Introduction
Cohesion, a unity or bond, is vital for harmony and success within a team. Cohesion is a multidimensional dynamic process. Recent sport research reiterates how complex the processes of cohesion are and the limited understanding of how exactly cohesion works, or doesn’t work, within a team, and how this impacts on performance; recent research emphasizes the importance of continued research into cohesion processes in practise (Eys et al., 2015; Gioldasis, Stavrou, Mitrotasios, & Psychountaki, 2016). In a parallel study to Hardy et al.’s (2005) study on the disadvantages, discussed in depth earlier in this thesis, 100% of athletes cited advantages to high cohesion (Hardy, Eys, & Carron, 2002).
The evidence demonstrated so far in this thesis is that athletes themselves perceive, as well as the more obvious and well cited benefits, multiple various costs to being part of a highly cohesive team. These costs occur at both the personal- individual’s perception of their own attraction to and involvement in the team- and the group level- perceptions of the team as a unit. There are a variety of costs for both high task cohesion and high social cohesion. Athletes perceive similar costs. Many of the costs are inter-related.
However, particularly unclear is the level and direction of impacts of the costs: again this demonstrates the complexity of cohesion phenomena. Some of the costs are themselves further complex processes such as communication issues. The number and variety of costs reported from Study 1 and previous research is high. Salient to be explored now is how significant each of these costs are and which are the most
significant. Strategies can then be offered to eliminate or minimise these potential costs. This chapter presents both Study 2 and Study 3. Both these studies will build on the results of Study 1 and answer the key questions from the following that are applicable to each participant’s experiences of the potential costs of high team cohesion in sport teams:
What are the influencing factors? How are the costs experienced and when/where/who with do they manifest themselves?
Which of these costs are significant and how significant are they? Are there buffers against the costs?
What strategies can be developed to minimise the most significant costs and create the most beneficial and productive team environment?
Study 1 identified that there was a high number and variety of potential costs
experienced by athletes as is evidenced in the small body of research literature on the disadvantages of high cohesion in sport and other teams. Study 1, and previous research literature, demonstrated that the personal level cost of being part of a highly task
cohesive team perceived pressures (pressure to perform and pressure to conform) was a very strong disadvantage or cost. This category has tangents with the group level category of cost, rigid demands and methods. Interestingly, participants reported perceived pressures as a personal level cost and rigid demands and methods as a group level cost. Compromised wellbeing, incorporating identity issues, challenging
transitions and maintaining balance, was a new category of cost established in Study 1 which is strongly related to both these former categories. This category is perceived as a personal level cost but will also impact at the group level. Study 1 has shown that while different disadvantages of high team cohesion can be categorised and separately
analysed, some of the most important costs interact producing potential for multiple negative consequences.
Narrative theory will provide a framework for Study 2 and Study 3. It will give a lens through which two different personal stories of the costs of high team cohesion can be examined. This will allow exploration and interactive analysis of the identified costs as experienced by athletes themselves. Life history interviews with one different particular participant for each study will develop understanding of which of the costs from Study 1 are most significant and what the influencing factors are in their occurrence
Study 2 and Study 3 are not comparative but seek to provide an in-depth approach covering a variety of factors. The aim is that each study separately, as well as any significant similarities and differences between the studies, will draw out important new knowledge.
The participant for Study 2 is a retired professional motor sport co-driver who worked with large teams. The participant for Study 3 is a current high performing driver who works in a small team. The framework of narrative theory allows each athlete to relate the costs they have experienced within the context of their sporting career and the wider sporting and social circumstances. The story form facilitates an evaluative response from each athlete enabling understanding of which costs have the greatest significance particularly at the personal level, which obviously also has repercussions at the group level.
Perceived Pressures
The category of perceived pressures incorporates an array of general pressures felt personally from being part of a highly cohesive team including the pressure not to let valued team mates down. Pressure perceived as exerted, implicitly and explicitly, upon team members within a highly task cohesive team would most likely be increased in a highly socially cohesive team. The closer the friendship ties are, then the increased burden of pressure not to disappoint team mates. The importance of this category is demonstrated in the strength of, and the emotional tone evident in, the comments made by the team members in their responses for Study 1. Pressure to perform was similarly the most frequently cited disadvantage to high cohesion in the study of interactive sports even though the participants in that study were less competitive level athletes than in this study (Hardy et al., 2005).
