A group I am currently a part of is an intramural basketball team. It is co-ed and is led by my RA. She organized the team, and as a result we don't all know each other. The group is extremely loosely organized, except during games, when it obviously needs to be tightly controlled. As a result, the teammates don't know many members and communication can be difficult (shouting "yo, 7, I'm open" isn't too effective). The task is very tightly coupled, because we all need to be on the same page during a game, and that doesn't bode well for a distributed group. We often lack cohesiveness and chemistry, which are essential for a successful team. The distribution is detrimental, but luckily hasn't prevented us from being successful so far. Hopefully a tighter grouping will emerge as we get to know each other through the season, because the tasks will always be tightly coupled and increasingly difficult.
We all share the same goal (winning), and we all work hard for it. We have the same internal representations, such as skills, work ethic, and cooperation, but varying amounts of it. All of these things are internally encoded and will hopefully be on display during games. Our individually learned representations need to come together to achieve our goal.
These are transformed through good communication and teamwork. We move towards our goal by working together to win. This can be coordinated by the captain or someone who chooses to act in a leadership role, but we usually have to be individually motivated. As in any sport, coordination is very important, which is why it's unfortunate that our team lacks overall cohesiveness.
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I think it would help improve cohesiveness if your team made some of the internal representations external instead. This can create a common ground for the team and create mutual awareness and understanding. For example, if you create external representations for the names of your team members, there can be a mutual understanding that "yo you" refers to a specific member.
ReplyDeleteI agree I think the main problem here is the lack of cohesiveness in your cognitive system. You could possibly lessen this by not only increasing your external representations but also by increasing the proximity of your group. Maybe you all could go out to dinner or grab lunch one day and really work to get to know one another. That way it would be easier to communicate once on the basketball court.
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