Bad apple is team poison

Willfelps was interviewed in the latest issue of American life. He is a professor at the University of Washington and once organized a sociology experiment to prove the surprisingly powerful influence of bad apple.

Note: This American Life is a narrative broadcast program that plays on more than 500 home appliances every Monday and has about 1.7 million audience members. This program was produced by Chicago Public Media Corporation. It is also the most popular podcast in the United States ).

A group of 4 students formed several teams and assigned a task to complete some basic management decisions within 45 minutes. To motivate the team, they were told that everyone in the best-performing team could receive a reward of $100. However, what they did not expect was that the fourth member in some groups was not a student. They are hired to play "Bad apple" actors and have one of the following personalities:

1. Frustrated pessimism.He complained that the task was too boring and publicly questioned the team's ability to win.
2. Mix balls.He will say that other people's ideas are not good enough, but he cannot come up with a better solution. He will also say, "You guys should all listen to my experts ."
3. Lazy.He would say "whatever" and "I don't care ".

The traditional view of the characters in the experiment is that they do not have much impact on the group. A group is strong, and a "group motivation" is strong. Therefore, a group should lead an individual, not the other way around. If you go back decades ago, too many studies have shown that individuals follow group values and guidelines.

Note: A group is a group composed of people with a common purpose and interest. Group dynamics are used to describe and explore various behavioral phenomena within or between groups, this includes the formation, structure, relationship, member interaction, operation, communication, goal fulfillment, leadership, decision-making, Cooperation and Conflict, performance, and power of a group.

However, Will Felps found the opposite result.

There is no doubt that teams with "Bad apple" have poor performance.Although some of their teams are talented, intelligent, and friendly, they do not help. Willfelps found that the behavior of "bad apple" had a profound impact-teams with "bad apple" were 30%-better than other teams ~ 40%. In a team with "Bad apple", people may quarrel or even fight. They do not share relevant information and have less communication.

Worse,Other team members began to show the characteristics of "bad apple.When "Bad apple" is a mixed ball, other team members also start to behave like a Mixed Ball. They also began to slack off when he was a lazy. And they don't just respond to bad apple. They also treat each other like "Bad apple", which shows that "Overflow Effect" is working.

Note: spillovereffect indicates that an organization not only produces the expected results when conducting an activity, it also has an impact on people outside the organization or society.

In short, their findings are,The team's performance can be accurately predicted from the worst member in the team.No matter how good the best members of the team are or how common the team members are, it doesn't matter. The fundamental deciding factor depends on the worst member in the team. The team with the worst Members performs the worst.

If you are interested, you can find the original research report online. However, I strongly recommend that you listen to the first 11 minutes of the "life in America" issue. This is a fascinating review of the results. I have made a summary, but it is still far from that show. For the sake of justice, let's listen to the show.

Note: The website of the study is http://liberalorder.typepad.com/the_liberal_order/files/bad_apples_rob.

Ira Glass, the host of life in America, found willfelps's research results so astonishing that he began to question his team collaboration:

I was shocked by the common occurrence of "bad apple. To be honest, my conversations with Will Felps make me feel uneasy. After hearing his research, you will realize how easy it is to poison a group ...... Every one of us is wondering whether or not this week has become a "bad apple" for our team ".

Self-cognition is always the first step. If you cannot determine who is the "bad apple" in the team, it may be you. Reflect on your behavior in your own team-are you "missing" from these negative "Bad apple" behavior patterns, even if it's only a little bit?

It is worth noting that there is a bit of lonely hope in this study-a special team has reversed this trend:

Although a team also has "Bad apple", they are still doing very well. That's because a person is a very good leader. All he does is ask questions. He will actively communicate with all team members and resolve their conflicts. I later discovered that he was the son of a diplomat. His father is a diplomat from a South American country. When our actors (Nick) show their mixed ball behavior, they usually cause a lot of conflicts in the team, however, these conflicts were all resolved by this outstanding leader with his amazing diplomatic capabilities.

This naturally led Will Felps to start his next research project: Can a team leader ask and ask everyone for their opinions and make sure that everyone's opinions are taken seriously, to change group motivation and team performance?

It is frustrating to understand that a group can be influenced so strongly by the worst temper of a member. However, it is exciting to know that a leader (if you are lucky enough to have one) can intervene and control the entire situation.

Of course, the most obvious solution is to solve the problem from the source --Remove the evil horse.

Even if you are the evil horse!