| The present study examined the concept of intra-team communication, which engages two or more individuals in a message exchange. In this process the sender transmits ideas, knowledge, and thoughts to the receiving party, either a teammate or a team, via explicit (verbal) or implicit (nonverbal) channels. Since the team communication influences performance outcome (Fiore et al., 2001), the current study observed differences between more effective and less effective tennis teams in the game of doubles by inspecting communication patterns and counting message exchanges.;Participants consisted of high skill players from NCAA Division I Florida State Women's Tennis Team. They were involved in a competition condition where one doubles team contended against another. The matches were video and audio taped in order to capture communication that took place between and during the points. Following the matches, the participants were interviewed, so that remaining communication, which was not entirely captured during taping, could be revealed and data triangulated. To analyze communication data, Data Analysis Tool software (Jeong, 2003) was used.;The results indicated that better performing teams used certain patterns more frequently (Action statement → Action statement, Uncertainty statement → Acknowledgement, and Factual statement → Action statement) than the worse performing teams. In addition, worse performing teams showed greater tendency towards using Non-task statement → Non-task statement pattern than the winning teams. This indicates that winning teams showed more capacity for problem solving and coordination than the losing teams.;Also, winning teams were characterized by using ten significant patterns, while losing teams used only four. Besides, winning teams communicated twice as much than the losing teams. This finding is consistent with the previous research by Orasanu (1990) and Mosier and Chidester (1991).;Although teams differed in the quality of communication patterns used, the quantity of types of patterns used was similar (i.e., both teams used about 20 patterns out of possible 36). However, winning teams emerged with higher number of significant patterns (i.e., ten versus four). Furthermore, winning teams used remaining nonsignificant patterns sparingly. In contrast, losing teams used all communication patterns equally and only four emerged as significant. Moreover, visual inspection of the communication diagrams confirmed that overall communication patterns of winning teams, in comparison to losing teams, created more homogeneous model of communication, making message exchange more predictable and hence advantageous in communication process. Finally, the overall results showed that most of the communication was comprised of emotional statements (i.e., more than a half) and action statements (i.e., more than a quarter).;While this study confirms some of the findings of the previous research, additional research is needed to explain additional models of communication, nonverbal communication, and types of communication in relation to the task at hand (i.e., how does the type of task, for example, proactive or reactive, affect communication). Additionally, future research should be directed towards certain patterns and their beneficial values at various stages of competition. |
