Imagine that
Cristiano Ronaldo is in your football team. Wow! That will surely be some
advantage. Such great player could single hand change the course of your
team in any competition. He is a match winner anytime, any day. So managers tend
to build their team tactics around such player and get other players to
compliment his effort.
The job of a
team manager gets even easier when he has a team of extraordinary players. The
manager of such team as Barcelona may as well go to sleep and be rest assured
that his team will do well. My wife once said to me, “Barcelona doesn’t need a
team manager. Anyone can stand at the team’s sideline and still get the needed
results.”
Well that
may be her opinion, but we all know that not many team can be like Barcelona
and not many club can boast of such extraordinary player as Cristiano Ronaldo.
Sometime, a team manager may have to make due with a crop of average players,
yet the club expect him to compete favorably against top flight teams in the
league.
If you are
the team manager, what will you do? Will you decide to go defensive, trying to
contain the opponent’s rampage all through the duration of each game. There’s
nothing more frustrating and emotionally exhausting as that.
But managers
like Arsene Wenger has proved over time that it is possible to build an
extraordinary team with a crop of average players.
In managing
Arsenal of England, Wenger has been known to have always recruited inexperience
players fron feeder teams and bench warmers in other clubs; then turned them
into extraordinary team that compete with the likes of Real Madrid, Chelsea,
PSG, Man City in the UEFA champions league. How doe he achieve this fit?
First,
football is a team sport and Wenger is one manager who is against the singling
out of an individual player as the best. He has vehemently criticized awards
like FIFA Ballon d’Or. Wenger said, “Individuality in a team sport is a bunch
of crap.” A club with many great players may not win if the players doesn’t fit
together to form a formidable team.
There are
four factors that contributes immensely to the building of an extraordinary
team, even with average players.
Team
Work: The primary
job of a manger is to form a balanced team by selecting players with
complimentary skills who are committed to the team’s approach and set
performance standards.
Teamwork is
how a team decides to approach a game with each player committed to
complimenting and supporting one another through out the duration of the game.
In building
an enduring teamwork, an individual player’s excessive expressions or playing
to the gallery is discouraged. Rather the manager tries to get the players to
perfect tactical moves as well as response to opponent’s style of play.
Teamwork is the foundation of building an extraordinary team.
Team
Norm: Team norm is a
standard of conduct shared by team members that guides their behavior. Norms
aren’t formally written guideline, they are informal standards which a manager
should identify key values and clarify each player with the expectations of the
team.
In a high
competitive team, norms are consistent with working together with supportive
standards that focus on team goal. A well imbibed norms causes each player to
want to go the extra mile (do extra work) for the sake of the team goal.
Team
Cohesiveness: Team cohesiveness is the extent to which a team
players are attracted to the team and motivated to remain part of it.
Team
cohesiveness is built by creating social avenues that promote players frequent
interactions. This will cause the players to develop common attitude and goal
as well as enjoy being together.
Coach Tony
Dicicco attributed the success of the U.S. women’s World cup soccer team and
the gold medal-winning U.S. Women’s Olympic soccer team to the cohesiveness
that comes from shared values: “The players placed high value on fitness,
intensity in training, individual respect and respect for the group, both on
and off the field.” Dicicco concluded.
Team
Spirit: Team Spirit
is the oneness of mind and purpose. It is the outcome of a well established
teamwork, team norm, and team cohesiveness that in-build in the team a winning mentality and an absolute believe in the composite players as a unit.
This is what
the Scriptures has to say about team spirit: “And the Lord said, behold, the
people is one, and they have all one language, and this they begin to do, and
now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.” Gen 11:6.
At this
point, it doesn’t matter if the players are average or not, the team spirit
causes them to do the extraordinary. With such team spirit nothing shall be
impossible for the team.
Tags:
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