Michelle Bakjac* maintains a bonded team of workers will always outshine one that places its reliance on a single superstar.
I occasionally ask senior leaders in an organisation what they actually value in their workplaces.
Do they prefer ‘shining stars’, those individuals who are such great performers that they outshine all others within the team?
Or do they value a team that works well together and achieves outcomes as a collective?
There’s an old saying among sports coaches: A champion team will defeat a team of champions.
There is no doubt we can all appreciate teamwork, but there are many of us that secretly also consider the value of shining stars within our teams.
We can sometimes place more value on a single talented person than on a cohesive team that has no standout.
It is interesting what the research shows about this difference perspective.
Imagine the following scenario: You’re an extremely wealthy person admitted to a hospital because of a serious heart condition.
You need a lifesaving operation and because of your influence and financial status, you are given the option of having a world-renowned surgeon flown in to operate.
In those circumstances, we’d all go for the star performer over settling for the standard team of residents, right? Well consider this.
Researchers, Robert Huckman and Gary Pisano from Harvard Business School challenged the status of freelancing experts in a 2006 study.
They measured the success rates of more than 200 cardiac surgeons working in 43 different hospitals.
They specifically examined the patient survival rates of highly experienced freelancers compared to those of resident surgical teams.
After analysing more than 38,000 procedures they found that the performance of individual heart specialists did improve significantly with practice and experience.
However, it was only at the hospitals where they did most of their work.
When the same surgeons left their usual teams to work at different hospitals, their success rates returned to baseline.
This study suggests that working within a bonded team of colleagues helps develop interactive routines that harness the unique talents of each team member.
The authors concluded that elite performance is not as portable as previously thought.
It is more a function of the “familiarity that a surgeon develops with the assets of a given organisation”.
That’s nice way of saying their stars only shine with the support of their colleagues.
Positive psychology has always emphasised the personal benefits of social relationships and connectedness to others.
Now we can say that connectedness makes good business sense, too.
In other words, once we have people riding on the same bus, the next step is to ensure they spend time driving it together.
Working with other people doesn’t mean that you’re working as a team.
Real teamwork implies collaboration, communication, and acknowledgment of a common purpose.
A group is more than just a gathering of people, and not all groups are teams.
Just because you have a group of musicians does not mean they can make beautiful music together.
They have to practise before they become an orchestra.
According to the Team Emotional and Social Intelligence (TESI) model, there are seven skills that will contribute to effective team functioning:
Team Identity
A group with a strong team identity demonstrates belongingness, a desire to work together, and a sense of clarity around the role of each member.
Groups with strong team identity also have high degrees of loyalty.
Motivation
A high level of motivation corresponds with the energy and responsibility levels of the team, and whether competition is working for or against the team.
Having a motivated team requires knowing and meeting desires, setting stretch goals, reinforcing success, and being persistent.
Emotional Awareness
A team’s emotional awareness encompasses the attention it pays to noticing, understanding, and respecting the feelings of its members.
Emotional awareness is a critical factor in motivation, productivity, and a team’s ability to collaborate, making it central to the success of every team.
Communication
Intuitively, we know that communication is an essential factor for a group of people working together.
It provides feedback and guidance on how well each of the team members listens, encourages participation, and discusses sensitive topics.
Stress Tolerance
A team with good stress tolerance knows how well it’s doing in managing the pressures of workload, time constraints, and the real need for work-life balance.
Conflict Resolution
Assessing a team’s conflict resolution means examining how a team processes disagreement.
It is whether it is able to deal with adversity as a way to enhance its functioning, rather than being caught up in the conflict.
This is essential for productivity and creativity.
Positive Mood
A team with a positive mood is built on foundations of encouragement, a sense of humour, and an expectation of success.
Positive mood is a major factor in a team’s flexibility and resilience, and it’s the heart of a ‘can-do’ attitude.
It influences how energised the team’s attitude is.
How does your team rate on these seven components?
*Michelle Bakjac is an experienced Adelaide-based psychologist, organisational consultant, coach, speaker and facilitator and a Director of Bakjac Consulting. She can be contacted at [email protected].
This article first appeared on the Bakjac Consulting website.
