Thread by @KieranSnyder

1 Claim: High-ego behaviors are problematic 100% of the time on teams, even if the high-ego individual has superstar talent and even if they are not a “jerk.” There are no exceptions. Thread >>

2 Let’s start by defining what counts as a team. A team is any group of people who need to work closely together to achieve a goal. A work team, a sports team, a team on a social project. Could be a formal team or an informal one.

3 The key is that a team works together to achieve a goal that is bigger than what any of the individuals on the team could achieve on their own. Contribution from multiple people is essential to achieve the goal.

4 A few years ago, I coached the most talented basketball player I have ever worked with. She could simply do things that no one else in our league could do. Everyone on our team knew it, and everyone on every team knew it.

5 She could score at will. It would have been easy for her to personally score all the points in every game.

But she didn’t. If she saw a teammate in a better position, she passed. She set screens for others. She consistently did what most helped the team.

6 Over the season, her team-mindedness brought up the game of every other player on our team. She made it her job to get the best result for the team. A brilliant athlete, and also a brilliant and selfless leader.

7 Under her leadership, we didn’t lose a game. More crucially, under her leadership, 3 of our other players were among the top 10 total scorers in the league. Not one of them had ever cracked the top 10 before.

She had twice as many assists as anyone else in the league.

8 I learned a lot from that kid. On teams, it can be tempting to make exceptions for people with “special” talent. Let them score at will. Let them have the special title, the different work hours, some kind of differentiated status.

9 It took me a long time to learn this as a people manager: people with high-ego “superstar” mentality undermine team performance. The team rises and falls with their ego and mood. They tend to struggle with resilience if they fail.

10 This is especially clear when the “superstar” is a jerk, but those are the easier cases to identify. Management 101 says No Brilliant Jerks. It can feel like a sacrifice to lose a brilliant jerk, but most experienced managers make this sacrifice.

11 The trickier case is when the “superstar” isn’t a jerk interpersonally. Because even in these cases, teams with a high-ego superstar at their center fall apart.

12 When someone insists on special treatment, they communicate that they see themselves as better than their teammates. If you as a team manager or coach indulge their requests, you communicate that you agree with them.

13 A high-functioning team outperforms the team with a single superstar every single time. When a team perceives that one superstar is the key to success, others become dependent on them. Their own skills atrophy. They feel less significant to the whole and less accountable.

14 The real superstars, the ones who commit + take the whole team to greatness, the ones you can rely on when things get hard, don’t ask to be treated like they’re special. They use their talent to make the whole team special. They use their power to advocate for the whole team.

15 Don’t get me wrong: As a team lead, you want extreme talent on your team. But you don’t want extreme talent at the expense of team-minded collaboration. Because down the stretch, you have to rely on the team, not the one superstar.

16 The moment you enable special status within your team, the moment you enable the high-ego superstar to demonstrate their special status to those around them, is the moment you lose the chance to level up the team as a whole.

17 I’ve observed this for a long time at work without having words for it. It was that kid on the basketball team who make me get this viscerally in my gut, because she showed so clearly what a real superstar looks like. ⭐️🌠🚀