In this episode, SCI Founder Joshua Gordon and Dr. Ken Pendleton discuss the value and need for an improved intercollegiate ombuds model. SCI is a major proponent of having a dedicated ombudsman available to student athletes and the outlet it provides to avoid major issues or conflict in NCAA college athletics.
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Intercollegiate sports have provided success stories, fan excitement, substantial college revenues, and character building experiences to many young athletes. However, when I look at the news with each passing month, it is obvious that there are a wide range of systemic problems present that are not getting any better with time. Institutions break league rules and we only see the few that get caught; coaches may receive exemplary marks on performance and later be found to be running shocking and abusive programs; and athlete off-the-field performance has been highlighted by extreme cases of misconduct which have included nightmarish hazing cultures, rape, and murder.
With these issues present, why aren’t all institutions making moves to proactively create Ombuds Offices, especially those specialized to deal with athletics issues? Obviously, it takes time, commitment, and buy-in at a variety of levels within a university to take a step like this. However, if most institutions really wanted to create specialized Ombuds Offices, they definitely could. So, why aren’t more of them at least making moves toward this goal? Do they think that the cost is too great to staff an Ombudsman or are they perhaps fearful of having an outside consultant or an Ombudsman around?
Obviously every institution is different. As far as cost is concerned, it’s tough to calculate the exact cost savings of an Ombuds Program, as you can’t calculate the cost of a calamity that didn’t happen because it was averted by having an Ombudsman. Regardless, there have been studies that show significant return on investment created by Ombuds Programs. However, if I were to take a guess, I don’t think money is the issue at all, as most NCAA schools should know by now that the cost of one major conflict can be worth an Ombudsman’s yearly salary one hundred times over. Instead, I would have to say that most programs don’t fully understand the benefits of having an Ombudsman, and from history we all know that people generally fear what they do not understand. They also may see the addition of an Ombudsman as a loss of control. For example, when an outside evaluator comes in to evaluate a program, there is generally something called “evaluator anxiety” that is experienced. Staff and executives wonder if they are being judged and if their positions will be at risk after a “nosy” evaluator makes their report. Likewise, perhaps some Athletics Personnel think an Ombudsman may scrutinize their actions and pose a threat to their positions. This is definitely the wrong way to think about an Ombudsman though.
Athletics Personnel must see the Ombudsman as a resource and even a way to protect them from making costly mistakes. For instance, if an athlete comes to a coach about a problem they are experiencing, the coach is now put on notice and has the weight of making the right chain of decisions to see that this problem is resolved properly or brought to the right audience. Perhaps the institution already has a wonderfully designed system for dealing with conflict. Bravo! However, every situation is different, complaints can be indirect or ambiguous at times, and coaches and other staff may either not have the time to deal with them or lack the expertise needed to do so. On the other hand, if a complaint is brought to an Ombudsman, the coach is not put on notice and does not bear the weight of now making the right chain of decisions to see that the complaint is given the right attention. Thus, you have a professional office now dealing with the complaint, which can save a coach, staff member, or athletic director from getting in the stressful position of knowing that a single mistake in their handling of a complaint might later put them in the hot seat. If you look at it this way, having an Ombudsman around helps most members of the Athletic Department protect themselves from making damning errors in the process of dealing with conflicts.
Overall, an Ombudsman is a resource for all stakeholders, is confidential, impartial, and can provide a university with continued non-attributable reports on the issues dealt with, so that decision makers can correct systemic areas of concern and create new policies and procedures designed to mitigate or resolve those concerns. So, again, why aren’t all NCAA schools actively looking to create Ombuds Offices? I believe it can be summed up with one word, “fear.” This is a fear of the unknown and unfamiliar Ombudsman and a fear of not having absolute control over problems that arise. However, I would argue that having a third party to take the lead in conflict should be thought of by decision makers as a godsend. Not only can an Ombudsman protect them from making costly mistakes in dealing with conflict, they can also help alleviate much of the stress that regular conflicts place on athletics personnel, freeing them up to focus more time on other aspects of their jobs. Thus, while much of the talk about Ombuds programs focuses on protecting athletes, decision makers must also realize that Ombuds programs are a benefit to everyone, including themselves.
