Sport Development In Action

Personal Performance

Each member of the group had different skills and attributes to contribute in the planning and performing of the 24 hour challenge. My therorictrical role was a Chairperson.  As a chair I should "initially focus on the groups objectives, inspire confidence, listen to others, lead a team without being an official leader and not be the most intelligent member on the team but gain loyalty". Lecture 2 (2009). Reminiscing the 24 hour challenge I did achieve some of the factors of my team type. I felt that during most of the 24 hour challenge I focused on the groups objectives and listened to others, especially in the tasks such as creative thinking as I reported back to the group shared my ideas and objectives and expanded on them by using other team member's advice. In doing so the song part of the challenge was much more effective than the paired effort.

       In at least one part of the 24 hour challenge everybody got the chance to lead the team into an event. Even thou I was not the official leader of the team in tasks such as the team song and the mass aerobics I was the leader in the planning and preparation as I prepared the session and song mainly by myself. I feel the biggest contribution I gave to the team was inspiring confidence. "Confidence can enable an individual to me more focused on a situation and achieve enjoyment or success." Hays, K. (2007). From analyzing my team type after the challenge it was realised that Belbins. (2001) team role model is a valid piece of research because I did use the predictive theories he believes.

      When fatigue kicked in and team morale was low I feel I made a large contribution into motivation and confidence boosting through praise and encouragement. I feel this especially helped the ghost dancing task as I tried to encourage the group of out ability to be a winning team with everyone's efforts.

I worked well with all members of the team for the majority of the challenge and feel happy that I will continue to do this throughout the smashball strategy. There were alot of different personalities in the group and I adapted the way I approached each task depending who I was working with.

After my performance in the 24 hour challenge there were both positive and negative situations that I brought to the group. My planning and performing was both a positive and negative to the group as I believe I have good skills and attributes when it comes to contributing to planning and I feel it was recognised by the group.  However when it came to putting that plan to action I was a weak link as my confidence and communications skills are not as strong as some members of the group. I knew this going into the challenge and realised I had to change this if I was going to succeed in the 24 hour challenge. To prevent me from being a weak link I entered myself into challenges I would normally opt out of and from the success of the challenges brought about a positive effect on my confidence and communication. I feel the longer the challenge went on the less of a weak link I became.

Final Review of the team

In conclusion of the team performance everybody in the team performed well and it turned out to be a very good performance on a whole. As each member brought different skills and attributes to the group there were motivators, supportive members and two distinct leaders. The variation is what brought success to the group and brought us to 4th place at the end. I hope that the team will carry on as they did in the 24 hour challenge correcting our mistakes and delivering a successful smashball strategy.

Reflective Log

There was alot of experiences during the 24 hour challenge that helped with my development as an individual as well as working with a team. The 24 hour challenge is a very successful learning curve and involved alot of tasks that made me put more critical thinking to practice. The three main experiences that learnt from were:

Mass aerobics – This session was led by myself and another member of the group. There was sufficient time to research and practice the session so it could be planned well. As the member I was working with was on another challenge I had to do the research and learning myself. I used past experiences to help plan a 2 minute session. Bodycombat form of aerobics was used. The session was planned on paper and then taught to the other member. Initially I was meant to deliver the session but because my partner was not here for the planning session he decided to put in last minute alterations and lead the session himself with me providing the demonstrations. This led to the session being less successful as there wasn’t a full understanding between both members of the team. From this session I have learnt that I should stick to my iniative and deliver the session that was planned.

Creative Session – This challenge was not pre planned as it was the first task in the challenge and the team had not set down goals, aims and objectives. This challenge I found was quite out of character for me as creative thinking is not my strong point, so I found this task to be a weak point in the challenge for me. However on the completion of this challenge I gained a confidence boost and formed my first bond with a member of the team. This challenge was an initial experience for me as I developed a better understanding of the importance of critical thinking and also to give everything a go.

The Song - This challenge was the last of the 24 hours and because of fatigue and frustration it became difficult to compose a song. As a group we could not focus and arguments occurred. I went away and composed a song for the group which in return received a lot of positive remarks from my peers. Unfortunately with no sound on the night the group had to use our superior singing voices and sing without the music. This was the a great finishing challenge as the team had finally reached the performing stage and I felt a boost in my self-esteem and confidence. I feel I got more out of the 24 hour challenge than a lot of people because I now feel I can just go ahead and apply myself to any ask and engage with anybody.

References

TUCKMAN, B. (1965). Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychological bulletin, 63, 384-399.

Adair's Team Model. (2004). The Adair Team Development Model. [ONLINE] (Updated 3rd November 2009) Available at    

BELBIN, M. (1993). Team Roles at Work Butterworth Heinemann. London.

Lecture Slides from Lecture 2.

HAYS, K. (2007). The role of confidence in world class sport performance [THESIS]. Sheffield Hallam University.

Adesso (1996) "Management would be easy ..... If it weren't for the people