What does baseball have in common with business, beyond the numerous expressions that have carried over from America's favorite passtime to the boardroom – ie, "hitting a home run"? More than you might think, according to new research by Penn State's Smeal College of Business.
According to the college's Assistant Professor of Management Stephen Humphrey and two of his colleagues, while each person in a team is important, core or central roles within that team are even more vital to its success or failure.
As this Newswise release explains their research, which will appear in an upcoming edition of the Journal of Applied Psychology,
Core role holders are those who encounter more of the problems that need to be overcome by the team, have a greater exposure to the tasks that the team is performing and are more central to the workflow of the team.
"All roles are not created equally," Humphrey says in the article.
The work of Humphrey and his colleagues should prove stimulating for organizations as large as Google to those as small as one of our 2007 Top Small Workplace Finalists, software developer Menlo Innovations – both of which have intentionally structured their employee engagement best practices to work best, if not always, in team mode.
At firms like these, the Borg-like mentality of working as one often prevails. Still, teams need leaders. (Remember that student in school who everyone else knew they could rely on to get the group project done on time, no matter how much they shirked responsibility? Yeah, that was me.) Research such as this from Penn State could factor into how the leadership of future firms helps train and develop those leaders.
Staying with the baseball metaphor, do you have a go-to pitcher who is Mr. or Ms. Reliable when it comes to getting the work done in the teams in your workplace? How does this person lead and delegate, and how do the shifting dynamics affect the overall performance?
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