As my first season leading the Bishop Diego Girls Volleyball program nears its eventual end, I appreciate the opportunity this course has provided me each week to reflect on leadership within my program, especially among my players. Last week, our team made school history by winning their first playoff match since 1978, and we build on that momentum with another win last night to advance to the Quarterfinals of our division. While I have experienced these playoff moments of intense competition, the need for focus at the most important times, and the pressure to succeed, all of these feelings are new to my players. Traditionally, our girls basketball and soccer teams would have begun practicing last week, and many of our players would be involved with those sports. In their mind, they look at their calendars and can’t believe our season is still going. If I would have bet money on our season going this far based on some of the potential issues we’ve dealt with and continue to work through, my money wouldn’t have been on winning a playoff game, let alone two.
This week, our lesson covered the importance of leadership within a team. On the surface, leadership is an assumed function that is assigned to the coaching staff, and possibly one or two players on the team who earn a role as a Team Captain. In reality, leadership is the responsibility of everyone involved, both personally and within the group. As I wrote in our discussion forum this week, Roles within a Team was what stuck out to me the most, as it remains an area which I think can single-handedly disintegrate a team from the inside out.
According to our lesson, Group Roles “are group expectations associated with specific jobs or positions in the group. They can be both positive and negative. Roles can change as situations and groups change. Task roles deal with getting the task done and include initiating, information seeking, information sharing, summarizing, evaluating, and guiding. Relationship roles support relationships within the work group and include harmonizing, encouraging, and gatekeeping. Dysfunctional roles include dominating, blocking, attacking, and distracting.” (PSU, WC, L9, 2019). Within a high school team of young women, roles can change for a variety of reasons. Playing time, relationship status, friendship status, coach-to-player relationship, results, production, and effort are all keys to developing a role for players. For players who identify themselves with their place on the team as a starter, captain, “a star”, or “Senior”, their role is their main focus. Their role outweighs the results of the team, the coach’s decision-making, etc. These players would rather lose knowing that they were the best player on the team.
Early on in our season, which happened to be my first season at Bishop Diego, I could sense issues with roles on our team. Beginning in our Tryout Week, I set the stage early by letting everyone know that their performance last year, including the team they made and the position they held, would almost certainly change. I also made it clear that I wanted the best players and teammates, and the best skill players play, not upperclassmen regardless of ability. From that moment, the players who thought they were going to get their way were on notice, and those who saw the opportunity to take a position they believed they could fill were aggressive to play hard to earn a place on the team.
Once our tryouts were complete, we almost immediately had issues with positional changes and anticipated roles in the lineup. As someone who has coached this level for over ten seasons, I knew what we had to do next. I followed tryouts with group meetings with players, where we discussed role opportunities for the upcoming season. While these meetings can be uncomfortable, I thought our team did a nice job overall of being realistic with their skills and their abilities to positively impact the team. Next came the toughest part; acceptance of their role.
I find role acceptance to be the hardest part of a young, student-athlete’s career in sports. The initial acceptance of the role is the easiest part, but once they understand what their role means after living the role, unhappiness and dysfunction emerge. For example, I met with a player in the beginning of the season who was an impact player the year before. She believed she improved over the summer, and said she would help the team in whatever role she could serve. I asked that she be an emotional leader, and come in the game when we needed a defensive adjustment or a tough serve. She accepted the role, but did not know that she would come off the bench to replace a freshman, while she was a junior. With her social status in jeopardy, her displeasure grew as the weeks went by because the freshman, one of our best players, was not making mistakes, thus we did not need this player to come off the bench. When she asked me after a routine win against a league rival why she didn’t go in the game, I reminded her of her role, to which she replied, “I’m no longer happy with my role on this team.” She was one of four players who I met with throughout the season to discuss evolving roles to meet the team’s needs.
In our lesson, Northouse (2013) mentions there are two critical functions of leadership: helping the group accomplish its task (task function) and keeping the group maintained and functioning (maintenance function). With our players who struggled with their roles, I leaned on my leadership experience, as well as those of my coaching staff and unnamed captains on the team. With the task function (Northouse, 2013), our team had very little issues among our best 8 players. We were rolling through opponents we didn’t expect to win, and most of our success came as a surprise. The hardest part came from the maintenance function (Northouse, 2013), particularly with those who were not receiving the playing time they felt they deserved.
As our season continues, we are entering the Quarterfinals of our Playoff Division for the first time since 1978. While most of our community is ecstatic with the results we’ve achieved this season, those who are not accepting their roles are still not enjoying their membership on the team.
In an ad posted online by Nike in 2013, an image of Tiger Woods served as the background to a quote, “Winning takes care of everything.”(Nike, 2013). After this season, more than any other time, I am convinced that winning doesn’t take care of everything. It takes care of those who care about winning. Those who cannot accept their role can serve as the kryptonite to a successful team. Role understanding, acceptance, and continued Leadership Maintenance are all essential to sustaining a successful high school athletic program.
References:
Nike’s Tiger Woods ad draws critics. (2013, March 26). Retrieved from https://www.espn.com/golf/story/_/id/9100497/nike-winning-takes-care-everything-tiger-woods-ad-draws-critics.
Northouse, P. G. (2018). Leadership: theory and practice (8th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
Pennsylvania State University World Campus (2019). PSYCH 485 Lesson 9: Team Leadership. Retrieved from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2008237/modules/items/27074716
Congrats on your volleyball team’s success! Obviously, your team has the right people and a compelling purpose, both of which are enabling conditions of group effectiveness (Northouse, 2016). Your team members are competent, the team is unified and you are results-driven (Northouse, 2016).
You mentioned that maintenance was required since some team members felt they deserved additional play time. As coach, did you take remedial action to alleviate their concerns and help them feel like they were still part of the team (Northouse, 2016)? Also, how do you decide when to intercede and when to let the team work out their own internal issues? I imagine this must be a very tricky and delicate field to approach since sometimes the team needs work on their own interpersonal relationships. However, sometimes internal relational action is required from a leader in order to maintain the team and improved interpersonal relationships (Northouse, 2016).
References:
Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: theory and practice (7th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc