Unit 7 Final Assignment Paper and Powerpoint

Every athlete and sports team wants to emerge as the best side in any competition. Unfortunately, some superstar professional athletes get driven by the winner bias to an extent that they no longer care about the overall team success or the sports values. Such athletes want to win at any cost, even if it means using performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) to give them a competitive edge over their competitors. The greed for emerging winners in competitions, and the fortunes, notoriety, and fame that come with it have even driven some sports organizations and government to the point of masterminding doping schemes to give their athletes a competitive edge over their competitors. For instance, during the 2014 Sochi Olympics, Russia was accused and found guilty for having masterminding such a systematic doping scheme (Mannie, 2018). However, the usage of PEDs by the superstar professional athletes will always have a negative consequence, to the athletes’ health, their career, and the societal wellbeing and welfare. It goes against the sports’ spirit and values of professionalism, fair play, sportsmanship. Additionally, even if they are not caught, the guilty-conscience will eternally reproach them.

PEDs usage can also affect teamwork amongst athletes. Ideally, athletes use the drugs to enable them primarily achieve personal success and glory, whereas the overall team success is a secondary goal. Thus, ensuring a team agility and resonance becomes very hard. Thus, a safer, holistic, and ethical alternative to PEDs usage is the building of high-performance team-work. The building of high-performance teamwork is critical for an agile winning team. High-performance teams need talented, skillful athletes and trust-based cooperative behavior amongst its members to ensure team success. Such teams are based on communication, trust, and clear vision, and responsible, skilled, and motivated team-members. Additionally, ethical leadership is also critical for high-performance teams because it helps set clear legal and ethical goals, standards, roles, and principles for everyone to follow.

Teams are an integral part of the sports organization’s culture. Team-base structures are the only component that can ensure organizations transform into agile high-performers, especially under the contemporary sports environment that is common with fast transformations and complexities. High-performance teams, although not very common, can help any sports organizations achieve what would otherwise seem extra-ordinary and unachievable (Hakanen, Häkkinen, & Soudunsaari, 2015). Sports teams, when built under high-performance ideals rather than PEDs usage, would help its members deliver an extra-ordinarily excessive performance that could not be reasonably expected compared to its competitors. In sports competitions where teamwork is required, such as rugby, soccer and football, having the best individuals, high-end facilities, extraordinary coaches, and more resources does not guarantee success. However, it is only those teams that can optimally combine its members’ insights, experiences, and skills and transform them into a high-performance team that can be sure of success (Afterburner, 2020). High-performance teams differ from the working groups, because under the latter, every team member will care about the group’s success. Thus, ethical and successful leaders must strive to develop such teams rather than let athletes cheat the system.

References Afterburner. (2020). Building a High-Performance Team: Professional Sports and Your Business. Retrieved October 24, 2020, from Afterburner: https://www.afterburner.com/building-a-high-performance-team-professional-sports-and-your-business/ Hakanen, M., Häkkinen, M., & Soudunsaari, A. (2015). Trust In Building High-Performing Teams – Conceptual Approach. Electronic Journal of Business Ethics and Organization Studies (EJBO), 20(2). Mannie, K. (2018, June 12). PEDs in Sports: The Ongoing Fight. Retrieved October 24, 2020, from COACH & AD: https://coachad.com/articles/peds-in-sports-the-ongoing-fight/