In high school I played on the volleyball team in grade 10 where I was disciplined by a very tough coach. We had 4 practises a week, and every time you were late you had to run 15 laps around the school. Although I respected the coach like he was my father, a lot of my other teammates resented him and they started skipping practises. This only infuriated my coach even more and subsequently, we lost our team cohesion and we did not make it very far in to the season. The following year, many of the players that previously played did not come out again and I wondered if there was a better approach the coach could have used in order to teach us.

In Commerce 292, we had a case study project in which we had to analyze a movie and identify any organizational behavior issues. Our groups movie was “Coach Carter” and many of the teachings he used was similar to my high school coach. He disciplined the players on a regular basis with drills that were extremely intense. As a result this caused a lot of tension between the players and himself. He, like my coach in high school was a transformational leader in which he tried to inspire the players to take the game more seriously. However, a different concept that I learned in class could have been more applicable if he used it. Both coaches would have been better in coaching if they used a charismatic approach in which they rewarded the players by intrinsically motivating them and focusing on the positives they contribute instead of what the did wrong. Punishments should not always be used an I believe this alternative approach would have been much more effective.