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Does your dream team need a bad boy?
In a recent interview, famous basketball player David Robinson said the following about contemporary Isiah Thomas being snubbed in the selection of the 1992 Olympic “Dream Team” [1]:
If you have a reputation and you take pride in your reputation as a ‘Bad Boy’ it kind of means people aren’t going to like you. […] I mean, I like Isiah fine, but can you be that surprised when people say ‘I don’t really want to play with the ‘Bad Boys?’
I was in the SEAL Teams, so I know what a high performing group looks like. A dream team consists of elite performers who are also elite at working together.
Conventional wisdom has it that chemistry between teammates can create a sum greater than its parts. As I detail in a recent podcast episode, this wisdom may be the rationale that underlies Robinson’s comment. The implication would be that ‘bad boys’ ruin team chemistry.[2]
Meanwhile, as potential evidence of this idea, countless companies have adopted the “no asshole rule.” But implementation varies so much as to make this more “like guidelines” than an…
