What is group cohesion?

The concept of cohesion has been an important factor in the study of group behaviour and its significance is often a source of motivation for group leaders.

Cliches such as 'Together we stand,divided we fall' 'There is no i in team' or 'Players play,team win' are often used to show individuals the importance of team cohesion.

Definitions of Group Cohesion

Carron, Brawley and Widmeyer (1998) defined cohesion as ' a dynamic process that is reflected intendency of a group to stick together and remain united in the pursuit of its instrumental objectives and/or for the satisfaction of memebers needs'

Mudrack (1989) Stated that cohesion ' seems intuitiely easy to understand and describe.. this ease of description has failed to translate into an ease of definition'

Cohesion-Attraction

Members of cohesive groups tend to like thier fellow members
Hogg: Social attraction vs personal attraction

Digram- cohesion attraction

Cohesion- Unity

Cohesive groups stick together as members 'cohere' to one another and the group, members report feeling a sense of belonging.

Digram- Cohesion unity

Cohesion Teamwork

The combined activities of two or more individuals who coordinate their efforts to achieve goals.
Collective efficacy: a high level of confidence about success as the tasks the group acepts.
Esprit de corps: feeling of unity commitment confidence and enthusiaum for the group shared by most of all the members.


Digram- cohesion teamwork

Carron's Antendents/ Factors affecting the development and growth

Cohesion Carron's general conceptual model of cohesion offered four general antecedents of cohesion
1) Environmental: Scholarships, contracts, eligbility, familiy, expectations, etc
2) Personal: Social background, personalilty, gender, attitudes, etc
3) Leadership: communication, goals, roles
4) Team Fators: Group Norms, Task/social cohesion

The Carron's antendents/factors affecting the development and growth model shows both task and social apsects of cohesion. It also shows what effects a group and what helps a group become one.

There are two aspects of group cohesion

Task cohesion: The degree to which group members work together and are commited to achieve common goals such as winning a match.

Social cohesion: The degree to which group members like each other and get on well, trust and support each other.

These to aspects of group cohesion shows that as a person you may be committed to achieve goals and targets for the team, but not that particuarly attatched to the other members of the team.


Does cohesion develop over time?

Cohesion develops over time in a relatively predictable pattern.

Tuckmans five stage model of group development:
1) Orientation (forming) stage
2) Conflict (storming) stage
3) Structure development (norming) stage
4) Work (perfoming) stage
5) Dissolution (adjouring) stage (planned & unplanned)

Forming:

• First moments of a newly fromed groups
• Often marked by tension, guarded interchanges and low levels of interaction
• People monitor their behaviour and are tentative when expression opinions.

Storming:

• Tension increases in the storming phase, over goals, procedures, authority
• Conflict often causes fight and flight responses
• Conflict is a required elementfor creating team cohesion

Norming:

• Group becomes more unified and organized
• Mutal trust and support increases
• Rules, roles and goals are established
• Communication increases

Performing:

• Productivity is usually not instantaneous, thus productivity must wait until the group matures
• Many groups get side tracked by the storming or norming phases
• More mature groups spend less time in conflict and need less guidance than less mature teams

Adjouring

• Either planned or spontaneous
• Can be stressfull for team members

Overall in my conclusion a group needs to have teamwork, attraction and unity so they can produce an effective group. With the Carron's general model of cohesion shows how a group can develop with leadership and team factor's. Personal factors such as personalilty and attitudes help the group because some members of the group can encourage others with their personality and attitudes. Also the enviroment can also develop the group with rewards and personal rewards. The Tuckman theory shows how the group develops in stages once all the stages are achieved then the group becomes an effective group. So over time a group can become effecitive with time, support from one another, attraction, teamwork, unity and factors such as leadership, personal factors, enviromental factors.

Leadership

Cognitive-Mediational Model of Leadership

Smoll and Smith (1989) proposed a theoretical model of leadership behaviour that emphasizes relationships among situational, cognitive, behavioural, and individual difference variables.

The effects of coaches behaviours are a function of their own personal characteristics, which are mediated not only by situational factors but also the meaning that athletes arrtibute to those coaching behaviours. In essences players attitudes towards their coahes and sport experiences area affected by their preception and recall of the coaches.

Digram

The model above displays the mediational model, with player perception of coach behaviours mediating the impact of coach behaviours on player responses. However this entire process is affected by situational factors and coach players and individual differences.


Multidimensional Model of sport leadership

This model developed specifically for sport or physical activity is the multidimensional model of sport leadership (Chelladurai, 1978,1990)

Digram

This theory is simuilar to the Smith and Smoll model, Chelladurai's model posits that leader effectiveness in sport will vary depending on the characteristics of the athletes and contraints of the situation.


Overall both these theories have simuilar ways to show how leadership can effect how athletes learn  from there coaches. The theories show how different characterisitics can effect learners and how they respond to the coach. For example if the coach has bad characterisitics then the learners are not going to respond to the coach very well.