Fallacy of Teamwork in the media

You know what it feels like when you meeting friends at a restaurant, and you're a little bit late and it's raining and you can't find a parking spot anywhere? And just for the heck of it, you drive right to the front door, thinking maybe your friends will see you, sympathize with your parking dilemma and give you that "no problem, we know you're here, take your time" hand-wave? And then just when you're circling by the door, someone pulls out of a spot right up front? You know what it feels like to have that parking lot karma?

Well, I felt that way when I read the story titled "For Job Hunters, The Big Interview is Getting Bigger" on page D1 of the June 3 Wall Street Journal.

Call it Fallacy of Teamwork karma. Here are the two lead paragraphs:

"Anxious about meeting a key hiring manager? Your job-search jitters may soon intensify when you confront the ultimate stress test: a panel of interviewers.

"Group grilling has long been popular among academics, government agencies and nonprofit organizations - sectors that prefer decisions by a consensus of constituencies...Employers, who now have the luxury of being picky with candidates, see selection committees as an efficient way to measure applicants' mettle under fire."

And I see selection committees as Theater of the Cowardly where behavior that should have been left on grade school playgrounds is regarded as some sort of success-in-business predictor.

This is nonsense, the fallacy of teamwork writ large.

Proponents, and there were a few in the article, will say that group interviews give a wide range of managers a chance to see how an applicant will react in a stressful situation. (As an aside, I have no reason to believe - or not - that the reporter, Joann S. Lublin, agrees with any of this. However, describing a panel of interviewers as the "ultimate" stress test is, well, a reach.) I disagree. Group interviews give managers a chance to see how an applicant will react IN A GROUP INTERVIEW!

Think about what's at stake. A person has reached the interview stage at Cogswell Cogs. It's obviously a job she's interested in. Maybe she's just coming back into the workforce. Maybe she's been laid off by a previous employer. Maybe there's financial pressure at home. Or maybe she simply wants to grow her career. This potential job would provide the solution to all those issues. So she wants to do her best. After all, there's a lot riding on this.

So how she reacts and responds to an unsmiling interviewer, a squeaky chair, a series of rapid-fire questions, or an interviewer who keeps cutting her off has NO relationship to how she would handle a typical "stressful" situation if she were on the job. If she were hired, Cogswell Cogs would have already shown faith, confidence and trust in her and her abilities. She'd feel the same. That would have a significant effect on how she would handle, say, a confrontational customer.

Once she's got the job, she's no longer trying to get the job. There's a significant behavior difference between the two. Since we've talked about basketball often in this lens, let's use an example from the hardwood. A candidate to become a head coach of an NBA team will say whatever he needs to say (within reason) to get the job he wants. There are only 30 of these jobs in the world. They pay very, very well. And although almost all of them end with the coach getting fired, it doesn't matter during the selection process. "I love the roster. I'll take the long-view, develop our talent and play the young guys. I'll be a tough disciplinarian. We'll play tough defense and rebound." Then, after the team's record is 14-27, he'll start complaining that he "can't win with the players I've got. We've got to play the older guys so we can win more games and get confidence back. I can't be too tough on them or I'll lose the locker room..." An individual's behavior and motives when they are interviewing for a job are much different from what they are once the candidate has been hired. As such, reaction to stimuli and stresses during the interview process are shot through a different lens.

Let's look at the group interview from the hiring managers' point of view. One of the situations in the Journal piece is described as a group session in which one interviewing manager never smiled, sat with his arms crossed and hardly said anything. Why? To play the role of the tough guy? To see how the candidate would react to being interviewed by someone so weak in his own role that he had to put on a performance? Like I said, it's the Theater of the Cowardly. Why? Why do people think this is necessary or beneficial? If I were the candidate and got hired by this company, I'd come in thinking that this guy was a complete knucklehead!

Why interview in a group in the first place? It creates a one-act play of childish behavior in which the managers can show off to each other. Maybe a couple of them will gang up on the candidate, see if she slips up or contradicts herself. And the interview-post mortem will be undoubtedly filled with self-referential evaluations. "I really got her on that one..." Or "I didn't like her body language when I asked her about her previous employer." Come on, people. We're supposed to be adults. I wouldn't tolerate this behavior from a grammar-schooler.

