I've been reading a most interesting book: Images of Organization, by Gareth Morgan. One of the chapters explains dialectics - "the study of opposites" - as a way to understand how both positive and negative feedback phenomena shape the nature of stability or change in an organisation. It has given me new insight into why it is that some people appear to perform below their individual capability, when operating in the context of a team (and perhaps in particular circumstances). Such is evident not only in sports teams, but also in companies !
Positive feedback loops result in 'virtuous circles' or 'self-fulfilling prophecies'. One example is the success of the football competitions in the UK and Spain: exciting games combined with supporter fanaticism result in high attendances, which attracts high media interest, which leads to high revenues for the clubs (and the league association), which allows them to attract the best players for top wages, which eventually leads back to exciting games.
But there are clearly also negative feedback phenomena, which provide counterbalance to such positive feedback. For instance the sometimes excessive behaviours of some top players (who cannot handle their fame, their wealth, their god-like status, etc.) putting negative pressure on their market value; excessive players' paychecks putting clubs in financial distress, which in turn has already resulted in some clubs resorting to game-fixing, with catastrophic (albeit not unsurmountable) impact on the game's reputation and consequent revenue potential.
I'm particularly interested in similar positive and negative feedback phenomena within teams.
Especially in sports it seems that team performance more often than not depends on the heroics of individuals. For instance in football (soccer) it is the strikers and goalkeepers who usually take up (or are given) that role of 'hero'. But that then puts them in a paradoxical situation: do they take up their team role (eg. strikers defending when their opponents have the upper hand) or do they save their energy for those few occasions when they're in a position to shine as 'heroes' ?
The dilemma extends to your role as team manager: Do you criticise a striker for taking a shot at goal - which is his role - rather than passing the ball to a better positioned teammate ? Does it depend on whether or not he actually scores ? Should it matter whether he scores ? And, crucially, how does this affect the behaviour among the other team members, since individual heroics, especially when they do not have the desired outcome, could well increase individualism and/or indifference among the others and thus have a negative impact on team performance ?
Similar dynamics and dilemmas are present in companies, where some have let's call it "more visible" roles than others, and perhaps are given the credit for what, ultimately, an entire team has achieved. Like the conductor of a symphonic orchestra getting all the credit for a beautifully executed piece of music even though he or she has not produced a single note !
Of course one can think of situations (i.e. context) where this is entirely appropriate. And much will have to do with organisational culture, too, and with personalities. As is demonstrated in sports, different teams can follow different strategies - and be successful - according to where their respective strengths lie and what their team values are.
The bottom line for me is the following: notwithstanding the saying that "there is no 'I' in 'team' ", team performance still very much depends on the performance of individuals - and on some individuals' performance more than that of others. It is important to understand the relative strength of positive and negative feedback loops between team and individual performance to understand how this will affect individuals' attitudes and behaviours, and how this will ultimately make or break the team.
Thus it could well be that team performance is best served when some members perform below their individual capabilities! And that it is best served when everyone contributes to the heroics of a few team members, where such individual heroics contribute to team performance. But what you do not want to see, is that individual team members pursue individual heroics at the expense of team performance.
