Friend and Foe: When to Cooperate, When to Compete, and How to Succeed at Both by Adam Galinsky, Maurice Schweitzer Page A
Authors: Adam Galinsky, Maurice Schweitzer
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disrespected.
We used this measure to create groups of all high-testosterone, all low-testosterone, or a mix of high-, low-, and average-testosterone individuals and had them do the same sentence task we just described. The results mirrored our first study—the all-high-testosterone groups did worse than the groups that had a range of testosterone because they spent more time embroiled in conflict.
This same effect has even been documented in baboons. When two baboons are both high in testosterone, they move toward each other in a competitive and assertive way that can promote conflict. When two baboons have different levels of testosterone, the one with lower testosterone yields and moves away.
So we can see that too much talent can derail groups by eliminating the necessary pecking order that helps produce effective coordination. Whether it’s winning the NBA title, securing a victory on the battlefield, or building and sustaining a beehive, a group of individuals are most effective when they are integrated into a seamless whole. Hierarchy helps achieve this collaborative coordination by suppressing individual desires and synchronizing behavior.
But sometimes more talent
is
better. Consider baseball. When we studied the relationship between talent and performance on baseball teams—for the same 10-year period we studied talent and performance on basketball teams—the benefits from attracting top talent were linear: the more talent, the better. The “too much talent” effect didn’t exist! In baseball, you can never have too much talent.
How do we explain this finding? As we have seen, hierarchy is most useful in situations where coordination is the key to success. Thus, the key to whether or not you can have “too much talent” hinges on how much the group performance requires coordination between the team’s members.
Baseball and basketball differ markedly in terms of their need for coordination. A baseball team’s offense plays sequentially rather than simultaneously. Each player bats individually. As a result, each batter gets approximately equal opportunities to hit. Of course, there are opportunities to cooperate on offense in baseball, but the extent of coordination between offensive players in baseball pales in comparison with basketball. In basketball, the number of shots a team can take is necessarily limited, and teams need a mechanism to efficiently allocate and reduce conflict over this scarce resource. Team members also depend on each other to create opportunities for high-percentage shots. Team defense is also more interdependent in basketball than it is in baseball. In basketball, defending requires all five players to constantly coordinate their actions and to support each other.
These differences were best expressed by two quotes uttered within three days of each other in the spring of 2010. In one, the sports columnist Bill Simmons referred to baseball as “an individual sport masquerading as a team sport.” In the other, President Barack Obama referred to basketball as “the quintessential team sport” on CBS’s March Madness broadcast.
In other words, whenever individuals perform largely independent tasks, like baseball players, you can never have enough talent. But in interdependent settings like beehives, Wall Street research groups, and basketball courts, more talent can lead to lackluster performance.
The basketball, Wall Street, chicken, and testosterone data offer cases where hierarchy wins. The baseball data suggest that sometimes hierarchy doesn’t really matter. But in some cases hierarchy can actually hurt, killing performance and people.
When Hierarchy Hurts
In studying when hierarchy helps versus when it hurts, we began to realize that the more
human
the task, the less useful hierarchy appeared to be. So what makes a task human?
Humans, more than any other species, have the capacity to learn from each other and produce insights that build off each other’s
We used this measure to create groups of all high-testosterone, all low-testosterone, or a mix of high-, low-, and average-testosterone individuals and had them do the same sentence task we just described. The results mirrored our first study—the all-high-testosterone groups did worse than the groups that had a range of testosterone because they spent more time embroiled in conflict.
This same effect has even been documented in baboons. When two baboons are both high in testosterone, they move toward each other in a competitive and assertive way that can promote conflict. When two baboons have different levels of testosterone, the one with lower testosterone yields and moves away.
So we can see that too much talent can derail groups by eliminating the necessary pecking order that helps produce effective coordination. Whether it’s winning the NBA title, securing a victory on the battlefield, or building and sustaining a beehive, a group of individuals are most effective when they are integrated into a seamless whole. Hierarchy helps achieve this collaborative coordination by suppressing individual desires and synchronizing behavior.
But sometimes more talent
is
better. Consider baseball. When we studied the relationship between talent and performance on baseball teams—for the same 10-year period we studied talent and performance on basketball teams—the benefits from attracting top talent were linear: the more talent, the better. The “too much talent” effect didn’t exist! In baseball, you can never have too much talent.
How do we explain this finding? As we have seen, hierarchy is most useful in situations where coordination is the key to success. Thus, the key to whether or not you can have “too much talent” hinges on how much the group performance requires coordination between the team’s members.
Baseball and basketball differ markedly in terms of their need for coordination. A baseball team’s offense plays sequentially rather than simultaneously. Each player bats individually. As a result, each batter gets approximately equal opportunities to hit. Of course, there are opportunities to cooperate on offense in baseball, but the extent of coordination between offensive players in baseball pales in comparison with basketball. In basketball, the number of shots a team can take is necessarily limited, and teams need a mechanism to efficiently allocate and reduce conflict over this scarce resource. Team members also depend on each other to create opportunities for high-percentage shots. Team defense is also more interdependent in basketball than it is in baseball. In basketball, defending requires all five players to constantly coordinate their actions and to support each other.
These differences were best expressed by two quotes uttered within three days of each other in the spring of 2010. In one, the sports columnist Bill Simmons referred to baseball as “an individual sport masquerading as a team sport.” In the other, President Barack Obama referred to basketball as “the quintessential team sport” on CBS’s March Madness broadcast.
In other words, whenever individuals perform largely independent tasks, like baseball players, you can never have enough talent. But in interdependent settings like beehives, Wall Street research groups, and basketball courts, more talent can lead to lackluster performance.
The basketball, Wall Street, chicken, and testosterone data offer cases where hierarchy wins. The baseball data suggest that sometimes hierarchy doesn’t really matter. But in some cases hierarchy can actually hurt, killing performance and people.
When Hierarchy Hurts
In studying when hierarchy helps versus when it hurts, we began to realize that the more
human
the task, the less useful hierarchy appeared to be. So what makes a task human?
Humans, more than any other species, have the capacity to learn from each other and produce insights that build off each other’s
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