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07
Oct 23

The Nature of Group Roles and Group Norms in a Developing Esports Organization

Group roles and norms are utilized in every aspect of teamwork from being a part of a sports team to running an organization/business. Earlier this year, my best friend and I decided that we wanted to try and start our own community/organization in gaming as we are both heavily interested in games as well as business (him more so than myself as he graduated with a business degree). Although many times the group roles are solidified early, we wound up having to have many meetings where we discuss and modify our roles the more people we brought on board and had in the community. Initially the roles for us two were simple, we both pretty much do everything and our main goal as owners is to facilitate growth. In this early stage we had mostly task roles, which are roles “that an individual fulfills by actually performing work” (Hughes, Ginnett, & Curphy, 2006).

Many of our tasks at the time involved reaching out to people, recruiting, doing research on potential ideas etc. However, there quickly became a need for relationship roles when we brought a third owner as well as a director of esports onto the team. “Relationship roles are those that an individual fulfills by keeping the team in harmonious connection so that the work can get done” (Hughes, Ginnett, & Curphy, 2006). While my job early on included relationship roles, we all found ourselves at one point having to fulfill the overall groups relationship roles by hosting meetings and initiating team building activities to keep the high spirits when working toward our goals.

Once we were about a month or two in, we had established multiple tiers of management and a small community. At this point, there was almost a “redistribution” of roles for some. For us three owners we are largely responsible for task roles in terms of management as well as a few minor relationship roles, however our directors and team management only really had task roles. These roles include things like training, scheduling, announcing events, recruiting for team positions etc. We also added some community directors. The relationship roles of our community directors are to foster community engagement as well as host team building events and the task roles are to promote and announce.

At this point everyone on the team understood their group roles for the most part and we started to unconsciously have group norms. Group norms are essentially unofficial standards of behavior within the group. Some examples of norms we all started to exhibit included, fully listening to and respecting other members of management as now we know and can work better with each other, promoting and celebrating achievements when watching our teams play or getting a sponsorship, fully contributing to each discussion and brainstorming session, delegating time without distractions to work/discuss ideas etc. When I first started to notice these behaviors and cohesiveness, it was very fun and quite intriguing as we were seeing progress as a team.

Uniquely, we all decided it would be a great idea to get in contact with a graduate student who reached out to us with aspirations to work as a mental performance coach in sports/Esports and was looking for field experience. We brought him on board and his roles unlike most already in the organization were determined to be solely relationship roles. His responsibilities were to be an outlet for individuals, improve player’s mental fortitude, and teamwork ability. Players mostly, but also community members are encouraged to contact him with concerns, when they want advice, or just to talk. He is also present when our teams play and helps them stay composed so in my opinion it’s an under appreciated position in a team setting; especially one that has goals in fostering a friendly yet competitive community/fan base. While these are still the beginning stages of our journey, I feel that our non deliberate emphasis on the importance of different group roles and norms early on has served as a catalyst in how we have been able to grow and function as a team and overall organization.

 

References:

Hughes,R.L., Ginnett, R.C., & Curphy, G.J. (2006). Leadership: Enhancing the Lessons of Experience. New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

Gruman, J.A.,Schneider, F.W., & Coutts, L.A. (2017). Applied Social Psychology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

 

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06
Oct 21

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work… right?

When I was a high school freshman, my high school’s band program was known as one of the best programs in the city, if not the state. Not only did it perform incredibly well in state competitions, but it was also a great experience being a part of the band. Students from different sections got along great with one another, and for many of us, our sections felt like family. However, in the years that followed, I noticed that the band felt less cohesive than when I first joined. Students still viewed their own sections as a kind of “family”, but there were fewer interactions between different sections. Also, our performance at competitions slipped downwards, eventually to the point where we usually got eliminated out of finals. What happened? Some of these changes may have resulted from outside factors, like changes in the band directors and students. Nevertheless, a part of me wondered whether the drop in the band’s cohesion caused the drop in the performance. Would we have done better if the band was more unified?

The concept that a team’s cohesion affects their performance would seem to make sense logically. When cohesion is high, team members get along better with one another and are on the same page regarding their shared objectives. This line of reasoning would be consistent with research on sports teams discussed by Gruman, Schneider, & Coutts (2017), which show that cohesion strongly relates to individual performance, individual efforts, and team performance (pg. 137). Team members are more likely to exert more effort when the team gets along well, and they can coordinate well with one another when they are all on the same page. It is tempting to interpret these findings to mean that group cohesion greatly improves how well they get a task done. As they say, teamwork makes the dream work… right?

