Before the Fighting Irish tip off the season opener in Purcell Pavilion on Friday, the 2015 ACC Championship banner will be unfurled. It will be the last chance to cherish the postseason run of what arguably has become Notre Dame’s most beloved basketball team, a tough and competitive group that was likable at every step…
Three weeks ago, I documented the Notre Dame basketball team’s progress over the course of the season within the construct of Bruce Tuckman’s stages of team development. You will recall that Tuckman, a professor of psychology at Ohio State, identified a model for the stages of team development and successful leader behaviors for each. His…
The score was 55-55. Butler’s Roosevelt Jones had the ball with a standing dribble at quarter court as the clock wound down. Pat Connaughton stood in a defensive stance as he waited just outside the free throw line for Jones to drive for what he hoped would be a game winning shot. Jones had been…
The date: October 26, 1973 The setting: Notre Dame’s pep rally the night before the USC football game The speaker: Irish co-captain Willie Townsend The backdrop: Undefeated Notre Dame had not beaten USC in its last six games, a 0-4-2 run punctuated by Anthony Davis’ six touchdown performance in the Los Angeles Coliseum in November…
It’s almost impossible to take an intro-level college management course without encountering Bruce Tuckman’s research on team development. Dr. Tuckman studied how groups work together; and his 1965 theory of of team development is a cornerstone of leadership education to this day. Tuckman identified four stages of a team’s growth that (a) are absolutely true…