Anyway, the term narcissism comes directly from Greek mythology and describes individuals who are "full of themselves". Importantly, narcissists aren't just self-centered individuals though. They also crave attention and expect to receive special treatment for their self-perceived higher status. While studies have shown that being a narcissist doesn't affect individual job performance, there are comparatively few studies that have explored the impact of narcissism on group-level or team performance.
Anecdotally, there have been a number of sports teams throughout history who have performed far below expectations despite having a number of so-called "All Stars" on the team. For example, the 2004 U.S. Men's Olympic Basketball team lost three games and won the Bronze Medal (failing to win the Gold Medal for the fourth Olympics in a row) despite having NBA greats Tim Duncan, Allen Iverson, Dwayne Wade, and Carmelo Anthony on the team. The 2017-2018 Oklahoma City Thunder finished 4th in the Western Conference and were eliminated in the first round of the play-offs despite having Carmelo Anthony, Paul George, and Russell Westbrook (one video describes them as the "Worst Superteam in NBA history", though I would suggest that the 2003-2004 Los Angeles Lakers, with several future Hall of Famers on the roster coached by a Hall of Fame legend are more deserving of that title). While not every "All Star" is a narcissist, at least in these cases, the players just didn't play well together, perhaps because they were more focused on their individual successes than the team's success.
It is with all of this in mind that I wanted to discuss the findings of a research study published in the Academy of Management Journal ("Examining the 'I' in team: A longitudinal investigation of the influence of team narcissism composition on team outcomes in the NBA"). The investigators analyzed data on 2,460 professional basketball games played during the 2013-2014 NBA season. They hypothesized that a team's overall (average score) level of narcissism, the maximum level of narcissism (highest score), and finally the narcissism score for a key player on the team ("core player"), which was the team's point guard (the playmaker). They generated their own "narcissism score" (which they validated in an accompanying study) based upon an analysis of the 396/483 (82%) players Twitter accounts. Specifically, they looked at the percentage of tweets by individual players determined to be narcissistic in nature (as an example of one tweet, a player tweeted a photo of himself standing in front of a mirror with the caption, "What do you think when you look in the mirror? Greatness."). They also analyzed each player's Twitter profile picture (pictures of players who appeared shirtless or flexing their muscles were rated higher on the narcissistic scale versus players that showed pictures of their families).
Teams with high narcissism scores in any of the three dimensions (overall average, maximum, or core player) did not coordinate their play as well as teams with lower narcissism scores. Team coordination was measured, in part, by the number of assists (in the sport of basketball, a player gets an assist if he or she passes the ball to a player who then scores a basket). Most importantly, teams with high narcissism scores didn't perform well (as measured by wins versus losses, as well as the margin of victory).
The investigators also were interested to see if team familiarity (defined as the number of games the teams played together over the course of the season) had any impact on the results discussed above. For example, several previous studies on narcissism and group interaction have shown that initially, during the beginning stages of group formation, narcissists are described positively as "confident", "entertaining", and "physically attractive." However, as the individuals within a group tend to become more familiar with each other, the narcissists are described negatively as "hostile", "arrogant", or "cold." In other words, we get sick of being around narcissists as time goes on. Teams with higher narcissism scores maintained the same levels of team coordination over the course of the season. However, teams with lower narcissism scores showed greater improvement in team coordination as they became more familiar with one another. Rather than causing "bad things to happen", narcissists "prevented good things from happening."
So, what are we to conclude from this particular study? First, and perhaps most obvious, if you ever find yourself in the general manager role for a professional sports team, don't over-rely on talent to build your team - team chemistry and team culture is important too! Second (and probably more realistic), organizations should consider narcissism when putting together their project teams. The investigators stated, "Organizations should consider narcissism when forming teams and proactively monitor teams' narcissism composition to allow interventions before problems arise. In particular, we recommend that companies should avoid putting highly narcissistic members in the most critical team roles (e.g., roles that are more central to a team's workflow)."
As they say, there is no "I" in team. The American psychologist M. Scott Peck once said, “Since narcissists deep down feel themselves to be faultless, it is inevitable that when they are in conflict with the world they will invariably perceive the conflict as the world’s fault.” I have found that to be exactly the case, and unfortunately, as this study highlights particularly well, they often bring down the rest of the team too.
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