- EM

Again, back to football. Witness the dynasty that is/was the New England Patriots. They did it with few superstars. And they were able to take another supposed troublemaker in Corey Dillon and turn him around. But everyone knew their role and they executed it well individually with an eye toward the whole team’s ultimate goal: a championship.

Give me a room full of role players who have a shared goal as opposed to a room full of superstars (see last version of US Olympic Dream Team) with individual goals.

Increasingly, however, the costs will outweigh the benefit–workplaces are increasingly becoming hostile to hostile behavior. Witness recent lawsuits which ended with the judgment that if a behavior has a greater negative impact on women than men, then it can be considered actionable sexual discrimination; seems to me that makes most disruptive, agressvie, and volatile behavoir potentially VERY costly.

The clincher in your question was when you said “might disrupt the team culture.” No one person can be above the vision and mission of a company wherein every person associated with it (employees and customers alike) can THRIVE.

From what you have described here (I don’t follow the antics of Mr. Owens) Terrell Owens would not have a place in a work culture managed with aloha.

My short answer is: no. When someone is THAT disruptive, then their incredible performance is just a tease, and more often than not will burn you in the end. Both competence and relationships are important to system performance. Our investment in people like TO simply reflects our overvaluing of technical competence, in my opinion.

This issue was brought up in a HBR article in June. Researchers noted that when you gave managers a choice between a “competent jerk” (someone who performs well but nobody likes—TO, arguably) and a “loveable fool” (someone who is not the best performer but everyone likes), they will tell you that they choose the competent jerk. Nice personality is a bonus, they argue.

But apparently the behavior is the opposite. The researchers discovered that people actually chose to work with loveable fools more than competent jerks (despite their stated preference). The researchers pointed out that the despite their ability, the “jerks” can detract from performance: “Dealing with jerks is so unpleasant that colleagues simply can’t be bothered with them.”

You don’t have to write the “jerks” off—they can be coached and developed in many cases (not so sure about TO). It’s not that we have to love everyone on our team, but we cannot ignore negative impact on teams.