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  • Marathon Runners Case, 19324, UTSAV RAJ PANT

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    Utsav Raj Pant
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    David is coaching three groups of marathon runners with varying levels of experience. For the beginner Group 1 runners, he uses a directive leadership style, clearly instructing them on their training. Group 2 runners have more experience and he coaches them with encouragement and support. However, David struggles with the experienced Group 3 runners, who seem uninspired by the training and challenge his expertise. To improve, David needs to develop his own knowledge, inspire a shared vision, and adapt his leadership style to how each group perceives him. Matching his style to the needs of the runners in each group will help David become a more effective coach.

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    David is coaching three groups of marathon runners with varying levels of experience. For the beginner Group 1 runners, he uses a directive leadership style, clearly instructing them on their training. Group 2 runners have more experience and he coaches them with encouragement and support. However, David struggles with the experienced Group 3 runners, who seem uninspired by the training and challenge his expertise. To improve, David needs to develop his own knowledge, inspire a shared vision, and adapt his leadership style to how each group perceives him. Matching his style to the needs of the runners in each group will help David become a more effective coach.

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    279 views6 pages

    Marathon Runners Case, 19324, UTSAV RAJ PANT

    Uploaded by

    Utsav Raj Pant
    David is coaching three groups of marathon runners with varying levels of experience. For the beginner Group 1 runners, he uses a directive leadership style, clearly instructing them on their training. Group 2 runners have more experience and he coaches them with encouragement and support. However, David struggles with the experienced Group 3 runners, who seem uninspired by the training and challenge his expertise. To improve, David needs to develop his own knowledge, inspire a shared vision, and adapt his leadership style to how each group perceives him. Matching his style to the needs of the runners in each group will help David become a more effective coach.

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    of 6

    Assignment 3

    Marathon runners at different level

    UTSAV RAJ PANT


    ROLL: 19324
    Question 1

    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

    Situational Leadership II model by K. Blanchard, P.Zigarmi and D. Zigarmi


    As the runners in group 1 are beginners and they donot know the dynamics of marathon
    they have certain level of ambugtuity regading their preparation and performance. So due to this,
    they will prefer a directive kind of leadership from david and expect their coach to give clear
    instructions and closely monitor their performance. On the other hand, David had expected these
    runners to be matured and at least had basic understading of running. So David back in mind david
    may be expecting to use Coaching style of leadership initially and thinking of helping these runners
    to achieve goals by using directions and some sort of encouragement.
    Blanchard and Hersey (1970) suggested the right leadership style will depend on the person
    being led - the follower. In this case after diagnosing the ground reality of runners, David have to
    adjust his leadership style based on the competence and commitment of his runners. So having
    explained the behaviors, skills, level of commitment of runners and their development level David
    have to use directive leadership style i.e. in which he have to give instructions about the goals,
    how the goals are to be achieved and supervise the runners carefully.
    Question 2
    How would you describe the fit between the runners in Group 2 and David’s coaching style?
    Discuss?
    Runners in group 2 have gained experiences regarding marathons and they have also developed
    the skills required for running. They are self-critical, cautious and doubtful regarding their
    competence and the trainings they are doing. They wanted to know would running long practice
    runs help them or not, would carbo-loading improve their performance or would taking rest day
    during training helps their overall conditioning and so on. This shows the runners in group 2 are
    uncertain whether they can improve their performance from what they are doing or not. They are
    lacking to confidence to test these ideas and seeking a certain level of support from coach. Being
    specific on SLII model, they are on the D3 stage of development.
    Now, looking at the David's coaching style for these group of runners, as mentioned in
    case, David has been giving them encouragement and motivational talks and I regard he is showing
    right kind of leadership in this case which is Supporting style (S3) as mentioned in model.
    Most of the players in these group have moderate to high level of competence and they
    have experiences of marathons as well. They know the technical skills required to run for
    marathons. So instead of directing them on the skills part, David is giving them encouragement
    and support which includes listening them, praising them and asking for input. As the runners have
    a lot of doubts in their mind regarding experimenting new ideas to improve their performance,
    David through somehow is able to giving freedom to runners and side by side he is encouraging,
    and motivating to create an environment for them to test their ideas. In this particular case, having
    experienced and competent players in group, David as a coach should not be fully directive as
    well, it may hurt the ego of players and side by side he should not delegate all the decisions to
    runners as they are still doubtful and confused in some cases.
    So to conclude, yes David has properly identified the development level of runners, their
    behaviors and matched his leadership style accordingly.
    Question 3

    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.

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