as a team. We thought they needed this extra motivation so that they don’t treat his intervention the same way they treated the Center for Enhanced Performance (CEP) training. The person from West Point whom had an expertise is maximizing individual and team performance through a series of training techniques that could have really helped them. The JV members embraced the CEP training whereas the skeptical Varsity members labeled it “touchy-feely.” This was an insult to the coach’s work to try to make them all better athletes. One of the main reasons why we chose this option is because we firmly believe the issues that the Varsity members are dealing with can be resolved. Successfully resolving them will require the application of new coaching concepts and strategies, and active participation from the team members, both JV and Varsity.
To begin, the Varsity team needs to abandon their citizenship behavior and focus on the upcoming task – the National championships. By shifting their focus directly to the non-routine activity of a National championship, I think the team will begin to have disagreements about task content. These task conflicts that will emerge should help stimulate discussion, promote critical assessment of problems and options, and lead to better team decisions. They will force them to begin working as a team and will cause the amount of relationship conflicts to subside at the same time. If they still don’t subside, I would have Coach P. explicitly discuss the issues with the Varsity and avoid focusing on personalities and the way things were said. That is the more effective conflict resolution method. The next thing I would have Coach P. do to improve the Varsity team is to apply diversity management and eliminate the unfair discrimination on the team. Intimidation, insults, exclusion, and incivility were all present at some point of the year. Coach P. needs to eliminate it altogether. Discrimination was the cause of a lot of the negative consequences for the team, including reduced productivity and citizenship behavior, negative conflicts, and increased turnover. The exclusion and incivility I’ve witnessed from the Varsity team shows they really need help. They call each other out on emails talking about how they are not pulling the slack for the team and are not willing to resolve problems together. I think the unfair discrimination became a problem because no one, including Coach P., ever thought to look past the surface-level diversity of the team. Surface-level diversity is differences in easily perceived characteristics such as age, gender, and race that do not necessarily reflect the ways people think or feel but that may activate certain stereotypes.
Coach P. needs to look past surface-level diversity and begin to examine the differences in values, personality, and work preferences on his team, know as deep-level diversity. This would help him conduct more effective practices and understand his team better. He would also be capable of applying diversity management to help resolve the unfair discrimination. A key step to diversity management is to make everyone more aware of and sensitive to the needs and differences of others. I think this would greatly eliminate the amount of cognitive dissonance on the team because they would have a greater understanding for one another.

Once Coach P. gained a deeper level of understanding for the individuals on his team, he could apply Furtermore, I think it’s crucial for Coach P. to assign someone as the coxswain. He would need to choose someone that is skilled in steering the boat, motivates the team, and sets the racing strategy. Coach P. would not be able to properly assign this role without knowing his member’s deep-level diversity. I suggest assigning a leader to the Varsity team because a team can’t function if they can’t agree on who is responsible for what and how the workload is distributed. Leadership is essential in multi-team systems like the Army Crew Team because leaders empower them by assigning responsibility to them, and play the role of facilitator, making sure the teams work together rather than against one another. I’m convinced that establishing a leader would help ease any conflicts between the JV and Varsity and improve the overall performance of both boats. If the two teams worked together, they could be of great assistance to each other. For example, the JV team could share some their team building tactics with the Varsity and the Varsity could show the JV some workouts to improve their test results. Both teams would benefit. Equally important as assigning a leader, Coach P. needs to establish a climate of trust during the intervention. The Varsity members are constantly blaming one another for the team’s failure, which indicates they are lacking a climate of trust. By helping to establishing a climate of trust between his team members, Coach P. would be facilitating cooperation and bonding members around the belief that others on the team won’t take advantage of them. I think forming a climate of trust would also help ease any tension between the JV and Varsity members. It would help destroy the social arrangement norms that were previously formed and also allow the team to fully accept commit to a leader’s goals and decisions. In conclusion, we decided that intervening to improve the Varsity team’s performance would be the best course of action for Coach P. to take. The personality conflicts and communication problems that are causing the Varsity boat’s decline in speed are a direct result of the Varsity being perceived as the superior team. This perception forms high expectations and performance norms for the Varsity members, which adds stress, pressure, and conflict to their team. Our intervention would solve this problem by improving the relationship between the JV and Varsity by: First, reducing the amount of relationship conflicts and working together on tasks instead. Next, eliminating the unfair discrimination on the team by applying diversity management. Third, assigning a leader to empower them by assigning responsibility to them, and play the role of facilitator, making sure the teams work together rather than against one another. And finally, establishing a climate of trust between them to facilitate cooperation and bonding members around the belief that others on the team won’t take advantage of them.


Bibliography
Robbins, Stephen P., and Tim Judge. Organizational Behavior. 15th ed. Boston: Pearson, 2013. Print.
Scook, Scott A., and Jeffrey T. Polzer. "Army Crew Team." Harvard Business School (2003): 1-11. Harvard Business Publishing for Educators. Web.