My tennis club consists of more than sixty people and regular practice meetings are held on Saturday. We use six courts for four hours. Each member is able to vote for which session during those four hours to participate to play double matches. We play double matches so someone needs to create the game set for twenty four sets' double match based on the player's proficiency and preference. A lot of conflicts are made from making the sets of the games. Because every member tends to think that each own proficiency is higher than other whose proficiency is similar to him or her. In other words, people tend to believe that they are playing better than they really are. It spawns a lot of problems in making matches. In addition to this, relationship between each people also matter when making the games. Some people have a bad relationship with certain people. If the game maker does not know about this relationship situation, then it can also triggers the problems. Therefore, it has a lot of things to consider when creating the game sets for each week.
In this sense, Jason claimed the complaints about the game sets. His main argument was that he always played with people who are playing worse than him. Also, he thought that he is playing fewer than he voted for. However, the game maker, Tom, who has intimate relationship with Jason, thought that he is actually not playing better as much as Jason thought and Tom thought it was fair to play. The proficiency of tennis is very difficult to measure. A great deal of things can have influence on the result of game such wind, luck, condition, sense, and so on. Especially, tennis is one of the very sensitive sports, which means that it is difficult to decide who is playing better or worse objectively. It is even more when those two comparable players have about same proficiency. Jason was mad at Tom's game making, so he just did not show up for games even though he was designated to play. This was very disrespectful way to express his feeling and thoughts because his pair and opponents were also not able to play for those session and they were judged by him that they play worse than him in a bad way.
Tom and Jason were ready to fight again each other. They started to avoid the situation to meet with each other. However, one day, Tom who is older than Jason tried to grab a beer and talk about this situation. Tom explained him how he felt about Jason's behavior. Tom suggested him to apologize for tennis club members for the behavior and making loud problems. Tom and Jason was quite in a good mood and the situation seems to be about to end.
However, after that day, Jason started to avoid him. Jason never talks to him and did not greet to him. Jason just ignored him. He might be such a person who has too strong pride. He just did not like someone advised him and made suggestion for him. After that day, Jason never even looked at Tom. Tom's reaction was disappointment. He was disappointed of him very much because the reason he invited him to drink some beer and talked about the situation is that he has at least some affectionate to him. However, his had was perfectly ignored and Tom also started to avoid him as well. They were now strangers each other.
This relationship started to be apparent in other members. People are not trying to show their opinion but they are somewhat dividing into two groups. It was very bad for tennis club atmosphere. If Jason acted with more polite and consideration with complaining, it did not happen. Jason was too aggressive about the gam sets. The purpose of the tennis club is to leisurely play tennis with each other and help each other to play well. At least Tom tried to resolve the solution by having some heart to heart conversation at the end, however, Jason reacted negatively. If Tom understood that his pride was too high to accept advise, maybe he could find another way to resolve it as well.
This is a good story, because it has an immediate parallel, a manager telling an employee the employee is not working up to standard. Maybe that wouldn't be done over a beer but rather at the place of work. Yet it is a very similar type of conversation as the one Tom had with Jason.
ReplyDeleteIf people have an inflated view of their own abilities, it does make them hard to work with. How can one address this situation? When there is an objective way to measure performance (you said in tennis doubles that is hard to do) then the answer would be to look at the performance data and see what it says about the person's output. The only thing I can imagine doing in the tennis, is to make a video of people playing and to get others to watch the video and rate performance base on that. It would still be subjective, but at least everyone would be rating the same experience.
But let's say that is not possible and all that exists are individual subjective evaluations. Then what Tom told Jason is very likely to lead to hard feelings. Indeed, one might guess that the personality type of somebody who overrates their own performance correlates with not having high regard for the opinion of others. So what might be done in this case?
I'm not sure, but Tom could have previously talked with Jason's opponents and partners to see what their view of Jason's play was. Had that happened, at the least it wouldn't only be coming from Tom. It would be coming from a larger group. If that group generally agreed about Jason's performance, maybe that would convince him, though I'm not sure of that.
In our tennis club, we rate each person's proficiency according to National Tennis Rating Program(NTRP). It scales 2.5(beginner) to 8.0(pro-player). However, since it is the comparably small tennis club in the town, most people are lying on between 3.0 to 4.0. Therefore, we needed more specific rating figure. One way is that keeping track of every matches of him or her, so rate the proficiency according to result of games based on opponents proficiency. Basically it is lining up by result of matches. However, it takes time to keep track of many data to decide and there are still few people who have complaints about it as well, like Jason.
DeleteI am positive that the personality type of somebody who overrates their own performance correlates with not having high regard for the opinion of others. In this case, if the situation is getting more serious, the club president had better kick out him from the club for the peace. Unless he realizes or understands how the club works out, making him leave the club would be a safe way to maintain the club rules.