The very best of you

Kat,

I like the clip. A couple of things stand out for me. The coach builds a positive link between himself and the player, getting the player to give extra effort for the coach, not the team, not himself. It is also interesting that some leadership philosophies say that giving team members as much info as possible is the way to go, yet here we see that when you take away the players points of reference, by blindfolding him, that he loses the information that he would otherwise use to decide if it is ok to give up, and, consequently, goes further than he otherwise would have. I also noticed that as the player progressed down the field, he received no support from the rest of his team.

This differs slightly from an experience I had in a fencing competition. We had gone to the competition as a team, there were 4 or 6 of us, I can't remember for sure. Anyway, in fencing competitions, everyone starts out roughly equal, the whole group of competitors is divided into small groups, called pools. Everyone in these pools fights everyone else in their pool. The results from those fights are then analysed and the organisers rank everyone. After that, the 1st seed has a 15 point elimination fight with the 64th seed, the 2nd with the 63rd and so on. Anyway, in this particular competition, I had done quite well in the pools, and was in a fight with a chap who was better than me, but did not completely outclass me. The thing that helped me the most in that fight was the support that the other team members gave me each time I won or lost a point. I can honestly say that I fenced better in that match, because of the team support, than I otherwise would have if I had been a solo entrant. I still lost, but only by one point.

The moral there being, I guess, that no matter how much you think you can give, that there is always more there, and that it is not only leaders that can get that out of you, but also support from those around you in your team as well.

Colin.