The Best Team Or The Best Individual?

Even the best individuals can't give you what you need.

Business is like football, basketball or cycling. It's more of a team work. So it's not surprising that sports analogy is a big part of business.

However, there is still much to be said.

Many of the most successful in the world.

According to Lucy Kellaway of the financial times, about half of the chief executives of large British companies have won sporting events awards. The figures are quite surprising. Many of them say they used to play sports.

What do we learn from sports teams about business teams?

Actually there are many.

After all, both depend on individuals who are ambitious, focused and capable, though sometimes difficult to manage.

In the competitive environment, even a small mistake can lead to a big mistake.

Both team members compete for the ability to squeeze into elite teams, and interpersonal relationships are at stake.

I have long-term research experience for high-performance teams and business teams. Here, I want to solve two mysteries first.

First, people usually stay comfortable in high-performance teams. This is wrong. Second, the best team is usually made up of the best individuals, which is also wrong.

Why? Here are four reasons why I have long observed athletes, lawyers and military medical teams.

All these teams are the best in their industry, some of them are in an unimaginably harsh environment.

Good team members may not be easy to get along with.

Useful personal qualities for high performance teams - motivation, concentration, perfectionism, high expectations, and high average intelligence - may also make it difficult for these individuals to work with others.

For example, self confidence can help you make decisions, but when you become overconfident, you will alienate others.

High IQ can help you think about complex problems, or you can easily ignore others' contributions.

High expectations allow you to set ambitious goals and sometimes make others feel less satisfied.

So you have to magnify these advantages as much as possible and minimize potential risks.

Personal past performance is difficult to migrate to another team.

Whether basketball, law or investment banking, individual star players may find that when they switch from one team to another, it is difficult to reproduce their past outstanding performance.

NBA basketball players need 21 games on average to merge with the new team and resume their pre pfer level.

A team of researchers from Harvard University found that in all 1052 investment analyst samples, all of them are star analysts, and 46% of them are hopping to other investment banks. It is difficult to have any previous high performance, even after 5 years.

One possible explanation is that even in a fairly similar environment, different teams will have different characteristics, and newcomers often need time to adapt.

A more interesting explanation is that the star's personal success is not the result of a rare talent, but based on the support of team structure.

In other words, your team wants to thank you for being their star player, and you want to thank your team for making you so excellent.