Unfortunately, improving team performance may not be as simple as getting people to get along. It is important to remember that correlations do not necessarily indicate that causation goes one way or the other. Although it may seem to make more sense for group cohesion to cause performance, it is possible that performance also causes group cohesion. Evidence for this possibility comes from Grieve, Whelan, & Meyers (2000), who found that cohesion has far less impact on performance than performance has on cohesion. A shared victory can be a great experience for people to bond over, while a defeat can leave people feeling bitter and distancing themselves from the team. Further research discussed by Gruman et al. (2017) regarding the cohesion-performance relationship found that cohesion can predict performance just as well as performance can predict cohesion. Regardless of which one causes the other more, the research shows that the relationship between team cohesion and team performance can go both ways, with both of them influencing each other.

So was it the drop in cohesion that doomed my band’s performances? While research shows a strong link between a team’s cohesion and performance, it also suggests the causality is bidirectional. My band’s performance may have suffered from a decrease in cohesion, but that drop in performance may have also caused cohesion to suffer as well. Thinking back, this would make sense, as I recall some of my band friends emotionally distancing themselves from the band program after we failed to make finals. The process may have repeated multiple times over my high school years, with decreased band cohesion leading to worse performances, and failures at state competitions leading to the band further falling apart. Perhaps my band would not have drifted apart as much if we had done well at performances. The band may have bonded better after a successful performance, which could boost future performances as well. It is true, on some level, that teamwork makes the dream work. However, based on the research, I would also argue that when the dream works, the team works.

 

References

Grieve, F. G., Whelan, J. P., & Meyers, A. W. (2000). An Experimental Examination of the Cohesion-Performance Relationship in an Interactive Team Sport. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 12(2), 219-235. doi:10.1080/10413200008404224

Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (2017). Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. Los Angeles: SAGE.

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06
Oct 15

Penn State’s THON

I have been a part of several different organizations in my life: youth groups, a sorority, volunteer organizations, but none have had as positive an impact on my life as being a member of Penn State’s IFC/PHC Dance MaraTHON (THON) and the Dancer Relations committee. This group operated more like the team dynamic discussed in our textbook rather than the organization dynamic. The committees are assembled and operate under the four basic aspects of teams: cohesion, team confidence, communication patterns, and group goal setting (Schneider, Gruman, Coutts, p. 115). The designated purpose of the Dancer Relations committee is to be educated on both psychological aspects and first aid aspects to aid a dancer through 46 hours of no sitting or sleeping. Committees are selected after rounds of interviews and discussions by overall captains. When teams are properly assembled and multiple aspects are taken into account to form the teams, they will work seamlessly together and the positive outcomes will be overwhelming.

Cohesion is an extremely important part of these committees and the success of THON weekend depends on each and every committee member. Cohesion is the first focus once the committees are selected; members are encouraged to go out to lunch, dinner, coffee, etc. to get to know each other as soon as possible. In fact, the night that we find out our committees group chats, Facebook groups, and Google docs of questions and answers are formed to get the ball rolling on getting to know each other. Cohesion is defined by the ability of a team to be united towards the objectives and/or satisfaction of member effective needs (Schneider et al., p. 116). Committees are especially designed for cohesion by picking and choosing which individuals are placed with which captain based on their personalities and the other selected committee members. The captain holds a democratic leadership in most aspects, asking for everyone’s opinions for decision-making. The affectivity (emotional state) of the group is beyond positive, as well as instrumental nature of cohesion (goals and objectives) that results in strong social and task cohesion (p. 117). We became an extremely close group of friends and some of my best friends now, I met through that committee, my attitudes show that the group had strong integration-social and integration-task.

Team confidence is the next important aspect of a successful team. Every member of my committee was bursting with their own self-confidence, which meant that our talents and efforts were pushed to the maximum. Because of this our self-efficacy was strong, and we know that we could do our duties under pressure come THON weekend. As a mail call committee we had the special task of handing out mail two times during the weekend, including letters and packages. This was a large task but we had collective efficacy, the belief that we could organize and execute the mail calls (p. 121-122).

Of course, communication is vital for a group of 38 people who are trying to have weekly meetings. Like I mentioned before, we had immediate communication when we found out what committee we were a part of. Today, social networks and technology play a large role in group communication, making it easier than ever to know about events and plan in advance. Our communication is mainly to relay orientation messages for planning strategy and technique and stimulation messages that motivate and energize the team (p. 126). Our emails would be used to communicate meeting times, meeting minutes, events, GoogleDocs, and motivational quotes and cartoons. Our group chats were to plan to hang out, quick (and immediate) reminders for meetings, and just to talk throughout the day. For THON weekend we made a phone tree for shifts so that we could insure that everybody was awake and ready to leave 45 minutes prior to the shift.

