Over at Coding Horror there’s an interesting but disturbing report on research by Will Felps on how a bad apple can affect team dynamics. Most of us have worked on a team where a single individual disrupts the smooth functioning of its members with passive aggressive behavior, refusal to pull his or her weight, or just constant complaining about every damn thing.
None of that is new but Felps’ experiments show that these bad apples do far more damage than just being annoying. Conventional wisdom dictates that successful teams will collectively overcome these disruptions, but this turns out to be untrue. In one surprising finding, Felps found that other teams members will take on the bad behavior of the bad apple.
Other findings were that teams with a bad apple performed more poorly than those without. One hopeful finding was that a strong leader can overcome the problems caused by a bad apple and still lead a well performing team.
This is really interesting research. Be sure to spend three or four minutes giving it a read. It will almost surely surprise you.