No program is immune from conflict. Even the best managed programs have occasional problems that make the evening news. With the issues present in Intercollegiate Athletics today, institutions must press for proactive, continual improvements through regular assessment and employment of conflict-trained personnel such as Ombudsmen. Decision makers need to look around and realize that if they are not proactively seeking help to take regular, measured, strategic, and knowledgeable steps toward mitigating and managing conflict within their programs, they are failing to protect the entire student body, the staff, the university they represent, and ultimately themselves. Hopefully more NCAA programs will begin to realize that these risks are reason enough to get over their fears and begin taking steps to create an Ombuds Office at their university.
Author: Jeff Sather
Sports Conflict Institute Founder, Joshua Gordon, interviewed on Front Office Sports.
In this episode of SCI Talk, we explore College Basketball with Connor Letourneau of The Oregonian. He discusses the issues and controversies surrounding college basketball today, and suggests methods that can be implemented to cultivate a more conducive environment for the student-athlete.
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In this episode of SCI Talk, we explore the NBA with Steve Kyler of Basketball Insiders. He discusses issues and perspectives concerning the NBA, and some of the developing ideas and concepts that are in place to help the game progress.
Follow Steve on Twitter @stevekylerNBA
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When managing an event, organizers must always be wary of one very crucial detail, Murphy’s Law is in effect. No matter how well you plan, there is always a chance for a fiasco. In a February 2014 episode of SCI TV, SCI founder Joshua Gordon, asked Gil Fried, a professor at the University of New Haven Sports Management Department and the Executive Director of Patron Management, “how do you protect a sport when the arena isn’t just an arena, but is 26.2 miles long?” His question was in reference to protecting spectators and participants at the Boston Marathon from further terrorist attacks. Professor Fried answered that “you can never guarantee perfect safety.” He also stated that “if people really wanted to attack, they’d attack.” Fried was not saying that “reasonable safety” was impossible, but was simple stating that “perfect safety” is not a guarantee. Thus, there is always a chance for a disaster, whether you are talking about a safety disaster or any other type of disaster that could happen at a large event. I don’t mean that you shouldn’t do everything possible to mitigate the chances of disasters, calamities, problems, and conflicts. You should. However, you should also expect that your planning will never perfectly end such occurrences from happening. Therefore, event management personnel should always have a plan for dealing with conflicts appropriately when they do occur.
As a small, but amusing example, I can offer up my experience as a participant in last year’s Thanksgiving Day 5k road race in Springfield, Oregon, The Turkey Stuffer. If you grew up in the Eugene/Springfield area, as I did, and were a local runner, odds are that at some point you may have raced a 5k in freezing conditions, a torrential downpour, or dense fog on Thanksgiving morning at least a time or two. On Thanksgiving morning of 2013 I was feeling good and was ready to run hard at the Turkey Stuffer before then stuffing myself with food for the remainder of the day. After I warmed up for the race and got to start line, I noticed no less than ten very good local runners up front, many of whom I trained with from time to time. “This is great, we’re going to battle it out today and end up pushing each other to run some fast times,” I thought. The gun went off and we were gone. A group of about 10 to 12 of us immediately went to the front and began pushing the pace with another 1200 or so people in tow behind us.
The race goes through a maze of streets, so it’s very important that the course is marked well and that there are trained course officials at the turns (hint, hint). This time however, someone didn’t seem to think this issue was of great importance, as just over a mile into the race, we were pointed down the wrong street by a course official. Up front, a few of us began to realize that something was wrong, and you could feel a bit of uneasiness beginning to creep into each stride. All of sudden, someone finally shouted, “are we going the wrong way?” At once, everyone started to groan. Then some obscenities were yelled and a sudden stop finally occurred. A few of the top runners in the field didn’t even try to turn around and get back on course, they just gave up. As for the rest of us, we turned around to find 1200 plus people running straight at us. We began running toward them and motioning for them to turn around. The whole fiasco reminded me of the parade scene from the movie “Animal House.” It was complete pandemonium and people seemed to be running in all directions, jumping over shrubs, running into one another and making a mad dash to get back to the right course. One person I know decided to just walk over to a point in the race where the course doubles back on itself and rejoin it in the place he thought he ought to be in (of course he cut a full mile off of the course by doing this). Others of us ended up running a 5k that was just over 3.5 miles (according to a friend’s GPS watch) instead of the 3.1 miles that we were expecting to race. The further up front you were, the longer you ended up running, so our quest to push each other for a fast time was ruined.
