Group Dynamics

Group Dynamics: Team Characteristics

A team is more than just a group of individuals – these individuals have to work together to achieve a goal and may have to perform different functions such as attacker or defender to make the team unit complete. A team has the following characteristics:

• Collective identity – the team can be recognised easily since they are usually wearing the same colour kit. Team members often feel a strong affiliation to the team and gain a sense of pride when they wear the team clothing, giving motivation and a sense of belonging
• Interaction – the team members should operate in their own role successfully and also be able to link this role with other members of the team, e.g. in netball the defence and central players may each mark a specific opponent while also communicating with each other to cover any opposition attacks
• Communication – to help with interaction, the individual players in the team should talk to each other and communicate non-verbally in a way that other players understand, such as rugby players using a coded call or a hand signal to indicate where the ball is being thrown at the 'line out'
• A shared goal or purpose – the prospect of achieving success is what often keeps the players in the team and working for each other. All the players should want to aim for the same goal to have maximum motivation

Tuckman's Stages of Group Formation

When the team forms and as the characteristics mentioned above develop, the psychologist Tuckman (1965) suggests there are stages of group formation through which the group must pass in order to start working as a unit.

1. Forming – in this first short stage, the group comes together and gets to know each other, with individuals often finding out how they feel about the team and if they think they will fit in. An assessment is made of the strengths and weaknesses of the individual compared to the strengths of others in the group
2. Storming – this is a stage of potential conflict where individuals may compete with others to establish position, status or role in the team. It may be that two players are competing for the same position and the coach or captain should resolve such issues as quickly as possible to ensure players accept an alternative role
3. Norming – once conflicts have been resolved, the team begins to settle down and co-operate, with the intention of achieving their goals. Group standards are accepted and the cohesion of the team develops
4. Performing – in this stage, all the players are now interactive and working together to achieve their goals. The team members support each other and understand their role in the team
5. Mourning – this is the stage that occurs when the goals have been achieved and the team might begin to break up and disband, then start again – e.g. a team that wins the league might then lose some of its players and recruit new players for the next season

The length of time it takes to complete this process can vary, depending on the size of the group, the difficulty of the task and the experience of the players – established club teams can go through the stages in a short time span, while representative and international teams may take longer since players have to learn unfamiliar tactics and new roles within a limited time span during infrequent meetings.

Cohesion: Task and Social Cohesion

Cohesion is the tendency of members of a team to work together to achieve what they want to achieve. There is little doubt that cohesion is needed for the effectiveness of team performance, though psychologists debate whether cohesion causes success or success causes cohesion.

• Co-action describes when others do the task at the same time but separately, as in rowing when all the crew must literally pull together. In other sports, each player may have a different role and this role must be integrated with the roles of the other team members – this is interaction
• Task cohesion looks at the end result and involves every player working together to achieve the goal, either by doing their own role well, so that other team members can also make their contribution, or by working hard, along with everyone else on the task
• Social cohesion looks at the interaction of the individuals in the team and how they work with each other – the degree of trust in each other's ability and support for each team member. They may even socialise together off the field away from the game
• Social cohesion will help the team be interactive and will help communication and team spirit, but it can be a negative influence on the team, since it might produce sub-groups or 'cliques' that mean some members will not co-operate or contribute to team questions or tactics
• Task cohesion is really important and can over-ride the problems of social cohesion – the performance and results of the team may still be good even if players do not socialise, but without task cohesion those results would soon be poor. Task cohesion provides motivation in the sense that all members of the team will work hard to win the cup or league title, with the prize on offer becoming more important than any social differences

Carron's Antecedents of Cohesion

There are influences on the team members that will help them to work together, summarised by the psychologist Carron as four main influences on the cohesion of a team, known as Carron's antecedents – the things that must be in place for cohesion to be effective.

1. Environmental factors – these include the size of group and the time available. The larger the group, the more time they will have to learn each other's roles, but with a large group there is more chance of social loafing and the Ringelmann effect, and a sub-division or 'clique' can form
2. Personal factors – this refers to the similarity of group members in terms of their aspirations, opinions and values, whether they are happy with the role they play in the team and even how they act
3. Leadership factors – the leadership style chosen by the coach or captain is important, as is how the captain or coach gets on with the others in the team
4. Team factors – team success is important here and the more success is achieved, the higher cohesion will be. The team will have experience of both wins and losses, and the longer the team has been together, the more chance to contribute to team cohesion. Sometimes if a team is threatened from another group, such threats tend to bind the team to respond and eliminate any dispute within the team

Steiner's Model of Team Performance and Faulty Processes

Steiner (1972) proposed that the results of group efforts could be based on an equation that sums up the various influences on cohesion – the thinking behind it is that it is not always the case that having the best players produces the best results, since those players have to be moulded by the coach into a cohesive unit and maintain levels of motivation.

• Actual productivity looks at the performance of the team at a given time, at the end of the game – the result, the end outcome: a win, a loss or a draw
• Potential productivity is the team's best possible outcome that could happen if everything went perfectly during the game. Group potential is affected by the skill level and ability of the players compared to the opponents and how difficult the task ahead may be, including factors such as player ability and group resources
• Losses due to faulty processes are the things that go wrong to reduce group outcomes and prevent group potential being reached, falling into two types: co-ordination problems (players fail to listen to the coach's instructions, employ the incorrect tactics, fail to communicate with each other, or misunderstand their role in the team) and motivational problems (players suffer from too much or too little arousal or lose the drive to win, with a resultant reduction in effort and concentration)

Social Loafing and the Ringelmann Effect

Social loafing is a loss of motivation by an individual within the team, due to a lack of performance identification – their efforts have not been recognised. Players who are social loafers will often coast through the game and hide behind other team members who they think might cover for them, taking easy options and making a limited contribution to the team cause.

• Social loafing may be caused by a lack of confidence in the player, a negative attitude towards the position they have been selected to play in, poor leadership by the coach or captain (not offering incentives and reinforcement), not understanding or accepting the role they need to play, lacking fitness to maintain their role for the whole game, or goals set by the coach that are too general and lack meaning
• The Ringelmann effect, described more than a century ago, still has significance today – a study of tug of war found that individual effort within the group reduced with increasing group size, as individuals tried hard on the rope pull when their efforts were highlighted but tended to reduce their effort in a team of eight
• Social loafing is a loss of motivation by an individual from the team – the Ringelmann effect is more collective, meaning group performance decreases with group size

Avoiding Social Loafing and Promoting Cohesion

To avoid the negative aspects of social loafing, the coach should make sure that the efforts of the players are recognised and rewarded.

• This can be done by giving players specific roles to play in the team, such as specific responsibility for marking a particular opponent, and using statistics such as tackle counts, number of assists or pass completion rates to highlight individual performance
• Strategies to promote cohesion, reduce the effects of social loafing and solve co-ordination problems include: setting individual and more challenging goals; involving all players in goal setting; giving specific roles within the team and making sure this role is clear and accepted; promoting motivation with rewards; establishing a group identity; using statistics to highlight individual performance; using team meetings to resolve conflict; maintaining communication with open discussion; and rewarding exceptional contribution to the team
• The coach might also use video analysis, a form of sports analytics, to highlight the performance of the individual and use feedback to evaluate and assess that performance, while in training avoiding situations where social loafing could occur and varying practice to maintain motivation and conditioning