Team Production with Gift Exchange
A common theme behind the three articles: “How to get the rich to
share the marbles”, “When a Child
Thinks Life Is Unfair, Use Game Theory”, and “The Power of Altruism”, is the
way human’s instinctive thought process and perception of what is good and fair
effect their collaboration with other human beings.
Growing
up I played on multiple sports teams; and although I may not continue to spend
the amount of time I once did playing sports I still see the balance of rewards
in the intermural league I play when I go home for the summer. The soccer team
I play on is a club women’s team made up mostly of girls with whom I played
travel soccer with as a kid. Being that the majority of us are friends with
each other, things become complicated when other team members do not carry the
weight of the team they have responsibility for. In particular, our team
captain did not live up to her expectations this past summer. Naturally, a team
captain is supposed to be one of the best players if not the best player on the
team. More importantly, a team captain is supposed to increase morale and boost
our energy before a game. They are supposed to give suggestions to the coach
and team on what could be done better and what is going smoothly. However,
because our captain was definitely the best player on the team she did not
always put her full effort in. By this I mean she missed more than half the
practices we had. However, we continued to put her in the game because she
scored the most points by far, and many of the girls on the team seemed to
value a win more than confronting her on her lack of dedication to the team. By
the end of the summer, our league supervisor awarded 5 medals varying from MVP
to Most Improved, and our coach had the majority of say in who accepted these.
Our captain was clearly our MVP, as she won a lot of the games for us and was
encouraged to be given game time from the entire team. When it came to be the
end of the year and the awards were given, many of us were somewhat shocked
when our captain did not receive MVP. Instead the award was given to a girl who
was not only an impressive player, but made it to all of our practices and
social events.
The
way my coach handled the situation reminded me a lot of the first article on
sharing the marbles. Although she may have earned her spot as the captain at
first due her ability to carry the team through the season, she clearly did not
deserve the title as MVP as she did not properly carry out her duties to the
team. This procedural fairness represents the coach’s ability to perceive the
actual amount of value our captain put in to our team. In regards to the marble
example the captain is the one with three marbles, as she is naturally gifted
and does not need extra practice to be better than the rest of us. Because we
all spend the same amount of time playing in games and tournaments, our captain
could have shared the wealth by showing up to practice and distributing her
extra experience (marbles) to other women on the team. In addition, she became
very altruistic after receiving title as captain. Because she had clearly
nothing more to gain from the teams expects a view wins, and due to the fact
there was nothing in her way preventing her from skipping pregame she continued
to just not show up.
Regarding your first paragraph, where you say "instinctive" I encourage you to think through this. Instinctive might be a possibility. A different possibility is that the thought process about others is learned. Something that is learned, but where the learning happened a good while ago may seem natural later. But during the time where the lessons were learned it would have been difficult.
ReplyDeleteLet me use that and apply the Haidt article to your soccer team and the behavior of your team captain. In the Haidt piece, the kid with the marbles would share if it were perceived that the other kid contributed, but not share otherwise. If your team captain perceived that she was carrying the team on her back and there wasn't much contribution from the other players, this would then be consistent with Haidt's observations. I order for the captain to actually share in this case, she would need a more mature view of sharing, one where doing so made sense if the other members of the soccer team might be expected to make a contribution in the future and that she could encourage that outcome by sharing now. We would consider this a more mature view.
So you might ask whether the team itself helped to develop that more mature view or not.
I want to close by noting we don't always understand other people's motivation when they don't share that with us voluntarily. It is possible that there is a reasonable explanation for your team captain's behavior that doesn't amount to being selfish. I don't know. But I do know that we ascribe motivation when we are otherwise ignorant. If there was something bothering the captain that impacted her missing practices, it would be good if the coaches came to learn about that something. The way you told the story the cause was simply the captain's immaturity. That's likely right, but the possibility that it was wrong didn't seem to have been ruled out.
I should have pointed this out more in my blog, but she did not show up to practice because she did not feel like she was getting anything out of going to practice. She told multiple girls on the team that she did not enjoy going to practice early in the morning, and so instead went to the gym at night instead. However, I do see your point in Haidt's perspective. She definitely knew she was the best player on the team; however, her being at practice did not inhibit our ability to contribute to the team.
DeleteI also had a similar team experience while in high school. I played on the golf team throughout high school and while I was on the team it was usual that the most talented senior received the title as captain. When I was a senior I was given the title of captain even though I was not the most talented player on the team. My coach told me it was because of the amount of dedication I had shown in previous years to maintain positive relationships with all of the members of the team and I demonstrated good leadership. People were originally shocked when the most talented player was not rewarded with the title of captain. The most talented player on the team did not demonstrate good leadership and team values, just like the most talented player did not demonstrate a good ability to be a team captain.
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