It happened roughly a year back. I was the team manager for my own football team that was made up of my JC and secondary school friends. It was a new team and the conflict occurred during our first few field games. The conflict between my key player and me started on the field nearing the end of the game. Let us call him B for convenience. B is a very talented player who is also quite influential in the team. He is also a very determined character who hates to lose. Additionally, he has been a long time friend since secondary three.
I shall now attempt to describe the scenario in detail. It was nearing the end of the match and the team was down by 3 goals. B, who was playing as a defender, decided to give up the formation and ran all the way up to attack.
Furious I shouted at him, "What are you doing up there? Can you stick to the plan?"
B replied angrily, "Why defend when we are 3 goals down? Of course we should go for an all out attack."
I replied, "If we want to score, we must still play with patience. Pushing bodies up impulsively will not bring us any goals. We might just concede more in the end and the game will be over."
Basically it was a quarrel within the game due to differences in opinions which erupted in an angry confrontation.
The possible causes could be narrowed down to three reasons. Firstly, we were losing and everyone was incrasingly frustrated. Secondly, his determination to win and my stubborness to stick to the plan was another source of conflict. Lastly, there was complete lack of communication. B did not discuss with me about changing the formation nor did I instruct the team to stick to the plan until I make a change.
What could have been done to avoid the conflict? Also, what could be done after the quarrel so that the relationship can still be as good as before.
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Hi Soon Yee,
ReplyDeleteTo prevent the first possible cause, I think outsiders cannot control the situation. Each player must willingly to try themselves to be aware and control their mind before, during and after the match. It is natural that people get frustrated when losing. Outsiders can only remind them to calm down their mind.
For the second possible cause, you can negotiate with him before a match. If your team is down by some number of goals, do all your teammates agree to stick to original formation or not? If yes, try to encourage them to stick to the plan by speaking short encouraging words and by showing your body-language.If not , you can prepare a signal and show it to your teammates to change the formation.
This will also prevent the third possible cause.
Since you have made a friend with him since Sec3, it would be easy to resolve any conflict. Tell him and discuss frankly and candidly for communication conflict and think together how to improve that kind of situation better.
Since both of you have the same strong passion, I believe it is not that difficult to resolve the problem based upon the same goal to win a football match. :-)
Hi Soon Yee!
ReplyDeleteTo avoid the conflict, I believe that you have to instill the "we" spirit into every member in your soccer team. Let them know that you are all in this together, so it is best you stick to the plan of the game.
Show some empathy towards the emotion of other team members. Let them know you want to win equally as much as they want to. It's best if you could come up with a plan that gets the agreement of all members.
Besides that, B could practise some self-regulation. He should control his emotions and impulses. It seems from your entry that he was deciding not with his head, but with the adrenaline pumping through his blood.
To resolve this conflict, you can personally talk to him and let him know that you want to win just as much as him and make him understand the importance of sticking to the plan.
Hey Soon Yee,
ReplyDeleteBeing the manager of the team, I believe you would command the respect of your team mates. You could inculcate into them team spirit and that you're the team leader whereby any change in the game plan should come from you, after listening to their suggestions. This could avoid confusion as to which plan to follow, if someone like B switches tatics midway.
Since B is a childhood friend, it may be easier to explain yourself to him as he would have had the chance of interacting with you for many years and would understand your way of thinking and doing things to a certain degree.
I do understand that tensions are high during the game, especially when you're losing. It could be quite disheartening. But I think playing a good game is all that matters. Winning isn't always everything. You could stress that to your players.
Remember, there's no "I in TEAM". Cliche-ish as it may sound :)
ThuWin: Yeah, I think you are right about getting the pre-match team talk right. The team talk was always not well done and as a result there was a lot of problems when the matches started. And regarding body language, showing the team that I am fighting hard to win is very important. Running for lost causes can sometimes motivate the people around you who have given up.
ReplyDeleteValerie: Yes empathy is very important. In fact that was how I resolved the conflict. I understood his hunger to win. In B's defence, he is actually one of the fighters in my team. His hunger to win is really admirable. Also, I was guilty of flaring up at him too. So after the whole saga, I took a step back, calmed myself down and apologised to him and we were back to normal. Stepping back from a conflict and trying to think about what has happened is something I learnt from this episode.
Tiffany: Regarding my leadership, I really think it is quite suspect. Actually many issues were due to the lack of an efficient leader. Most of the time there was a clear lack of leadership. I do try to step up and take charge but it's hard because everyone are such close friends.
And you're right about team spirit. It is essential that a team has team spirit. However my team clearly lacks it and it's hard to inculcate such cohesive spirit when we only meet once a week for matches.
Thanks everyone for the responses. Maybe you all can help me out by thinking how I can effectively lead the team despite all of them being my close friends.
This is a very good description of the problem, Soon Yee, as well as of the characters involved and the possible causes. You present the info clearly and concisely with good fluency. There are a couple minor language problems (mainly verb tense problems). Still, you've garnered good feedback.
ReplyDeleteI look forward to reading the resolution.
Okay this was the resolution of the conflict. After it all turned ugly, we went our separate ways. Then I was letting it all out to another teammate who is also my very good friend. Through the conversation, I not only let off my anger, I also got enlightened by some of the things my friend said. In a fit of anger, all rational thought was lost. He put it back into perspective. In the end, after I calmed myself down and took a step back to analyze the whole situation, I realized it took two hands to clap. I was partly at fault too. I decided to apologize to B. B's reply was very quick and he apologized as well and everything was all good after that.
ReplyDelete