January 21st, 2015

Star Players Aren’t Worth Much If They Aren’t Team Players

Interpersonal and collaborative skills are vital qualities among the independent tech professionals 10x chooses to represent. Harvard professor Cass Sunstein, makes a strong case for valuing workers’ team-playing intelligence in his recent LinkedIn article.

Though many analytically-driven organizations assess employees’ potential value by using the longstanding Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Sunstein, co-author of “Wiser: Getting Beyond Groupthink to Make Groups Smarter” argues for prioritizing individuals’ so-called ‘C-Factor’.

In sports, some people are famous for “making other players better.” Magic Johnson, the great basketball player and winner of five National Basketball Association (NBA) championships, was not merely a terrific scorer, passer, and rebounder; he also transformed his teammates—some of them ordinary players—into stars. Early in his career, Michael Jordan was known to be great, maybe even the greatest of the great, but his teams just didn’t win. People wondered whether he could ever win a championship, because he “wasn’t a team player.”

In business, some people are thought to be like the young Michael Jordan—individual superstars who, apart from their own skills, don’t add much to team efforts. But there are others, like Magic Johnson, who are widely thought to make others better. Is it possible to say something about what kind of person does that? Not something impressionistic, intuitive, and anecdotal, but something that is actually based on evidence? Intriguing answers are starting to emerge, and they involve something called Factor C.

Read the rest of Sunstein’s article here.

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