The same breakdown of group dynamics can also be found in the highly competitive environment of Wall Street equity analysts, in which high-performing individuals are often singled out by journalists from the trade press. As you might expect, these people tend to be headhunted and often end up working for the same companies – but a study from 2011 found that employing a large number of these stars in a single team rarely brings the profits you might expect. In many cases, it seemed like the team, as a whole, may have done better if the leader had hired more mediocre talent.
Clearly, a group can be much greater or less than the sum of its parts, and individual geniuses, in particular, may sometimes struggle to gel with their workmates.
Creative collapse
None of this previous research looked specifically at creativity, however. This led Ning Li at the University of Iowa, US, to wonder how particularly creative team members – the real-world Don Drapers – would influence team dynamics.
Collaborating with colleagues in China, Li surveyed the Research and Development teams of 23 firms in multiple industries, including manufacturing, transport, hydropower and aerospace. In each case, the team leaders were asked to rate the creativity of the individual members. Li and his colleagues asked each member to describe their relationships with the other team members, including how often they relied on each other for input in their work. They also asked them about their learning on the job and whether they got the chance to practice new skills. Finally, Li asked leaders within the company to rate the team’s creativity, as a whole unit.
As Li had hypothesised, teams centred around particularly creative individuals faced some unique challenges. While the creative stars’ brilliant ideas certainly contributed to the team’s output, this came at a cost to their colleagues, who tended to find fewer opportunities to learn and develop their own talents. “The other people become less creative,” says Li, “and that mitigates the benefits provided by the star.”
One reason may be intimidation. “You don't want to contribute your ideas in front of a star co-worker because you don't want to make yourself look like a fool, or say something stupid,” says Li. It could also be a sense of dependency – you know that they’ll come up with something brilliant, so you don’t have to try so hard, he says.
Confirming these effects, Li also looked at data from a further 113 sales teams, whose jobs required very different kinds of creativity from the work of the R&D departments. “They need to invent different ways to attract customers,” says Li, whose results were published in 2020.
The Link LonkMay 07, 2021 at 02:00PM
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