Nascar

Case Study 8 – NASCAR’S Racing Teams

Q1. In what ways do Evernham’s leadership tactics prove consistent with the characteristics and ideas on high performance team and teamwork advanced in the text?

Communicate high standards. Evernham’s leadership emphasize on the need to communicate high standards by setting strong principles such as painstaking preparation, egoless teamwork, and thoroughly original strategizing.

Collective Intelligence. Evernham’s cultivate a positive working environment by motivating his team with ideas about leadership and teamwork. He shape his team members behaviors by adopting useful concepts such as the ‘circle of strength’ through arranging the chairs in office in a circle. This will constantly reinforce that a team effort is always stronger than one on its own.

Make sure members have the right skills. Evernham’s training policy on Rainbow Warriors emphasizes the need for every team member to be equipped with the necessary skills, commitment, ownership, and teamwork to advance the mission. On top of that, he sets clear expectation such as safety, compliance, and efficiency to focus his team towards the vision. Also, he creates clear understanding of each team members so that manpower resources can be applied effectively.

Q2. If you were hired as Jeff Gordon’s new pit crew chief, what team norms would you expect to be in place?

If I were hired as Jeff Gordon’s new pit crew chief, I would expect performance norm to be primarily in place. In such time critical operations, everyone in the team must be aware of the expectation required and to drive the message clearly that teamwork is the key to mission success. Another norm I would expect is high-achievement norms. A positive environment is needed to maintain a high performance team. Everyone should be hunger to win and paying close attention to every detail of the job to achieve the desired outcome. A norm of close knitted family is also expected to foster team cohesiveness...