At least it wasn’t the Olympics, only a local road race. However, there were still some upset individuals out there who drove across town early in the morning and paid money to take part in what they thought was an organized race. Fiascos do happen though. In a case such as this, there is no way that a race director could tell all of the participants to get back on the line for a “redo.” What was done was done. You can’t fix it. However, you can make sure that you relay the right message to the participants. A simple email to individuals or a notice on the Parks and Recreation District website, that thanked participants for coming out and then apologized to them for the mishap, with a promise to correct the problem for next year, would have been plenty good to everyone there. Instead, I never even saw a single acknowledgement of the incident. There was only a post on their Facebook page, which basically said “thanks for coming out.” Further, I felt sorry for the race timer as he received most of the direct complaints, yet, to my knowledge he was only hired to do the timing, not to layout and manage the course.
Although it was a memorable experience, it is not one that I would like to repeat in future races and I wouldn’t be surprised if a good number of the people from that race will think twice about running it again this year. Overall, the moral of this story is that in any event the planning must also include a plan for dealing with calamities, disasters, or other problems that may still arise. Hopefully an event is managed so well that 99.9% of these issues are mitigated. However, Murphy’s Law is always in effect. So, create a plan that mitigates issues from happening, but also creates protocol for dealing with those issues, should they happen regardless of your best efforts. From this example, all that was needed was for event management to acknowledge the issue, apologize to the participants, and make amends by promising to fix the problem for next year. This would have been an effective apology that was also simple to disseminate to participants. Instead, a fun local road race called The Turkey Stuffer is now known to many local runners by another nickname, “The Cluster F***er.”
In all, not handling the mistake properly might cost the race some future participants, and hurt it’s reputation, but in reality this probably won’t result in a large loss to the event, as it was only a small race to begin with. However, what if the same thing happened in a major marathon that offered prize money, had $150 entry fees, and hosted over 50,000 participants, paying around a thousand bucks each in travel and lodging costs to be there? Handling the mistake properly would now seem to be exponentially more difficult. Further, failure to handle the mistake in a proper and timely manner could result in a loss of reputation and large future losses to the event.
Mistakes like this happen more often that you would think, as the news is littered with stories from events that went awry. Strongly incorporating conflict management into event planning is not only a smart thing to do, but I believe that Murphy’s Law also makes it an absolute necessity.
Author: Jeff Sather
As a practitioner in appropriate dispute resolution, I often like to look back on my experiences prior to entering the field. Having around a decade of business management experience, coaching runners for just as long, and spending countless more years as an athlete (though not a great one), I have seen my share of conflict in business and in sports. As a business manager I’ve seen employee-to-employee disputes, employee-to-customer disputes, customer-to-customer disputes, business-to-business disputes and so on. As a coach and athlete, I’ve seen various types of athlete-to-athlete disputes, coach-to-athlete disputes, coach-to-coach disputes, and about every other combination of stakeholder group disputes that you can imagine. Some of these disputes were short-lived and ended well, others ended in dismissal, suspension, or another form of punishment, but I would argue that most did not “end” at all. In fact, I believe that most internal team disputes quietly fester and ultimately create dysfunction on a larger scale, leading to stifled team performance and ultimately significant costs in the form of both dollars and wins.
Personally, I believe that the business world can learn a lot about the costs of ongoing internal team disputes by studying the impacts that they can have on the performance of sports teams. In sports, you don’t have to be an appropriate dispute resolution practitioner to spot a dysfunctional team that suffers from internal conflict. It is blatantly obvious by both their performance on and off-the-field. Internal conflict can lead to costly miscommunications, penalties, ejections, and losses. Further, team frustration and anger over growing conflict may also end up leading to PR embarrassments, as players or coaches relieve their frustrations in public view. Of course, I’m not saying that PR embarrassments are always related to internal team conflict. More often, I believe that teams who continue to suffer PR embarrassments have systemic problems within their recruiting methodology and/or lack conflict management systems and training within their organization. However, the basic argument that I want to make is that internal conflicts and disputes lead to noticeably diminished team performance.
Highly functioning teams need to be able to communicate effectively and often between team members. When disputes arise between team members and they are either reprimanded or made to sweep the dispute under the rug, there is no real resolution. This often leads to strained teammate communication, as individuals may only communicate when absolutely needing to do so, which can then wreak havoc on the way the entire team begins to function. For example, think of how it feels when you’re caught in the middle of a dispute between friends or family members. Does the dispute begin to wear on you and change your communication patterns with others?