Finally, group goal setting was an extremely important aspect of our philanthropic committee. We outcome goals, in relation to teams is competitive in nature, was not only beating the grand total of money raised the previous year but also each Dancer Relations committee is assigned to one of four colors. These colors denote another “team” atmosphere. The teams competed in competitions leading up to THON weekend and at THON there were mini-competitions that committee members could participate in with their dancers. This encourages us to remain active and involved in not only our peers but also by helping the dancers during their sleepless and sit-less weekend. Our process goals are worked towards all year leading up to the event, we are given multiple first aid training workshops as well as tests to insure that all volunteers are prepared. We are also given psychological advice and training on how to deal with an individual who is severely sleep deprived and physically and emotionally weak. Performance goals aren’t really a factor in this setting (p. 128-129).

Our committee did follow Tuckman’s developmental stages of a group. There is very little forming state because, although we do not know each other, we are instantly drawn to each other and trust each other. This is most likely due to the nature of our volunteering. In the storming stage, strong personalities are identified and group rules and expectations are communicated at the first official meeting. Eventually we are all given our own leadership positions, personally I was named social chair during the norming state. Our performing stage was THON weekend, and the success of guiding our dancers through the tough but exciting weekend (Tuckman, 1965). Unfortunately, we did have to adjourn when THON weekend was over (Tuckman & Jensen, 1977), but these people have become my best friends. I still talk to a lot of them every week. By coming together because of passion, dedication, and desire to help others and the fight against pediatric cancer, Penn State’s THON community is able to build successful teams that operate positively and cohesively. These attributes insured that THON weekend would be pulled off without a hitch.

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References

Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., and Coutts, L. M. (Eds.) (2012). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. ISBN 978-1412976381

Tuckman, B. (1965). Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychological Bulletin, 63 (6). 384–399. doi:10.1037/h0022100

Tuckman, B. & Jensen, M.A. (1977). Stages of Small-Group Development Revisited. Group Organization Management, 2. 419-427.

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13
Oct 14

A Team in Need

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I am a volleyball coach for a club team on the central coast of California. The season is about to start and I am always looking for ways to improve my coaching. As I read the chapters on teams and organizations I realized that are solutions to some problems I have had with teams in the past. One such problem is cohesion. Cohesion is defined as the tendency for a group to stick together (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2012, pg 116). There have been two types of cohesion identified, task and social cohesion (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2012, pg 117). Task cohesion is the ability for a group to want to reach a goal and social cohesion is friendships (Schneider, Gruman & Coutts, 2012, pg 116).
It has been my experience that not all high-school aged girls get along. When those girls end up on the same sports teams, bad things can happen, such as very low social cohesion. One thing I see a lot of when this happens is relational aggression. Relational aggression includes social exclusion, friendship withdrawal threats (e.g., “I won’t be your friend unless…”), giving the silent treatment and spreading malicious secrets, lies or gossip (Ostrov, 2013). As one can imagine, this can be particularly harmful to the team’s social cohesion. I was also not very knowledgeable about how to fix these problems until recently.
From the reading, I know understand that the antecedents of cohesion must be present in order create unity. These include role clarity, role acceptance, and role performance. Role clarity is the extent ones role is clearly defined (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2012, pg 119). Role acceptance is the degree to which the person agrees to comply with their role (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2012, pg 119). While role performance is how well the person actually fulfills their role (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2012, pg 119). These increase task unity and social cohesion (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2012, pg 119) and were something I have not always done. With this in mind, I tried to make my team better.
So now, at the beginning of each week I sit down with each of the girls and have a conversation. I ask them questions about their role to make sure they understand what it is they are supposed to do (role clarity). We then move on to role acceptance. I ask them if they accept the role I have given them. We talk about how happy the girl is with their role. If they are not happy, I give them a list of things they need to do in order to gain the role they want. For example, if a girl wants to be hitter and her current role is defensive in nature, I could tell her she needs to perfect her hitting approach before she gains the role she wants. Next, we would move on to role performance. This is a discussion about why each girl is (or is not) playing. If they are not playing, I give them the statistics they need to improve on to play. Last, I ask the girls if they need to speak to me about any of the other girls. I let them know that any social problems cannot affect the team and must be dealt with through me. Any violation of this policy will result in disciplinary action.
I, as the coach, also set the social norms for the team. My job is to coach and critique, the player’s jobs are to be positive no matter what, especially to eachother. I strictly uphold these rules and reinforce them daily. These weekly talks have curtailed the major problems with social cohesion.
I was a little surprised how well they have worked, although I shouldn’t be. These things have been researched and my opinion or intuition is secondary. It makes me excited to try and incorporate more research into my coaching. I want to continue to use science to solve problems. This is being an applied social psychologist. I eagerly read sports psychology articles and social psychology texts.

References

Ostrov, J. (2013). The development of relational aggression. American Psychological Association. Retrieved from:
http://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2013/07-08/relational-aggression.aspx

Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., and Coutts, L. M. (2012). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

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