The Study to Compare Group Cohesion and Leadership Among Players of Different Games

Social groupings are part of the human’s relationship with society. Groups have power and a culture, distinct to itself. Groups contain characteristics that are common to every other group, but they also possess characteristics unique to the group in question (Eys, Burke, Carron, and Dennis, 2006). A group has a common fate to its members, a mutual benefit for members, social structure, group processes, and self-categorization. Common fate means that the whole team wins or the whole team loses. It is the team identity. Mutual benefit refers to the victory, the individual recognitions, and the privileges of participation in the group. The social structure incorporates the roles, positions, and the status of respective members. The group processes refers to the communication, cooperation, task performance, and the social interactions within the group. This is personal and task interdependence. Self-categorization is the individual value a person feels in the collective group, making the person part of the team.

Group cohesion is a lively procedure where the group tends to linger together and united in the pursuit of its objective for the satisfaction of the affective needs of group members (Paskevich, Estabrooks, Brawley, and Carron, 2001). It is multidimensional, dynamic, instrumental, and emotional. Individual and group aspects of cohesion are based on the beliefs and perceptions of personality group members. Group integration concerns the beliefs that individual members hold about the team. Individual attractions to the group relates to the member’s beliefs about what attracted him to the team. These two categories are each subdivided into task and social orientations. These things collectively create an individual and group sense of team cohesion. A highly cohesive group is more likely to be united and committed to success that a group with low cohesion (Jarvis, 2006).

To have team cohesion present must be an effectual team environment (Anshel, 2003). This climate is the atmosphere, environment, and perceived conditions and interrelationships among team members. Team atmosphere is a psychological construct, a value judgment made by the players. This team contentment will have a great effect on an athlete’s desire to be a part of the team. Team members want a certain amount of autonomy, not having all decisions made unilaterally by the coach. Members want emotional support from coaches and their fellow teammates.

There are several correlates of cohesion in sport (Paskevich et al., 2001; Eys et al., 2006). These include: (1) Environmental factors, such as normative pressures; (2) Personal factors, such as a personal sense of responsibility for negative outcomes; (4) Team factors. Environmental factors that may affect the team include the level of the competition and the size of the team. There are more pressures at a state championship, and larger teams have more team members to communicate and coordinate with. Personal factors may include issues such as social loafing, which is identified by team members not contributing their share to the team effort. Leadership factors consist of the leader’s decision style and leadership behavior.

Leadership have included elements like the following • Influencing a group toward a shared goal • Framing reality for others • Giving purpose to collective effort • Starting evolutionary change processes

A common problem for many coaches is how to get a group of athletes, often of varying fitness or skill levels, to perform as a team. Many great coaches have emphasized that having a group of extremely talented athletes does not guarantee a successful team, but rather that success is more often the result of a group of athletes of lesser talent who chose to work together to achieve a shared team outcome.

Getting a group of athletes to perform as a team is not always easy. Just because a group of athletes may train and compete together under the direction of the one coach that does not automatically define that collection of individuals as a team. Rather, a group of athletes becomes a team when they all possess a common identity, have shared goals and objectives, exhibit structured patterns of interaction and communication, and most importantly consider themselves to be a ‘team’. When self-categorization is present, that is, when the collection of athletes start referring to themselves as ‘we’ versus ‘they’, coaches can feel confident that a team is beginning to emerge!

The factors that draw athletes to a team and help them remain united in order to achieve a common goal, is referred to as team cohesion. In order to develop team done through basic survey questions or general group discussions. Questions such as, “Why did you decide to try-out for this team?”, “What attracted to you this team?”, “What do you think makes us a team?” can help coaches get a basic idea of such factors. It is also important for coaches to understand that there are often numerous factors that result in a team’s cohesion, that these factors change over time, and will be different for each team (eg. friendships, a chance to win a championship, etc). Coaches must not assume that the factors reported by the team last season will be the same for the next season or even remain the same throughout a season. Having established the factors contributing to a team’s cohesiveness, coaches can use this information to further build cohesion. For example, a coach has a young team of athletes who report friendship and social interaction as important factors. Using this information the coach organizes several team dinners throughout the pre-season. Another example would be a coach that identifies that the team cohesion factors are to do with the leadership style of the coach and senior players. Amongst other things, this coach decides to develop a mentoring system for younger athletes to work closely with more experienced players.

Tips for building a team:

• Organize a ‘team-challenge’ day. Athletes are organized into small teams and must work together to complete various physical activities (unrelated to their sport).

• Appoint a different athlete to run team-meetings each week.

• Once every two months, review and develop team goals.

• Review team communication so as to assure all members understand the jargon being used. Terminology and game lingo can vary from team to team and sometimes new team members will be to embarrassed to ask what it means!

The subject of teams, teaming, team-building, or leading teams has been a very popular one. The objective of the study was to find out the relationship between group cohesion and leadership among players, team cohesions and team success. The

behaviour conducive to positive athlete experience, perception and performance. Therefore influencing coach behavior is critical in the optimization of the athlete learning environment.

• Eys, M. A., Burke, S. M., Carron, A. V., & Dennis, P. W. (2006). The sport team as an effective group. In J. M. Williams (Ed.), (2006). Applied Sport Psychology: Personal Growth to Peak Performance (5th ed.) (pp. 157-173). New York: McGraw-Hill.

• Paskevich, D. M., Estabrooks, P. A., Brawley, L. R., & Carron, A. V. (2001). Group cohesion in sport and exercise. In R. N. Singer, H. A. Hausenblas, & C. M. Janelle (Eds.), (2001).

• Handbook of Sport Psychology (2nd ed.) (pp. 472-494). New York: John Wiley & Sons.

• Jarvis, M. (2006). Sport Psychology: A Student’s Handbook. New York: Routledge.

• Anshel, M. H. (2003). Sport Psychology: From Theory to Practice (4th ed.). San Francisco: Benjamin Cummings.

• Paskevich, D. M., Estabrooks, P. A., Brawley, L. R., & Carron, A. V. (2001). Group cohesion in sport and exercise. In R. N. Singer, H. A. Hausenblas, & C. M. Janelle (Eds.), (2001).

• Handbook of Sport Psychology (2nd ed.) (pp. 472-494). New York: John Wiley & Sons.

 http://www.ausport.gov.au/sportscoachmag/psychology2/how_to_get_your_group_to_become_a_team