As a manager, I can remember mediating a dispute between two employees in which both of them had become so angered that they had refrained from talking to one another. This put a large stress on other employees and made it blatantly obvious to customers that something was dysfunctional. As their manager, I was able to tell them that their “solution” (to not talk to each other) was not acceptable and that they would either need to be willing to mediate and resolve their differences, or I would have to make necessary changes, as their behavior was not acceptable in a team environment. Grudgingly, in separate conversations, they both agreed to come to the table and talk to one another. Utilizing narrative mediation we were able to uncover attribution errors and break down other previously held assumptions that they had about each other. Apologies were readily given with these new understandings. I was then able to guide them toward developing a plan, including processes for more effective future communication to avoid falling into the same patterns that led to their original dispute, and future courses of action should another unfortunate event happen. Not only would their working relationship soon recover, but their friendship did as well. Had I simply reprimanded them and then ordered them to adhere to a solution that I came up with, they never would have truly resolved their differences. They might have tolerated each other to save their jobs, but they would not again have functioned as part of a finely tuned team.
This is precisely why mediation in sports is so important. Teammates, coaching staff, administration and other contributing entities have enduring relationships. If they do not resolve their disputes and other internal conflicts, the team as a whole will fail to work together in the harmonious way required of all beautifully and finely tuned machines. In other words, the team will underperform.
There are a number of steps that teams can take on their path toward becoming “finely tuned machines.” Among which are to resolve and mitigate conflicts by getting key members of their team and coaching staff trained and by hiring a sports-conflict practitioner to consult with them on a regular basis. To further reduce internal team conflict, a sports-conflict practitioner can regularly facilitate their meetings to uncover and resolve areas of conflict for athletes, coaches, and administration. Of course, sports mediation can always be utilized as needed to make sure that disputes don’t “fester” and become larger problems. Teams can also employ a part-time of full-time Ombudsman. Ultimately, when team stakeholders work with a sports-conflict practitioner, I feel that the practitioner’s input and coaching also begins to increase the “conflict IQ” of all stakeholders involved, leaving them more able to quickly resolve their own day-to-day future conflicts.
To put it bluntly, I believe the inner workings of any well-functioning team must include the ability to resolve conflict appropriately and expeditiously if they are ever to reach their full potential. Services such as sports mediation, team facilitation, and Ombuds services are relatively low-cost, high-impact solutions for mitigating internal team conflict and improving team performance. I am particularly adamant about these services not only because I am a practitioner in the field and have seen their benefits, but because I can look back on my prior experiences as a manager, coach, and athlete and truthfully say that I believe many unresolved conflicts would have been resolved and led to improved team performance had the appropriate dispute resolution services been utilized.
Author: Jeff Sather
Conflicts in sports – especially those in high-profile sports leagues – differ from many other high-profile conflicts due to the nature of stakeholders in the conflict. Fans of players, teams, and leagues have an unorthodox relationship with these organizations and entities. The fans are stakeholders insofar as what happens with their given interest truly does impact their lives. A fan will have much interest in what happens with their favorite player, team, or league, to the point where their identity is often tied into that interest. However, fans are not stakeholders in the conflict in a traditional way of being a stakeholder. That is, they (generally) do not have an actual monetary or other tangible stake in the outcome of the conflict. The fans are generally not present for the resolution of the conflict, no matter which system is used, yet are impacted nonetheless. Due to this special relationship between fans and those in the conflict, use of mediation in sports may be able to resolve the conflict in a way that appeals to fans the most. Mediation in sports could offer a quick resolution and a win-win scenario, both of which lead to higher morale among fans.
When a conflict occurs within an organization, it clouds the fans’ perception of what is going on with regard to the actual sport. The longer the conflict lingers, the more time the fans have to become frustrated. In terms of having a good relationship with fans, an organization should want to have as few, as small, and as quick of conflicts as possible. Mediation is touted as being a conflict resolution process which, when effective, can bring about resolution in a timelier manner than litigation, arbitration, or negotiation because of the informal and open nature of the process. If a sports team is able to resolve a conflict quickly, fan morale will be less likely to suffer.
The primary reason for fans to engage in sports is for the enjoyment of the game, whatever game that may be. When conflicts happen, fans will often have lower morale, spending the time normally devoted to the enjoyments of the sport thinking about the conflict. Use of meditation in sports could combat this negative effect by being an avenue for the two sides to work together. If fans believe that the two sides of the conflict will resolve it in a way that could potentially lead to a healthy working relationship going forward, they may worry less about the long-term impacts of the conflict, and suffer less from changes in morale. Mediation as a process aims for and allows both parties to ‘win,’ which can help those in the conflict to have a much better post-conflict relationship. Due to the relative speed of the mediation process, a conflict has less of a chance of lingering in the media and becoming a public relations nightmare. A conflict will have more lasting impacts on fan support and morale the longer it persists over time. With this in mind, fans will be able to confidently focus on the enjoyment of the sport, knowing that the conflict will have less impact than it might if it were to be litigated, arbitrated, or negotiated.
