Talented Or Higly Intelligent People

“The aggregation of highly talented or highly intelligent people does not necessarily make an effective team.”

Talented people can help a team perform in a high performance level to meet its specific goals. However, talented people can also instill a sense of disharmony within an already effective team. Robertson and Abbey (2003) acknowledge that having talented people in a team requires having different values and motivation from the majority of the people. This statement can be seen with various situations happening around us to events across the world through different industries and even to sports. Cases like F.C. Real Madrid’s (A highly

decorated Spanish club soccer team that has won numerous trophies in Spain and European leagues) superstar buying policy, and NBA Lakers’ personality clash between Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant, has proven that talented people would not make an effective team. Woodruffe (2006) states that having a great deal of autonomy, where people can really get into their role in a team/organization is likely to be welcomed. However, having too many talented people in a team would only cause a team to lose its focus and not be able to achieve its goals. By having too many talented team members, they may have the impression that they are better than the other team members. Thus, this could result in an egoistic/prideful decision that they should be the person leading the team and not requiring them to be a team member. Lewis and Slack (2003) agrees, that highly talented people are understandably reluctant to apply their abilities to projects, that are undervalued and an online article by Colvin (2006) from CNNMoney listed the following as reasons that having too many talents within a team fails:

• Signing too many all stars

• Failing to build a culture of trust

• Tolerating competing agendas

• Letting conflicts fester

• Hiding from the real issues

Without going in-depth on these, it will be shown that these are issues that are opposite to that of building an effective team. The next few segments will evolve around a few of the factors that make an effective team.

Ingram et al. (1997) suggests that characteristics of an effective team are based on effectiveness and efficiency. This is further elaborated in the diagram below to differentiate the different between efficiency and effectiveness

Effectiveness is about the performance, goals and criteria of the team, basically, the ending result of the team goal. Efficiency looks at the process of achieving it and looks to factors such as teamwork, group dynamics and resources. Johnson and Scholes (1989) observe that efficiency is a measure of how resources are used while effectiveness is how it complements efficiency with its external environment/factors. As mentioned by Cole (2005), these would in turn, lead towards achieving synergy, where it is the ability to achieve more than what its individual members could achieve individually.

Looking more in-depth into the factors of efficiently achieving an effective team would be factors like teamwork, team culture, dynamics, cohesion and leadership. Teamwork is defined as a group of people working together to accomplish a common goal(s) of the team. Schermerhorn (1996) acknowledges the benefits of teamwork within a team and how it can affect customers/organization of the hospitality industry. This involves corporation between members and their understanding of being team players. Even with talented people in a team, all the members should take up a team player role voluntarily at anytime. An industry example of being a team player would be helping out a busy team member to serve customers. Even if it was just the clearing of tables or refilling water glasses, it increases the overall efficiency of the team to serve customers. As time goes on with this practice, communication and team morale increases. Eventually trust builds up as you know your team member on a better level and all through these phases, the efficiency of the team increases as well. Essentially, according to Miller, Walker and Drummond (2007) it is of greater importance to a team to learn how to be a team player rather than being an individually minded talent.

Team culture builds when a team gets to know each other well and establish habits collectively. As supported by Cole (2005), a team acquires an identifiable difference from other teams when the building of a team culture occurs. A team culture gives the team its identity and it is unique from the rest of the teams. However, with a good team culture, it enables the team to work out problems, through open and trustful communication. This improves the efficiency of the team and instills an enthusiastic and fun factor into the team. An example would be the improved relations within the team and the team enjoying their work, which, in turn, customers feel well treated due to the presence of a good vibrant team atmosphere and their actions. An issue which some hospitality members forget that customers can always see if the staff serving if enjoying themselves while at work. Schermerhorn (1996), maintains that team culture is extremely important as it sets the level of effort and performance standard that the team would strive to achieve.

Group dynamics are able to the internal and external forces that affect how the team reacts to each other (interactions and relationships) and how it can influence the effectiveness and efficiency of the team to achieve its goal. This works together with how cohesive (tightly bound) the team is as a single unit. Schermerhorn (1996), acknowledge that a highly cohesive team is good for their members as they experience satisfaction through group identification and interpersonal relationships. This concept is further supported by Conti and Kleiner (1997), which states that team spirit, a sense of loyalty and dedication brings together a group of individuals and develops a commitment to the teams’ cause.

Leadership within a team plays an important role to help it achieve its goals and aims of the team. Although usually a team would report to a manager, it is still important to have a sense of leadership from within the team to be effective. With leadership coming from within the team, it builds up an environment of confidence, trust and motivation for each team member in accordance to the earlier mentioned segments. Horner (1997) also agrees that leadership is less of a specific set of behaviors than it is creating an environment in