Win as Much as Possible

    In class we did a game that was called "Win as much as Possible." With a name like that I felt like there was extra incentive to win and coming from a very competitive family my head was definitely in the game. Our strategy at the beginning of the game was foolproof. It was going great until one of the members of our team decided to stray from the rules we had set for our team, after she did that, there was a complete absence of trust and other members of the group started going against what we had originally planned as well. The Absence of Trust is Dysfunction #1 of a team. All it takes is one member of a team to do something and that can be really harmful to the other members who are trying to cooperate. For example in my family there are five daughters and I'm the youngest. So if one of my sisters did something like break curfew for example, or cheat on a test often times it led to my parents losing that trust in not just one of the girls but all of us. Unfortunately my sisters and I (as a team) had to work together to cover for each other and make sure that we were all on the same page to save each other from our parents losing trust in all of us as a whole. It's the same concept as a team, if there is a loss in trust it's hard to progress when energies are spent on rebuilding.

      A time that there has been major disfunction on a team was last year on my cheer squad. Freshman through junior year, our whole team had basically moved up together as a group from year to year. We had the same coach every year and we were all extremely close. Our senior year together, our coach was getting married and she decided to step down. We had a brand new coach last year and it was a major rebuilding year. This new coach was brand new to the entire program and she was a very strong personality. She was difficult to get along with and extremely stubborn, she wanted things her way and she did not want to reason with us and would never see things eye to eye. A lot of the girls wanted to quit and there was a total lack of commitment on the team. As captains Elann and I tried extra hard to unite the team by going to team lunches and meeting early for call time to go over the cheers and dances without our coach. At first it was a struggle but we got through the difficult stages of development until we reached performing. It was so good to finish out the season with all the girls at the beginning of the year through the end of the season!