Team and Small Group Experience

There have a few experiences that I have had, where I have been a member of both a team and a group. There are many similarities as well as differences among a team and a group. One of the biggest and most common similarity is that both of them want to be able to reach a particular goal. The team that I am currently a member of is a women’s basketball team. I am also part of a small group. I met a few local girls through Facebook that have been wanting to loose weight just like me. My team was started up by some friends that wanted to form a league to play for the city. They put some ads on Craigslist and Facebook to see if anyone wanted to try out for the team. After doing the try outs and deciding who was actually going to be on the team, we got together twice per week for a period of one month for practice basketball games. Currently, we are in the â€Å"tournament period† and we play every Tuesday at 7:00 pm with other teams that are also playing with the city. We have three games left before we know how we placed and if we go to finals. After every game we get together for a few minutes and discuss how we did and what we can do to do things better and to strategize. Communication among the team has really made us improved the way that we play and make us better in every game. The group I belong is made up of six girls including myself. We all chat online and make plans, we state our goals and what we want to achieve with them. Each week one of us will make an exercising plan for the entire week and then at the end of the week we meet up somewhere to talk about how we did with our exercise plan. It is not all about work, we also get together to have some fun, like go to the movies, eat dinner or take out our kids to the park. Most of us have lost at least 10 lbs since we started our little group. We just support each other when we are lacking motivation. There are some differences that I noticed between the team and the group. For example, we had to try out for the basketball team. Then we were chosen and assigned to a position by the organizers of the team. We have all been working together to make our team better and become a good and strong team. The group that I am currently was actually made up by a group of friends that just wanted to have a support system to lose weight. We have made sure to always have something going on to help us stay fit or keep helping us lose weight. The team used practice basketball games twice a week and a little get together that we had at the beginning of the season to motivate us and help us to get to know each other. This helped us feel more relaxed at the actual games and to know how each team player was used to playing in the court. The coach and the assistant coach wanted to do these two things to ensure that there was a healthy relationship among the players because in the past not knowing each other had cause much tension in the games, causing many looses. Getting the basketball team together virtually would have not been a good idea. Practices needed to get done and there was no possible way that it could have been done over a computer, The best method of communication for the basketball team was in person, by phone or by text messaging. This methods were used to communicate with each and to be updated on times and location for basketball practices or actual games. My group of fitness pals, is able to interact virtually. We were able to chat via skype, email and use sites such as Facebook to stay in touch with each other. We were also able to interact with each other virtually to make actual plans to meet with each other on a weekly basis in person. Whenever the teams or groups meet exclusive using virtual communications, there is no physical contact, for that reason, the relationship would be more impersonal rather than personal. This is not the case with either the team that I am involved with or the group that I am involved in, since in both cases we do see each other face to face. The team and the group work well the way that they have been communicating and meeting, exclusive virtual communication would not be an option for either of them. Each player on the times played on assigned position, depending on the tryouts and what the coaches thought they would be best at. In the group, every week, a different person would take leadership and make a fitness plan for all of us, she would also plan a day during the week where we could all meet, talk or just hang out in person. It worked out better that way because that way we would not run in to reoccurring exercises or activities. Everyone in the basketball team did the same thing. We all showed up for our practice games and we would also show up 30 minutes before an actual game, just to make sure that we had a complete team. We got sponsored by my husband’s place of employment, so with the sponsorship they also gave us red uniforms for all the girls. Every week our coach assigned one of the team members to bring bottled water for all of the team players. Most of the time all of the players play fairly but in some instances things would get out of hand and the team member would either get benched or even suspended for a game. For the fitness group, there were not many rules. The only thing is that everyone had to participate in some way. Everyone had to take initiative at least once every two months two make plans and set goals on how to lose weight. That same person also had to plan something fun for us to do so that we could meet in person. Status and differences for the team was each individual team player, they had different positions and they each were in charge of covering it on the games. The coach and the assistant coach decided who would start in each position after they held the tryouts and saw us play. In rare occasions the players were change from positions, but mostly we always held our own position. In our fitness group, every week we had someone doing all the planning for our fitness goals and weight loss progress. A certain person would plan and then all of us would follow the plan and at the end of the week meet somewhere and discuss our progress. So basically the only thing that would change is that every week we had a different leader and different fitness plans and weight loss goals. According to the Maslow theory, the team’s belongingness depended on the power of the team players in that position that they were given by the coach and assistant coach to play in. Good self esteem was built because the team players feel that they are doing a good job with their position and in their own way feel that they are helping the team win the games. Safety in the basketball team was very important. All of team players needed to feel protected by one another when playing the game. The small group worked very close and well together. According to Maslow’s belongingness theory, the group worked well because they worked together to achieve a goal that they all had. Esteem was built by the group because we would talk to a daily basis and get together with each other once a week making us have some sort of bond. Each member of the group felt safe with each other because we were all working for the same urpose and we didn’t feel the need to hide anything from each other. In conclusion, I think that the main purpose of working with a team and having specific roles in it is to accomplish a goal. In this case the one goal that the basketball has is to win as many games possible. Working with a does not have many differences from a team, but in my group in particular we all have the same goal, which is too lose weight and get fit. A small difference is that on the group we are all working for ourselves instead of for a victory that belongs to everyone else.