Why interview in a group in the first place? Maybe because it absolves an individual hiring manager of responsibility. If you agree with the Journal authors premise that employers have the luxury of being picky, it also means that they probably don't have the luxury of making a mistake. In a marketplace that favors the job-seeker, there's more tolerance for hiring an average performer. You'll get wiggle room from the bosses if you hire the best candidate available. But if employers can be picky, that means that there are theoretically a lot of good candidates available. It also means that getting the wrong one stands out as a mistake. Not a lot of people have the self-confidence to make that call on their own. It's a lot easier to go through a hiring process knowing that you weren't alone in making the recommendation.

Of course, if the candidate doesn't work out, there will be no shortage of "I told you so" from those in the group interview. Fallacy of Teamwork, indeed.

Why interview in a group in the first place? It creates a different environment for the interviewing managers as well. While one manager may think it's personally entertaining to play the role of the curmudgeon or the rude know-it-all, how does this really - based on evidence - help them determine if the candidate is best suited for the actual work he or she would be doing?

And if the candidate breaks out in a sweat, stammers through answers and doesn't perform as the group expects, they can all pat each other on the back and said, "Ahh, yes. Not hiring her was the right decision! If she couldn't handle a little heat in an interview, she certainly wouldn't be able to represent Cogswell Cogs out in the field!"

Well, congratulations. I hope you're proud of your behavior. And I hope she gets hired by Spacely Sprockets and beats your brains out.

Thanks for reading. More to come.

The July 7, 2008 issue of The Wall Street Journal featured a special section -- The Journal Report -- in collaboration with MIT Sloan Management Review. One of the stories titled Follow the Leaders was written by Dr. Craig L. Pearce, an associate professor of management at the Peter E. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management in Claremont, Calif.

The premise of his piece is that a way to make teams function better is by designating more than one leader. His concept is called "shared leadership."

In the piece, he writes "Our research showed just how effective shared leadership can be...we found that shared leadership led to better results.

"For example, we recently completed a study of 66 companies on the Inc. 500 list, looking at five-year growth in earnings and the number of employees, and surveying top management team members about their experiences."

First fallacy right there, and it has nothing to do with teamwork. As we learned from Phil Rosenzweig's "The Halo Effect," the research and interviews were done AFTER the five year period of growth. All the interviews and results are shot through the prism of known results. How you think about a process in retrospect is changed when you know the results. So, with that said, the piece continues.

"We found that shared leadership was a significant predictor of a company's growth rates: If a company's top management team practiced shared leadership, there was an excellent change that the company's financials were headed up."

Here's the scary part. People will believe this stuff.

If shared leadership actually was a "significant predictor" (think about both of those words) then all you would have to do is adopt shared leadership, get out of the way and watch the earnings roll in!

This is precisely like sports statistics you hear spouted on NFL telecasts. "The Giants are 9-0 when Joe Morris carries the ball at least 25 times." The commentators would have you believe that Joe Morris's carries are a "significant predictor" of the team's success. If that were true, the Giants should have handed the ball to Morris in each of its first 25 plays, then spend the rest of the games making reservations for the Super Bowl!

And this assertion does not even begin to consider all the other competitive factors that may have impacted a business's results. Maybe the company got a quicker-than-expected government approval for a regulated product. Maybe a tough, talented competitor slipped a little. Maybe a new technology burst unexpectedly onto the marketplace. But none of this seems to be accounted for in Pearce's sweeping conclusion that "shared leadership" was a significant predictor of success.

The piece is full of contradictions. In the third graf, Pearce writes, "...a better approach is to share the top duties, so the person in charge at any moment is the one with the key knowledge, skills and abilities for the aspect of the job at hand."

Almost 20 grafs later, he offers, "Clearly, it's tougher to share leadership when a society is based on unequal distribution of power." Oh. Kind of like the United States and most American businesses?

Okay, let's reset. Shared leadership is a concept that Pearce describes in which several subject matter experts on a team "share" the leadership role traditionally designated to one individual. Actually, those "shared" leaders are simply well-performing team members.

Look at the earlier module on the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. No traditional "leaders," just members of the orchestra taking turns in the traditional leadership role. This is a genuinely great team, because it has team members that do exactly what they are supposed to do, trained to do, and want to do.

But does the concept of "shared leadership" hold water in the typical American business, where real people with real human pressures, conflicts, concerns and issues form both the leadership and the teams? Not really, and to his credit, Pearce does a good job pointing out the holes in his own argument.

