Since most people would agree that being part of an athletic
team at the intercollegiate level is a form of “work,” my teammates, coaching
staff and I had a substantial ongoing conflict with one particular individual
during my sophomore and junior year. For the sake of this post, we’ll call him
Fred.
Fred was a sophomore from Whales when I started my freshman
season. He had tons of potential as a tennis player, but never seemed to
utilize his incredible talents. Yet, that does not define a good teammate. All
through my first year, Fred loved showing the freshman the ropes, being a good
student in the classroom, and most of the time, showed resiliency both in
practice and during dual matches.
Fred was always doing things that were a little unorthodox
such as taking other teammates’ practice gear without permission, spitting on
the courts when he was angry at his performance (which is very frowned upon in
the US), and goofing off during community service and public events. These were
all scenarios in which his actions were unacceptable, but not terrible in the
whole scheme of things. We thought it was simply because of his different
cultural upbringing in Whales.
It was during my sophomore and junior season’s where his
actions started to change and needed to be addressed. Over the summer going
into my sophomore year, Fred started to really utilize his talents and began to
see some serious results. By the time the season started, he had earned himself
a top 30 singles and doubles ranking. Unfortunately for us, his success seemed
to have changed him.
On top of his continuing quirks from my freshman year, he
was showing up late for practice, doing his own warm up instead of warming up
with the team, getting in constant verbal conflicts with the coaches and
getting in constant verbal and an occasional physical conflicts with my
teammates and I. It was at this point, my coaching staff and fellow teammates
needed to control this growing situation.
In my opinion, and in the opinion of many of my teammates as
well, the origin of our conflicts with Fred arose because of Fred’s stubborn
mindset of doing things his way and on his clock. He really seemed to not care
at all whatever needed to be done to help him be victorious, which as a result,
would help us. By helping himself, he was helping the team, and after all,
tennis is viewed as an individual sport. If you win your individual match, you
do your part for the team.
Once everyone became fully aware of Fred’s actions, two
different things started to happen. First, my teammates and I discussed this
issue privately without Fred present. We wanted to make sure that everyone was
on the same page, and we all felt the same way about Fred. Second, the rest of
the team, including myself, tried to get his side of the story individually. We
loved having Fred on the team (at leas the Fred we knew before), so we wanted
to the do the best we could to understand where he was coming from and then
paint him a picture of how we viewed his actions.
Fed seemed like a reasonable and understanding guy. After we
sat down with him for the first time, he seemed to take it well, like he understood
where he went wrong and was more than willing to change. This however, became
an ongoing routine as nothing seemed to change and these meetings became more
and more pointless. Finally, one day at practice, Fred crossed the line. Long
story short, he basically called one of our coaches dumb and he was
indefinitely kicked off the team. As hard as it was to let one of our best
players go, it was time for him to learn his lesson and our culture to get back
to the way it was supposed to be.
Ultimately, Fred humbly apologized to the coaching staff and
the team a couple weeks later and he was immediately reinstated. We saw
excellent results for the first few weeks, but over time, Fred slipped back
into his old ways and unfortunately, he damaged a lot of relationships with the
guys on the team because of it.
Looking back at how we handled the situation, I thought we
handled it almost perfectly. We basically executed Argyris and Schon’s Model I
of interpersonal behavior to the exact steps as shown in Reframing Organizations. To be honest, I would have liked to have
seen more drastic measures be taken earlier to really show Fred how his actions
were unacceptable. Just because Fred was so successful on the court, did not
give him the right to be treated differently than everybody else. Even if we
changed our ways and acted more harshly towards Fred, I’m positive the
situation would have ended up the same way in the long run and I’m sure my
teammates would agree with me.
Whales? Did you mean Wales?
ReplyDeleteI wonder how much you know about tennis from the 1970s and early 1980s. For a while Jimmy Connors was #1. A bit later John McEnroe was #1. They were both quite obnoxious on the court. And though I don't really know that, I would expect that they were quite obnoxious in their personal lives as well. So I wonder if there is a lingering thought among some in the tennis world that being a brat and playing good tennis goes hand in hand.
Regarding Ben, a question for you is whether he was a loner outside of tennis and if you have any way to know that. I gather he was an international student. Sometimes you can think of having a cohort of friends as a way to normalize behavior that might tend to be eccentric. If Ben didn't have that in his social environment, his wort tendencies might have been amplified.
The other part of the story that you really should comment on is the role of the coaches in this. Was Ben's poor behavior invisible to them? Or were they aware of it and let it slide because it wasn't too bad?
There is a tendency to let situations like this fester, because dealing with it is unpleasant. You argued that your teammates managed this pretty well, but I wonder if you should have had it out with Ben much earlier. The evidence wouldn't have been as clear cut then, but if he took the hint maybe some of the bad behavior could have been prevented.
Ego plays an enormous part in both an individual player's performance, and the overall team dynamic. In the case, of Fred it seems that his ego was both a positive and a negative for your team. His confidence, coupled with his ability, allowed him to perform at a high-level on the court. But off the court, it had a clear negative impact on your team.
ReplyDeleteOne example where we see this type of organizational dynamic occur often is in the NFL. To become a professional football player you have to have world-class athletic abilities, and many players recognize their own ability. This can cause players to feel that they are above the team, or the authority of the team, and act on their own accord. This can be parasitic as a team, as the focus drifts from the goals of the organization, and more towards handling that star athlete's ego. Most recently this was shown by Odell Beckham Jr. in the beginning weeks of the NFL season.
I think the way you and your teammates handled the conflict was productive, and at that point the only person left to work out the issue was Fred himself. It's clear that the only way to show that he was a part of a team, and that the team comes first, is to show him that he can be removed from the squad, and life goes on. After that was done I am sure he realized his wrongdoing.