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Marathon Runners Case, 19324, UTSAV RAJ PANT
Marathon Runners Case, 19324, UTSAV RAJ PANT
Based on the principles of the SLII model (by K. Blanchard, P. Zigarmi, and D. Zigarm),
how would you describe the runners in Group 1? What kind of leadership do they want
from David, and what kind of leadership does David seem prepared to give them?
Answer
The runners in group 1 are simply enthusiast beginners. They are very new to marathons in fact
most of them had never run a marathon. They have keen interest about the various aspects of
running but don't know exactly what they are supposed to do while preparing for and running in
marathon. They lack basic knowledge about the preliminary aspects like diet, exercise, rules of
marathon and trainings required for marathons. But the runners are showing high enthusiasm
regarding marathon. So basically they are eager to learn and as they lack skills and field experience,
they are likely to blindly follow what the coach says them which means they would be expecting
clear directions from the coach and they will try their best to follow their coach's directions. With
the over excitement, these runners are also likely to do mistakes while following the directions
of coach regarding their diets and training. They may do things in a wrong manner and expect the
results in a short span of time as we know during initial phases most of people become impatient
and tries to do and achieve everything immediately.
In reality these runners lack self-confidence as they do not have required skills and
experiences relating to marathons but in some instances, they may show confidence which may be
fake due to their high aspirations and hopes of learning the skills and being a better runner and the
small progress they will make in marathons.
Group 1
Runners
The experienced runners in Group 3 appear to be a challenge to David. Using SLII, explain
why David appears ineffective with this group?
Answer
The third group of runners consists of Self-Reliant achievers who have a lot of experience of
running and confident with their ability to perform well since most of them have finished the
marathon in top 10 of their respective age groups. Having a group of highly competent runners
have created a challenge for David due to following reasons:
First, in the other groups the runners majorly were less competent or moderately competent
than David, so due to this any tips and suggestion David would give to them they would listen him
because to some extent they were considering David a person who can help them to improve their
performance. But in the case of group 3, giving only the tips to players didn't worked because may
be runners were equally or even more competent and experienced than David and due to this any
suggestion David used to give them have made them feel incompetent and even hurted their ego .
So due to his they may be acting defensive and avoiding his suggestions.
Second, the case states, runners have complained of feeling flat and acted a bit moody and
down about training. So some of the reason behind such compliant may be the smaller or average
goals (not pushing their limits) and inability to captivate and inspire runners in the training
programs. Since the runners are already professionals they may have found the training simple and
less effective for them. The absence of challenging targets in trainings must have reduced their
excitement and made them take the training and tips of coach casually.
Third, these players are achievement oriented and they are always seeking growth in every
marathons. The case states, they lacked excitement about running in New York event and raised
question whether their overall training would help them in other races too. This shows they had no
any extra motivation to train harder in this New York marathon. Due to the absence of obstacles
that challenges them and make them perform even better, they have started losing interest over
this marathon and this had created challenge for David.
So to conclude, David's inability to convince runners with his expertise, embrace challenge
in trainings and show them prospect to improve their performance has made his job of coaching
challenging.
Question 4
If you were helping David with his coaching, how would you describe his strengths and
weaknesses? What suggestions would you make to him about how to improve?
Answer:
Strength of David
The major strength of David's coaching is he is trying to match his coaching style as per
the needs of each groups. To be specific David seems to be successful in accommodate his
coaching style with the needs of runners in group 1 and group 2.
Weakness
David is facing problems in leading the runners in group 3 and this reflects his inability to
match his leadership style with runner's needs, though he seems successful in coaching the
group 1 and group 2. But in this case, inability to show multidimensional leadership in case
of runners in group 3 is a major weakness.
Due to having a lot of competent runners in group 3 David is losing acceptance from the
runners. So David has not been working on improving his expertise in marathon. So still
leading form his comfort zone and not pushing himself to do extra effort in coaching these
runners is also a major weakness.
In all these groups, David doesn’t seems to be able to inspire the spark and energy to
runners. He is giving the right kind of training but still he is lagging in teams of developing
a shared vision which can act as a source of motivation for runners.
Suggestions
1. First, David needs to be self-aware of how he is perceived by the runners and give the
coaching accordingly. His coaching was going well with group 1 and group 2 runners but
he faced challenge while coaching group 3. So awareness of how they perceive him and
changing the coaching style accordingly will help David. For example, if runners think
they are more skilled and competent than David, then he should work on his knowledge
and try to push both himself and runners so that they start listening him seriously.
2. David should clearly define his expectations and targets for each group of runners so that
he can avoid the unnecessary issues while giving training. Just as in case of group 1, David
was getting irritated by the immature questions of runners. So if he had made it very clear
that he is expecting some level of knowledge regarding marathon, runners would be
prepared to meet his expectation and instead of wasting time on giving them basic
knowledge David could have used time for improving their skills.
3. Instead of giving tips for runners in group 3, David should encourage the runners to share
their expectations and ideas regarding improvement of running and listen to the carefully.
Doing this will, make them feel they are participating in the coaching process and the
resistance to running tips given by David will reduce.
4. To keep the motivation and inspiration up for runners in every group, David needs to use
some sort of persuasive skills to captivate runners towards a vision. Along with this, instead
of coaching in a casual way, some interesting and tough challenges can be introduced in
coaching process which will make the runners feel they have still much more to learn and
improve. For example: for group 3 runners he may set a very tough time limit for marathon
or he may increase the distance of marathon so that the runners will be out of their comfort
zone. Doing these two basic things will introduce the energy in the runners which seems
to be lacking in the mid-week.