The biggest holes come closer to the end of the piece. To go along with the previously mentioned issues with unequal distribution of power, Pearce adds that "those who occupy leadership positions are less likely to share their authority, since they likely believe it is something they have earned." Absolutely true. And it describes most American business senior executives, because that kind of earned authority is something that is rewarded.

Pearce also looks at how differing international approaches to business has an impact on the structure of leadership. Among the circumstances that are usual impediments to "shared" leadership are an atmosphere of aggression, as opposed to nurturing. "Aggressive societies have people who are assertive, materialistic and competitive," he writes, describing habits and attitudes that are encouraged and rewarded in (at least) American business culture. Pearce writes, "Generally, assertive societies are at a disadvantage when it comes to shared leadership." He would be referring to, uh, Americans.

"To get people to share leadership," Pearce offers, "the key may be to focus their natural aggression onto an external target -- such as beating competitors or performance benchmarks." In other words, accepting a common goal consistent with individual motivation, something we've written about here previously.

Pearce continues, "In other words, let them see that handing over leadership will help them beat the competition." That's not handing over leadership -- that's being a great teammate. Refer to the Chicago Bulls, Lance Armstrong's cycling team, the Honeymooners, etc. previously mentioned in this space.

Pearce then writes that societies that exhibit "collectivism" instead of "individualism" have a better chance of executing shared leadership. "People in individualistic societies are independent and self-reliant; they enjoy personal freedom. Accordingly, they are not predisposed to work in teams, which are the building blocks of shared leadership."

Independence, self-reliance, personal freedom. They describe admirable elements of the American dream, don't they?

So with all of that, one of Pearce's caveats that came earlier in the piece certainly makes sense. In his words, "...the practice of shared leadership has limits. For one, it generally requires a bit of time to develop." Sure does. Especially if you are in an individualistic, aggressive society like ours.

Here's what I'd suggest: don't focus on the element of "shared leadership," with the accent on the second word. Much of that individualistic, aggressive culture has led to conferring importance and value on "who's in charge?" as opposed to "what's the desired result?"

Instead, look at the concept of genuine teamwork, in which members fulfill their roles to the best of their abilities, especially when called upon.

Here is the full piece.

Thanks for reading. More to come.

In her May 4, 2008 "Unboxed" column in the New York Times, Janet Rae-Dupree wrote a very interesting piece about habits. She goes against the grain by suggesting that new habits can be learned to foster creativity and innovation. Much of the material in the column has an application to the Fallacy of Teamwork, but one paragraph really got my attention.

Citing Dawna Markova, an executive change consultant for Professional Thinking Partners and author of "The Open Mind," Rae-Dupree writes: "...take a look at how colleagues approach challenges, Ms. Markova suggests. We tend to believe that those who think the way we do are smarter than those who don't. That can be fatal in business, particularly for executives who surround themselves with like-thinkers. If seniority and promotion are based on similarity to those at the top, chances are strong that the company lacks intellectual diversity."

Business evidence is that much of what passes for teamwork does EXACTLY THAT. People surround themselves with like-thinkers. People adjust their behavior based on that of the company's leadership -- or leadership of the team to which they have been assigned. Why? Because the belief is that if "I see things like they do, they'll agree with me, think I'm smart and I'll have a better chance to move up."

What happens? Not enough intellectual challenge and intellectual curiosity leave the group regressing toward the mean. It happens again and again without fail, because that behavior is a) the path of least resistance, b) the path of greatest acceptance and c) the path that tends to be rewarded.

As mentioned previously, intellectual diversity is rare because of weakness of both the speaker and the listener. The speaker may not be confident enough in his or her position, does not want to be thought of as a rabble rouser, selfish or (heaven forbid) "not a team player." The speaker wants to be taken seriously, so words are chosen to match the accepted lexicon of the business. "Looking for synergies to leverage our assets" is corporate ventriloquism. But if dummies are listening, that's the language that gets used.

The listener may not be confident enough in his or her own place to engage the intellectually diverse. Again, as mentioned previously, it could be seen as an ad hominem attack. The focus is often taken OFF the actual idea or proposal and ON to the person delivering it.

You can read the full story here.

Good stuff. Thanks for reading. More to come.

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