Pressure to perform would most likely increase at higher competitive levels but would depend on a multitude of internal and external factors. Pressure to perform in sport is evident across all levels and across all sporting disciplines. Athletes at the highest competitive levels are required to show ability to manage performance under pressure,
to develop resilience or mental toughness, but an increasing research base presents the elite sport environment as a risky place for many high performing athletes (MacIntyre, Barr & Butler, 2015).
Pressure to Perform and the Performance Narrative
“If we don’t win a race there’s a problem. We haven’t done our job properly. Somebody, somewhere down the line hasn’t done something and we have failed.” Dickie Stanford, Team Manager, Williams F1
The work of Frank (1995) focused attention on narrative types. These are the general types of stories which particular stories can be seen to follow. Narrative types can be used as a framework to begin interpreting particular stories. The research shows that here is one recurrently dominant and influential narrative for athletes within high performance sport: a performance narrative (Douglas & Carless, 2006, 2009).
Douglas and Carless (2013) consider there to be three signature characteristics to the performance narrative: there is a single-minded drive to win; there is a resistance of other areas of life out with sporting performance; relationships are subordinated in order to fulfil this desire to succeed in sport. The performance narrative views being
competitive as a natural and an intrinsically positive phenomenon.
This aligns itself with the culture of elite sport where performance is about winning no matter what: performance failure brings shame (Carless & Douglas, 2009). This narrative is ingrained in sporting culture and is “widely circulated and amplified by the sport media” (Carless & Douglas, 2013, p.702). Winning is the sole criteria for success (Douglas & Carless, 2012). The performance narrative is considered to be aligned to strong athletic identity as examined in the earlier research literature (Brewer, Van Raalte, & Linder, 1993; Sparkes, 1998). Trying to sustain a strong athletic identity or a singular narrative centred on performance outcomes across career and life span has shown to be potentially damaging to athletes (Douglas & Carless, 2006, 2009). The absence of a holistic sense of self in a balanced life can be viewed as detrimental when
athletic achievement and results are not sustained due to uncontrollable circumstances; injury or lack of performance or transitions into retirement from sport can create
psychological and psychosocial difficulties (Alfermann et al., 2004; Brewer et al., 1993; Carless & Douglas, 2009; Douglas & Carless, 2006; Lally, 2007).
Fundamental to the performance narrative is that it is given presidency, and becomes monological, to the extent that it excludes all other possible narratives and motivations for sport participation (Douglas & Carless, 2009; Douglas & Jamieson, 2006). Douglas and Carless (2009) cite Frank’s desire that other narrative types should be offered for consideration and examination. Due to the dominance of the performance narrative there is limited accounts of other types of narrative in elite sport but two which have been identified in the research literature are a Discovery/Flow narrative and a Relational narrative. The dominant performance narrative demands such dedication and sacrifice for the sport at any and all costs that this is at the detriment of these other possible narratives (Carless & Douglas, 2009, 2012). These two narrative types are most often discouraged and silenced within sporting circles and sporting culture because they go against the fundamental elements of the performance narrative (Douglas & Carless, 2012).
A relational narrative is considered to show an emphasis on interpersonal relationships instead of the individual self (Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach, & Zilber 1998). The relational narrative is based “on care and connectedness over and above the masculine values of separation, individuation, hierarchy, and competition” (Douglas & Carless, 2006, p.24). The key characteristic of a relational narrative is a focus on others, or another, rather than pursuit of sport purely for own self-interest (Carless & Douglas, 2013; Douglas & Carless, 2006, 2009). Athletes’ living a relational narrative have been shown to reject the glory of winning and high level rewards in favour of the valuing relationships, or a particular relationship (Douglas & Carless, 2006, 2009).
A discovery narrative can be considered in direct contrast to the performance narrative (Douglas & Carless, 2006). For those following a discovery narrative, sport is not about
winning and achievement but sport is a means for discovering and living a full life (Douglas & Carless, 2006). Athletes were intent on finding, living and exploring a full and multifaceted life rather than only driving to improve performance (Douglas & Carless, 2006).
While a performance narrative over-rides other possible threads or strands of existence, both these narratives have more complex layers and multiple facets (Douglas & Carless, 2006). The discovery narrative can be related to flow experiences in sport, to the joy of embodied sporting movement and love of the challenge of peak performance (Sparkes & Partington, 2003). The most recent research has demonstrated that although this performance narrative and sacrifice for sporting victory is the over-riding narrative in elite sport, some athletes- a minority- do resist the immense pressure within their cultural environment to adhere to valuing only performance outcomes (Carless & Douglas, 2013). For most this would be covert resistance but a small few may sustain an overtly multidimensional narrative (Carless & Douglas, 2013).
