Netball Essay

The following essay is an executive report for a netball performance director. The report will cover an aspect of team work and group dynamics which is pivotal to the success of a team in netball. Based on the literature and aspects of team work and group dynamics an intervention will be suggested that would be beneficial for netball teams.

There are many aspect of group dynamics such as leadership, group norms, efficacy beliefs and roles. For the sport of netball, the aspects of roles will be covered as in netball a player may play in more than one position or have different roles in the team with different responsibilities throughout the season. A role is defined as a set of behaviours expected from a person occupying a position in a specific context (Biddle & Thomas, 1966; Katz & Kahn, 1978). Bales and Slater (1955) suggests that roles can vary on the function that it serves. One of the functions suggested is a task related function. The responsibilities of these roles are orientated towards the instrumental objectives of the group such as a team captain. The second type of role functions is that of a social nature. These roles tend to be responsible for the maintenance and harmony of the group such as a social organiser or team clown. Mabry and Barnes (1980) proposed that roles should be separated into formal and informal roles. Formal roles are those that are given to the individual by the organisation and informal roles are those that occur over time due to the interactions within the group.

There’s potential for many roles and responsibilities to be present in group environments (Eys, Schinke & Jeffery, 2007) and in some cases individuals in a team must carry out more than one responsibility simultaneously (Fisher, Hunter ...

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...am are given the opportunity to agree with, modify, dispute or add to what was mentioned by the athlete. Not only does this benefit the athlete in the hot seat but also leads to every member of the team becoming familiar with who is responsible for what and when.

Communication in the team has been shown to have the biggest effect on the role element in teams and the effect of roles has a large influence in interactive team environments such as netball. The above interventions should aid the events in the role episode model (Kahn et al., 2005) and prevent role elements such as role ambiguity, role conflict and role overload from occurring which in turn would aid performance, however it must be noted that the skill level of the team, time in the season and the coping strategies are important factors to take into account before implementing a specific intervention.