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The Army Crew Team Case

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The Army Crew Team – Case Analysis
Scott Sung-Won Kim
This is a good example to show how teamwork is important. If the teamwork is not built and the members don’t trust each other, then any good performance couldn’t be achieved. The Varsity team keeps losing its race against the Junior Varsity team even though they were selected by the several objective tests like the seat racing and they proved they have better physical condition than JV team members. The National championship, a culmination of the season is just four days away and a Coach Preczewski has to decide how to solve this critical issue
Here are some points on why they failed to build good teamwork * Coach P. mainly focused on physical ability rather than balancing with psychological variables * Coach P. didn’t try to consolidate the Varsity team to one team and couldn’t lead them to communicate each other with respectful attitude * There is no leader in the Varsity team * They blamed each other on the low performance as “touchy-feely” * There is no session to encourage the Varsity team even after losing races
Coach P. should have focused more on the psychological points in the earlier stage as the US Olympic Committee’s research showed. During the seat race in the Atlanta, he should have considered the attitude and personality of each members as well. To build strong teamwork, I’d like to propose ‘Advocate Feedback’ communication which is to force the team members only to advocate the others without any criticism. This is the effective way to help them trust each other and encourage each other when someone makes a mistake.
Now only four days are left and there are three options. The first one is ‘Switch the Varsity team and Junior Varsity’. It is not good because all the data indicate the current Varsity team is the strongest rowers. The second option is ‘Switch individual boat members’. Coach P. conducted this way as a final experiment. The result was inevitably bad and the ‘sent down’ members made the Junior Varsity boat go faster than before. The third and final option is ‘Intervene to improve the Varsity boat’s performance’. Coach P. tried this way before with CEP training but it didn’t work. He has to intervene differently during next 4 days.

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