When you are given a scholarship to play a sport in college, you enter your freshman year thinking that you are the most important piece of the puzzle. Your confidence is at an all-time high, and you enter the arena or court for the first time with your chest puffed up and a skip in your step. What happens, then, when you are shown right away that you’re not as good as you thought, that there are grown men who are much more talented than you already on the team, and that you’re being relegated to the Junior Varsity team for your first season?
You are deflated. Beaten. In the span of a few short weeks, you went from thinking you’re going to turn the fates of the program around to being told that you’re not even going to be a part of the program to start off your career. It’s disheartening, discouraging, and it can ruin the careers of some athletes. Now, combine fifteen of these broken players onto one Junior Varsity team. What kind of chemistry could you possibly hope to create when every player is in such a negative headspace? How could an island of misfit toys ever hope to win basketball games?
According to social psychology, a team of throwaway players can win. That is, if they have social and task cohesion, and a common enemy.
Social cohesion refers to the level at which the members of the team are united as a group (Sullivan et al., 2017). Task cohesion, on the other hand, refers to how united the team is toward achieving their shared goals (Smith et al., 2013). In the above example, the social cohesion should be low because each player that was relegated to the Junior Varsity team thought that the deserved to be a part of the “big show”. The task cohesion would be, like any other team, a desire to win games. But, if you don’t care about the team you’re on and only wish to be promoted to the main squad, how much could you possibly care about winning?
It turns out that you end up throwing the cast-offs together, they can bond together over one thing: being a cast-off.
I should know because it happened to me. I was a highly recruited freshman who came into my first year and was sent down to play on the J.V. team. I thought my career was over before it had a chance to begin. Not only that, but I had to play on a team with 14 other guys who all thought the same way I did.
On a “normal” team, the social cohesion can be tipped from one end to the other based on the personalities of the players and how well they fit together (Gruman et al., 2017). When we first got together as a J.V. team, there was almost no social cohesion. We were at each other’s throats daily. None of us believed that we belonged there, so we never pulled the boat in the same direction. We were, all fifteen of us, thinking only of ourselves and who we needed to “beat” to be moved up.
That is, until I had an epiphany. One day, as we were practicing, I could feel that we were failing as a team. We were fighting amongst each other instead of preparing for the opponents we were about to face. There was a level of anger within the team that was almost at the boiling point. So, I had two options. I could sit everyone down and try to talk through our problems and come to a solution as a team, or I could turn the heat up and allow the anger to boil over. I chose to let the anger boil over, but instead of allowing the boil cascade over us and potentially destroy the team, I decided to focus the anger toward a “common” enemy: our program’s head coach.
Studies have shown that social cohesion within a team is increased when they are confronted with an outside threat. This phenomenon is called, simply, the “common enemy effect” (Haller & Hoyer, 2019). One of the most effective ways to drive cohesion within a team is to focus the energies of the individuals onto a common enemy (Savar, 2019).
Once we all were focused on proving the common enemy wrong, we started to fight together as a team. Our practices became more competitive, we worked with one another to improve, and we started to win games. Having something to focus our anger, our frustration, and our disappointment onto helped us to all row the boat in the same direction. Instead of finding ways to step on one another for a chance to be promoted, we banded together and became a cohesive unit with chemistry unlike anything found at the upper level of the program. Being on the J.V. team became a badge of honor for us, a sign that we were unwanted by the common enemy but found a family in the trenches. Even now, fifteen years later, we still meet once a year and remember how special it was to be on that J.V. team.
The next time your team is faced with a seemingly unreachable goal, or the next time you are having a hard time bringing your teammates together, try to find that common enemy. It will focus the energy of the individuals onto one central opposing force, which will drive motivation and team cohesion (Savar, 2019). With cohesion, and motivation, your team can achieve results that you never thought would be possible.
References:
Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (2017a). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781071800591
Haller, H., & Hoyer, B. (2019). The common enemy effect under Strategic Network Formation and disruption. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 162, 146–163. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2019.03.011
Savar, A. (2019, December 17). Nothing brings a team together like a common enemy. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2019/12/17/nothing-brings-a-team-together-like-a-common-enemy/?sh=566624a96152
Smith, M. J., Arthur, C. A., Hardy, J., Callow, N., & Williams, D. (2013). Transformational leadership and task cohesion in sport: The mediating role of intrateam communication. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 14(2), 249–257. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2012.10.002
Sullivan, P., Feltz, D. L., & Dithurbide, L. (2017). Applying social psychology to sports teams. Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems, 129–154. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781071800591.n6
The common enemy effect is sharing an enemy to show cohesion when confronted with an outside threat (Haller & Hoyer, 2019). An example I have in mind is when I had intramurals, a sports event that competes at each grade level against each other. I was going to play basketball with the upper level. For more context, my grade was not on good terms with the upper level. We hated each other, which fueled our anger at them, and we became more united. In the game, everyone from our batch supported me and my teammates. We couldn’t win against the upper batch, but we were unified with the intense feeling of having a common enemy.
I understand that social cohesion can be tipped from one end to another on a standard team based on personality and how well they fit matches together (Gruman et al., 2016). Focusing on a shared rival is one of the best ways to build a team. The enemy can be a team dynamic or a competition (Savar, 2019). However, I think the drive will disappear once the enemy is gone. So, can this be a long-term matter? How long are threats going to persist? What if it’s going to be a change of enemy every time? For example, in my country, the citizens see certain politicians as a common enemy that would create rallies against their campaigns. I think that would lessen the typical effect with each bad politicians.
Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (2016). Applied Social Psychology (3rd ed.). SAGE Publications, Inc. (US).
Haller, H., & Hoyer, B. (2019). The common enemy effect under strategic network formation
and disruption. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 162, 146–163. https:
//doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2019.03.011
Savar, A. (2019, December 17). Council Post: Nothing Brings A Team Together Like A
Common Enemy. Forbes. Retrieved from
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2019/12/17/nothing-brings-a-team-together-like
a-common-enemy/?sh=5cc30bfe6152