Army Crew Behavioral Ethics

OVERVIEW

The case starts with selection on army crew members and how they perform. Colonel Stas Preczewki (Coach P) is the coach of the Army crew team for US military academy. He had several objectives as a coach. He had to select members of Varsity and Junior Varsity boats through series of objective test that measures speed, strength and coordination. The task does not end with selection but also training and motivation.

Its expected that Varsity boat perform better when compared to Junior Varsity as the top eight performers were placed in Varsity boat. The members were selected on the bases of ergometer test results and series of weight lifting results. They provided with objective and comparable measures of strength and endurance. The most valuable one next to individual tests is teamwork. The boat has to be synchronized and synergy will lead to success. The individual members have to perform as a team and not as an individual. They can neither over perform nor underperform than the other member, as it will lead to particular team's failure.

The members exhibited a higher average score than the previous years in the objective tests. The next task lies on selecting the members for Varsity and Junior Varsity boats. The members went through series of seat racing tests that exhibited not only individual strength but also team spirit. They were all determined to prove their best. After these challenging rounds of selection, the top eight in objective were qualifying in the seat racing with an exception of two. Coach P was happy to see a coinciding report and after detailed analysis he announced the teams. As expected, the first match proved that Varsity team is better than Junior Varsity team from their success. But Varsity team was not happy with their success margins. As the practice session started Varsity boat was underperforming and was losing several matches. This led to de-motivation if team members. They were under psychological pressure. Coach P tried intervening to solve the issue so that the best team performs well. He analyzed the team's reports and found that those members in Varsity boat were team disrupters and Junior Varsity did not have any virtually. Coach P arranged for a training session to strengthen their beliefs and attitudes and to keep them motivated. Junior varsity team welcomed these training. Lot of disruption was found inside Varsity team. They were individually strong but not as a team. There was a strong image created about the teams and now all the members preferred to be in Junior Varsity team or the winning team.

Coach P has to decide whether, to switch the boats, or individual members, or intervene to improve performances. The whole case carries the expectation of varsity boat very high which is not met.

CAUSES

As far as from Coach P side he lacked leadership, which caused rift between Varsity and Junior varsity teams. He had a high expectation out of Varsity members. He did not consider the psychological impacts while team selection. Rather he concentrated on individual physical efforts. Being aware of these traits also with a PhD in higher education and experience as a tenured professor in Department of Behavioral sciences and Leadership he failed to apply them as critical for evaluation. He has also failed to motivate the Varsity team and tried getting external help which again worsened the case. He should have created several emotional episodes so that the belief translates to behavior. He failed to create a positive emotion.

The Varsity boat is rather group of individuals than a team - "the whole less than sum of the parts" . They did not have a leader and they had several team disrupters. They did not trust each other and lacked team spirit. They were all individualistic. They initially started blaming their own team members (Fundamental attribution