9- Cohesion In Sport Flashcards
Cohesion
Desire of group members to achieve their goals
■ Forces acting to keep members within the group/ integrated and focussed
■ This can lead to success or can come from success
■ Can be task or social
Cohesion
Task Social
Results based Working together
Outcome based Interaction
Interaction or co-action
In some sports success comes from people all pulling together. -Everyone completes the task at the same time but separately. This is known as Co-action
-E.g. a Rowing team pulling together
-In other tasks success depends on everyone completing different roles but having to
integrate them all together. This is known as Interaction
-E.g most team sports like netball, football etc
Carrons Antecendents-
The factors that may affect cohesion
Environment factors: group size, age, geography, contractual obligations.
■ Personal factors: group similarity, gender, aspirations/satisfaction.
■ Team factors: ability, stability, desire for success, shared experiences.
■ Leadership factors: leader style, leader–team relationship.
Environment Factors and Personal Factors
Environment Factors
■ Age, geography, contractual obligations
■ Time spent as a group
■ Size of the group- big equals social loafing and the Ringleman effect
Personal Factors
■ Do the group align in terms of aspirations, work ethic, opinions and values,
happiness etc
Leadership and Team Factors
Leadership Factors
■ Leadership style shown by the captain or coach (autocratic, democratic, laissez
faire)
Team Factors
■ More success = more cohesion
■ More time together greater cohesion
■ If a team is threatened then they can bind together
Task and Social Cohesion
Task Cohesion
- Individuals working together to achieve an end result
- Allows members to make their own contribution
Social cohesion
- Allows support and trust to develop
- Individuals relating to each other to interact in the group
Task and Social Cohesion
- A team needs both social and task cohesion if possible
- Social cohesion can however form cliques and be a negative aspect
- Task cohesion can override the problems of poor social cohesion
- A team can perform very well without the need for social cohesion
- Task cohesion provides high levels of motivation
Influences on cohesion
- past success
- Communication
- sharing common goals
- unequal pay or rewards
- personality
- threats to the team
- type of sport
- size of group
Group cohesion is caused by
- poor strategies
- lack of communication
- bad timing
- poor tactics
Steiners Model
■ Actual Productivity- The performance of the team, the result: a win
■ Potential Productivity- Affected by skills and ability
■ Faulty Processes- things that go wrong. Not listening to a coach, misunderstood
patterns/ roles, motivation
Social loafing
■ Individual loss of motivation in a team player due to a lack of performance
identification when individual efforts are not recognised
■ Social loafers take the easy option and make limited contribution to the cause you
can spot lazy players
Causes of social loafing and how to prevent it
■ Causes
■ Low confidence, negative attitude, poor leadership, no recognition of previous
performances, failure to understand a role, lack of fitness,
- statistics
- highlights individual roles
- offer rewards
- set goals
- highlight individual performance
The Ringleman affect
■ When group performance decreases with group size
■ A study of ‘tug of war’ found that a team of eight did not pull eight times as hard as
an individual.
Are winning teams cohesive?
■ Social cohesion helps working together.
■ Successful teams display high task cohesion.
■ Cohesive groups usually successful.
■ Winning teams may not need social cohesion if committed to task,
task cohesion is enough.
■ Task cohesion more important, can over-ride social cohesion.
■ Success follows when task and social cohesion are high.
■ Other factors promote success, not just cohesion.