While sports organizations may have legitimate reasons for wanting to pursue other mechanisms of conflict resolution than mediation, fan morale should be kept in mind as a reason to consider mediation in sports.
Author: Mitchell Kiefer
In this episode of SCI TV, we explore the theme of Reinventing the NCAA with the University of Nebraska’s Josephine Potuto. She discusses issues and perspectives regarding reinventing the NCAA, and improvements to the system to make it a more enriching and consistently positive experience for student-athletes.
Josephine (Jo) R. Potuto has been Nebraska’s faculty representative (FAR) at the NCAA and conference level since May 15, 1997.
In 2002, Potuto was named Outstanding Faculty Athletics Representative by the All-American Football Foundation. From 2008-09 to 2011-12 she was president of the 1A FAR (FARs from FBS institutions). Among her NCAA positions, Potuto spent nine years (the maximum) on the NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions (chair her last two years) and currently substitutes when a member cannot serve. She was one of three Big 12 Conference representatives on the NCAA Division I Management Council, served on the NCAA Men’s Gymnastics Championship Committee, and currently serves on an NCAA-wide (all divisions) committee to advise NCAA staff on student-athlete issues and educational programming for coaches, staff, and student-athletes.
A sports law expert, Potuto regularly lectures and consults on sports issues in general and NCAA processes in particular. She is an expert witness in litigation involving sports issues. She testified before the House Subcommittee on the Constitution regarding due process in NCAA infractions hearings.
Potuto earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism at Rutgers’ Douglass College, and her master’s degree in English literature at Seton Hall. She earned her juris doctorate at the Rutgers Law College.
Sports Conflict Institute’s Joshua Gordon and Dr. Ken Pendleton discuss group dynamics with guest Dr. Mark Eys, co-author of Group Dynamics in Sport. They cover elements of group cohesion, it’s effect on performance, and which team activities build or undermine cohesion.
Successful group performance is the result of many complex factors, but Dr. Mark Eys of Wilfrid Laurier University specializes in teasing out which factors matter, or at least which can make the difference between winning and losing in a close matchup.
“Ultimately if there is overwhelming talent, it’s going to overwhelm,” Eys admits. “But (cohesion) could be the differentiating factor when you’re talking about groups that are equal with respect to strength.” Studies do show there is a reasonable, moderate correlation between cohesion and performance.
So what makes a cohesive team? “When you think about group performance as an outcome variable, it’s very complex,” Eys says. These factors can be related to leadership, role acceptance, environment, and personality. Two of the most studied are social cohesion, a sense of belonging, and task cohesion, how united a group is around completing a particular task.
To improve both types of cohesion, Eys recommends teams pay special attention to goal setting and not just individual goals. “Getting on (the same) page from a task perspective is probably the first and most pragmatic activity groups can do. Make sure you understand what you’re striving for and how you’re going to get there. Set performance and process goals that are very specific, that athletes can buy into during practice, that coaches are involved, and that you monitor over time. I think it keeps the team directed.”
There could also be such a thing as too much cohesion. “If social cohesion is really high, it can lead to distraction around completing a task,” Eys said. “There might be this tradeoff if you consider both the social and task aspects of cohesion. We don’t want to get to a point where we can’t have open and honest conversations.”
A form of team activity that tends to be destructive to cohesion is hazing. “(As a team) you have a goal of welcoming players, to initiate them, to bring them into the fold of the group,” Eys said. “Hazing obviously is a real nasty level of initiation and welcoming. There are alternatives, (and doing) welcoming activities in a more positive fashion is really important.”
Eys believes that studying and understanding group dynamics allows teams to be proactive with the inevitable conflicts that arise in sports. “It’s a really emotional laden environment; players play because they want to be on the field, they have desires that might be in conflict with other players. The more proactive you can be about these issues, and the more thought that can go into the group processes ahead of time, is really important.” Thinking about role development, cohesion, and goal setting Eys says, “can save a lot of pain later.”
Watch the entire interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L42QNg-m1Y4