Colonel Stas Preczewski

Colonel Stas Preczewski, also known as Coach P, was the coach of the Army crew team for the United States Military Academy in May 2002. He mentored two teams, Varsity and Junior Varsity with the best eight rowers in Varsity team. However, the JV team started to continuously defeat the Varsity team though Varsity had the best individual rowers. Despite several efforts by Coach P like conducting objective tests such as seat racing and pairwise racing, he could not achieve any improvement in the Varsity team’s performance compared to Junior Varsity. This had put Coach P in a tough situation in terms of winning the National championship race which was just 4 days away. In my view, Coach P should try a combination of options to improve Varsity’s performance. First option is to improve team morale and spirit by motivating them towards a common team goal. Secondly, help resolve the conflicts within team members so that they are comfortable communicating with each other.

As the National championship is due to start in just four days and with this short time constraint, the idea of switching teams seems a viable option. But, given that, Varsity team clearly has stronger rowers, it does not seem fair on part of the Varsity rowers and their capabilities. So, the idea of developing the internal team dynamics is a good approach I would suggest and this is also an affiliative leader’s style as referenced in HBR article Leadership that gets results: "The hallmark of the affiliative leader is a People come first attitude. This style is particularly useful for building team harmony or increasing morale and affiliative leaders create emotional bonds and harmony”.

In contrast to the JV team who had a shared accountability towards the team’s success, the Varsity team believed that only one of them were carrying the boat independently and criticized that the rest were slacking off. This pessimistic nature about the co-team mates demotivates the team and hinders the winning spirit. As rightly quoted in HBR article How will you make your team a team that- “Teams that cannot hold one another accountable are susceptible to allowing individual and department priorities to supersede the goals of the team”. To overcome this, Coach P must get the team together and involve them in harmony building exercises like fun team activities and outings.