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Why one slacker drags down the whole team | V3 Ep2 S5
Team variance, free-riders and the ‘sucker effect’ — why diligent people quietly stop trying (Keca, 2019).
Full episode on the channel.
📄 Full research article: https://www.keca.co.uk/articles/five-factor-model-big-five-personality-guide
#teamwork #management #conscientiousness #bigfive
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If you want to wreck a good team, mix in one person who doesn't pull their weight. It's worse than you think and psychology research shows exactly why. When you build a team, everyone chases the highest average. But what really matters is the variance, how much people differ. Picture a rowing crew. One man stops pulling.
The others carry him for a bit. Then your most conscientious people notice and think "why am I killing myself while I'm on the coast?" and they ease off too. It's called the sucker effect and the slack spreads throughout the whole boat. Negative behaviour travels faster than positive so build for consistency not the highest average and make the standard impossible to ignore.