Similarly, athletes have demonstrated they have themselves multidimensional conceptions of success in their sport and their motivations and drive for competing include not only winning, but along with this working and pushing themselves to the best of their ability regardless of performance outcomes, increasing the value of their relationships, and the joy of the physical peak performance experiences in sport (Carless & Douglas, 2012). The research into the narrative ‘types’ experienced and lived in the sporting world is in its early stages. Developing greater understanding of how these three narrative types operate is clearly important as is identifying possible additional and alternative types.
Pressure to Conform
As well as pressure to perform, pressure appears within a highly cohesive team in the guise of pressure to conform. Cohesion implies, by its very definition of “sticking together”, conformity. The more cohesive the team is, the higher the intensity of the pressure on a team member to conform to group norms (Patterson et al., 2005).
Similarly to sacrifice behaviour, conformity to group norms has previously been cited in the literature as a positive consequence of high cohesion. It is not that simple: direct and indirect pressure to conform has been shown to lead to damaging group processes such as normative and informational influence, and group think (Mellalieu & Juniper, 2010; Rovio et al., 2009).
The results of Study 1 reported rigid demands and methods as a significant cost experienced by athletes and they perceived this to be a personal level cost. However high group identity and high cohesion produces processes which have been shown to have negative repercussions at the group level and hamper team performance.
Furthermore pressure to conform would impact on other group processes such as communication with further negative consequence.
Compromised Wellbeing
Identity has been defined in the sport literature as “a multidimensional view of oneself that is both enduring and dynamic” (Lally, 2007, p.86). It is clear that a strong athletic identity is encouraged in sporting culture and when it is considered how this is linked to the performance narrative, and developed in and sustained through sport performance winning and results, there is potential for identity problems and compromised wellbeing both through failure to achieve in sporting context and in sporting transitions (Douglas & Carless, 2009).
It has been suggested that this is even more so for male athletes who are more likely to sustain one narrative as their sole focus throughout their career, and possibly life, omitting any other (Lieblich et al., 1998). Male athletes are expected to show strength and power, confidence and competence, in success as prescribed by the “master narrative of masculinity” (Vincent & Crossman, 2007, p.80). Motor sport is a
the values of a strong athletic identity and of a performance narrative would pressure the necessity of the construction and adoption of a performance life story.
Women too however in the elite sporting culture are subjected to the performance narrative as the primary cultural context in which to form their storied identities. Therefore they are similarly vulnerable to identity issues and inability to form alternative acceptable narratives within sporting context, such as that of “mother” (Douglas & Carless, 2009).
There is little research on elite athlete mothers but a recent exploratory study with ten elite athlete mothers found that the formation of a new story and identity through motherhood contrasted the performance narrative so starkly that women were forced to choose one or the other- and often suffered distress and narrative wreckage. However if the two could be reconciled there is potential for a “melded identity” (McGannon, Gonslaves, Schinke, & Busanich, 2015). This melded identity would involve renegotiating the performance narrative and living a multidimensional narrative: resisting the performance narrative and then reconciling both strands. It could be a positive way of countering the performance narrative with a multidimensional identity and story. A multidimensional identity and story offers long term benefits to all athletes particularly in the area of wellbeing.
Compromised wellbeing can occur in a highly cohesive team as sport-life balance becomes skewed and the team and sport takes precedence over personal life and
wellbeing. There is the risk of burn out from the sporting, and other, demands in the life of a high performing athlete (Jouper & Gustafsson, 2013).This is never more clearly demonstrated in the top levels of motor sport where the travel, distances, climates and media circus are accepted as ‘just part of the sport’. Unique to motor sport is also the danger element and despite continual increase of safety awareness and safety
Furthermore high team cohesion, especially in a high performance environment, can have harmful effects on identity. It could be that an athlete’s identity corresponds to team objectives, task cohesion, and specifically to role identity (Kamphoff et al., 2005; Stetts & Burke, 2002). Some research has indicated that external motivators, important components of the performance narrative, such as prizes and status are related to burnout in sport (Cresswell & Eklund, 2005).
Sacrifice behaviour is reported in the cohesion literature as a positive consequence of high team cohesion but it is clear that the issues are more complex and need to be further explored. It would seem that a highly cohesive team, especially at top performance level, would expect and demand a strong team identity and athletic identity with strict adherence to the performance narrative- thus compromising optimal balanced wellbeing both at physical and psychological levels in both the short and long term (Carless & Douglas, 2009, 2012; Douglas, 2009; Douglas & Carless, 2006; Therberge, 2008).