The study done by psychologists Michael Tomasello and Katharina Hamann poses an interesting scenario in how gift exchange and team performance may be impacted by systematic changes. This study was a test to see whether or not children were inclined to share the "gifts" that they both receive from working together. In the study, the children had to pull on separate ropes simultaneously in order to receive marbles, where one child received one marble and the other received three. They were then observed as to whether they would be inclined to share marbles to reach an equal distribution. This was compared to an alternative scenario where the marbles were already in the cups when they got to the machine, without having to pull any ropes. Similarly, their behavior was observed to see if they would share marbles and why. When comparing the outcomes of both scenarios, the children in the first scenario were considerably more likely to engage in sharing and reach an equal distribution by either one child giving his/her extra marbles or the other child asking for them and immediately being asked for them. These results can be extrapolated to our expectations of gifts when asked to work together, and that when equal work is done, individuals are more willing to share their gifts with the others on their team.
The only example of this that I can think of was when I was working at a small healthcare consulting firm. There were ten consultants who brought in work for the company, and given the relative small size of the group, the scale of contracts ranged from the thousands to the millions of dollars. Since they were all working for the collective good of the company to bring in more business, there was an opportunity for individuals to feel they deserved more of the pot since they were bringing in more money. Why should someone who brought in a million dollar contract be paid the same as someone who brought in a handful of thousand dollar contracts. However, this was not an issue for them, as all of the consultants shared the value brought in and received around the same level of salary. I think this dynamic was able to exist because the of the small size of the firm. There was a very strong feeling that everyone was working as a team and that there was no competition among the consultants. It was a very tightly knit group, and as such everyone felt the need to do their best work so that the team would benefit. The priority of the team before the individual benefited all of the consultants because they were able to share the profits of the company equally, and all equally succeed, instead of distributing pay by commission which would have fractured the team mentality of the organization.
It is interesting to consider the example you gave at some greater length. You said there was a strong feeling of team among the group. But you didn't explain the source of that feeling and why it mattered at all for doing the work. I agree with you that commissions would have destroyed the sense of team, but why did that matter in this case. In other words, how were the various consultants reliant on one another? That really should have been elaborated on in this post to get at the core issues.
ReplyDeleteI think I touched on the reason why the team dynamic was so strong, but to provide further detail, since all of the revenue of the company came through their sales, each one of the individual consultants had to perform at a high level in order to maintain their clients. The closeness of the group came in part from simply the small size, but also from the fact that everyone's salary came from the revenue brought in by the team, not just the individual. So selling work was not about getting the money for yourself but for earning for you and everyone else at the firm's salary. Although they all worked in different practice areas, they were reliant on each other because their salaries were dependent on the success of the firm so no individual felt entitled to the greater share of the pot. In context of the study, although they all received different amounts of marbles, they were all pulling the rope, so they felt more inclined to share their earning with each other.
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