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When people come together, more incredible things happen. In any organization, working together with a common goal and bound together by the team's vision results in good outcomes. For any team’s best product to be achieved, there is always the need to have strong cooperation between the teammates. Given this, a coach may group his juniors in groups or, in other words, boats. There are ways of categorizing these members, but most coaches order them in terms of the 'more talented' group and the 'less talented group.' (Baldwin et. al., 2013). However, even with such groups, the group's success with more talented individuals is not guaranteed, and less performance of the boat with less gifted individuals is also not guaranteed.

This paper takes a more in-depth insight into possible reasons as to why a team of more equipped individuals may underperform and possible reasons as to why a boat with less qualified individuals may outshine that with more talented individuals. It also focuses on a case study where coach Preczewski chose two teams, and the team with less gifted individuals exceeded that with more talented persons. It will also focus on selecting the right team members and the possible reasons for a boat to succeed.

Features That Can Make a Boat Sink

Even with choosing a team with top-notch individuals, it is never guaranteed that they will work together and give the optimum results. Several interacting factors may jeopardize the synergy of the boat. One of the reasons is the lack of self-awareness of the members. Each of the members ought to be aware of his/her strengths in the team. Each member needs to know the goal of the group so that each member works toward that. So even with a boat consisting of more talented persons and they lack self-awareness, there are chances that the whole ship will eventually capsize.

Lack of cooperation may capsize a team of talented individuals even with the group consisting of highly qualified individuals. The ability to work together towards achieving a common goal is very crucial in every teamwork exercise. When they decide to do something, they do all of them wholeheartedly and in oneness. (McShane & Glinow, 2017). A team of talented individuals without synergy between them eventually ends up too low performance than expected. Another reason that may make a team of gifted teams capsize is that they are the best compared to the group with low-talent individuals. They will not have that challenge of working extra more rigid to avoid being outshined by the less talented team.

Reasons for the Success of Less Talented Teams.

In some instances, the low regarded teams or the teams with members with less talent occasionally tend to be stronger than the teams with members who are exemplary talented. A good example of such an instance is the 2001-2002 Army Crew Team JV boat, where the bottom eight rowers repeatedly won over the Varsity boat. One of the factors that lead to this account is that the members of the lower team had little or no pressure and prestige. This helps the members of the team not to develop egos that limit them from cooperating with other team members. Secondly, being the lower team and having the zeal to prove themselves by beating the Varsity team also helped them unite and work together to accomplish their goal. Another reason for this account is the lack of cooperation by the Varsity team, which was a result of ego by most of the individuals in the team, despite the members being in better physical conditions and having a higher experience (Larson et al., 2018). The Varsity team also had little or nothing to gain in the competition and were only there to extend their winning tally. This may have contributed much to their poor performance. Poor leadership and communication barriers in the Varsity team also played a role in their frequent defeats. This is because the individuals in the team have an exemplary performance individually and may not listen or take instruction from their fellow teammates to prove that they are outstanding.

Choices Made by Coach Preczewski.

I would not go for the method that the coach used to allocate lowers to the team. This is because he mainly considered the team members' individual performance and ignored other important aspects of a team member, such as cooperation standards of the members (Heinz et al., 2016).

If I were to set up the teams, I would have considered the team members' cooperation rather than their individual performance. As an experiment to choose the team members, I would look for the best combination of individuals with the best cooperation (Avilés-González et al., 2016). To come up with the Varsity team, I would let the teams obtained after coming up with team members who best work as one play against each other throughout the season and make the winning team the Varsity team. I would also set fair conditions for both teams throughout the tournament to determine the Varsity team. This method will help come up with the strongest team where the team members understand each other and effectively work together in unity as a team. The team obtained using this method will not only be very strong but will most likely be consistent in their performance.

Situations where the Best team is not the Best

Other than the example of the army, other examples portray the best boat of individuals is not always the best team, which means that at the time, the team that seems to be less talented end up performing better than the team that is constituted of more talented team members. A good example is that of a team student in a university whereby one team is comprised of students who are perceived to be the cream of the class and another perceived to be average students in the study. At some point, there is the group's likelihood with students who are perceived to be of average performance working more and hence performing better than the group of students who are perceived to be the bright students. (Holt, 2016). This happens mostly because the bright student’s view that they are the best, so there is no more incredible urge to do more. The team with average student’s works extra harder to outshine the bright students, and at the end of it, all the best team is the one that does not seem to be the best.

Another example is of management of firms. Assuming one of the companies is bigger than the other. One company has a larger scale of operation than the other, but the profit margins are different. The company with a smaller scale of operations is making more profit than the one with a larger operations scale. This suggests that the smaller firm's management team is working in a better way compared to the group of the big firm.

The right team Members

In every team establishment, it wise to have the right people to perform the task and not the best people. As discussed in the above question, the best team is not always the best. (Graham,2016). The goal is not to have the people who seem to be the best but the ones who are there to spearhead the team's purpose.

Important Variables for the Success of a Team.

A team's performance is subject to several different elements that the team has in common. The first element or variable is commitment. The team members' commitment to the team's values, aims, and goals play a major role in the team's success. If the members are committed to the team, they are always ready to sacrifice their individual needs and differences aside for the team's success. The second variable is communication (Zare et al., 2016). Every member of the team is given a chance to express themselves. It promotes unity in the team and helps bring up new ideas to the team, which helps it succeed. The third variable is cooperation. The success of a team greatly depends on the extent of interdependence than individual performance. Conflict management also plays an important role in the success of a team. Team members will likely have their differences from time to time. The manner in which these differences are handled is key to the progress of the team. Other important variables for the success of a team are change management, connections, and individual contributions of the team members.

Conclusion.

As indicated previously, we have proved that the success of a team is more determined by how the members work together as a team than the individual performance of the members. As the leader of any team, it is very key to observe every member's degree of cooperation. We have also seen that other key factors play different roles to ensure that a team is successful.

Reference.

Avilés-González, J., Smith, N. R., & Sawhney, R. (2016). Decision Making Method to Select Team Members Applying Personnel Behavior Based Lean Model. Industrial Engineering & Management Systems, 15(3), 215–223.

Baldwin, T., Bommer, B., & Rubin, R. Managing Organizational Behavior: What Great Managers Know and Do (Irwin Management).

Graham, C. M., Daniel, H., & Doore, B. (2016). Millennial Teamwork and Technical Proficiency's Impact on Virtual Team Effectiveness: Implications for Business Educators and Leaders. International Journal of e-Collaboration (IJeC), 12(3), 34-50.

Holt, D. (2016). Branding in the age of social media. Harvard business review, 94(3), 40-50

Heinz, A., Coppock, P., Corey, C., Crabbe, J., Penn, J., Tangirala, S., Roberts, L., Thomas, M., & Wang, C. (2016). Eureka! May 2016.

Larson, E. V, Eaton, D., Linick, M. E., Peters, J. E., Schaefer, A. G., Walters, K., Young, S., Massey, H. G., & Ziegler, M. D. (2018). Defense planning in a time of conflict: a comparative analysis of the 2001-2014 quadrennial defense reviews, and implications for the Army. RAND ARROYO CENTER SANTA MONICA CA SANTA MONICA United States.

McShane, S., & Glinow, M. A. V. (2017). Organizational behavior. McGraw-Hill Education.

Zare, M. B., Mirjalili, A., & Mirabi, M. (2016). Ranking and evaluating the factors affecting the success of management team in construction projects. Journal of Fundamental and Applied Sciences, 8(3), 614–630.