No one doubts that the interest of the individual is not the same interest of the group the individual is part of. Stars on teams, athletic or management, have special troubles aligning their interest with the team's goal. Even more so, when their team is unlikely to succeed at achieving the team goal.

The star may, despite being nominated as the leader, put his own goals ahead of the team's goal -bringing about a poor team performance.

Seeing how "lousy" the team is, the leader may be even more emboldened to put his interests ahead of the teams because team performance is so lousy.

Soon, team performance completely unravels.

Can you tell in advance which leader will fail to be effective?

Fail not because they are not talented, but fail because his followers don't believe that the leader believes that he can effectively discipline the "lousy" group to act as a unit?

Training Exercise

Here is a short exercise to determine how effective a leader is when confronting this problem - how to form coalitions when trust is needed to overcome skepticism.

This is a simple Simon Says task. The team and individuals gets points for following you. You win by getting the most points. But people also get more points if they accurately predict that the small group will not form a coalition, and ignore you. (This exercise is based on an exercise by Gerald Williams, the "Win as Much as You Can Game." Thomas Schelling analyzed a similar problem with his multi-person social dilemma games.)

The task is easy to describe. You have to get people, 3 on your team, to follow your commands, but your interests are not completely aligned with your team's interests.

You can utter one of two commands, "Left" or "Right". If you say "Left", the team wins if they all follow and say "Left". The entire team, including the Leader, wins one point. But, if you say "Left" and some other people say "Right", then you are penalized, along with your followers who also said "Left".

If you say "Right", however, only those who say "Right" win and those who say "Left" lose. But there is a catch: this time, if the entire team says "Right", then they all lose, including you.

To allow for learning, cooperation, and communication, play ten rounds of the game. Have a 5 minute discussion at round 3, 6, and 9. Otherwise, play in without overt communication. Limit the time in each of these rounds to 30 seconds.

The individual with the highest highest score wins the game, whether the team leader has the highest score doesn't matter.

Payoffs for the Game

Here is a chart which summarizes the exercise in terms of outcomes and pay-offs.

Are You an Effective Team Leader?

(As an exercise, play a couple hands, using ordinary playing cards to get feel for what happens. Pick 4 red cards, for "Right", and 4 black cards for "Left".)

The game starts off with everyone making a guess about what you and the others will do.

How can you be an effective team leader in this simple game? You want a high or the highest score - but how can you achieve this?

A good and effective leader will get everyone to say "Left", even though some people will be better off by saying "Right". Can you hold your group together? Or will some just pretend to follow?

Achieving Disicpline

How would you turn this group of individuals into a disciplined group that would play only four Lefts?

Suppose that you started out by saying "Left" yet not everyone guessed this. How would you persuade those in the Right to give up their gains? How could they credibly commit to giving up future gains on future plays? How could they do this before the communication round?

What if you started with saying "Right" and found out that one other person guessed "Right" and two others guessed wrong. You would get 2, the other Right person would get 2, while each of the players who guessed "Left" would lose 2.

What would you expect on Round 2? Likely, those who lost would switch their strategy. It is reasonable that everyone would now play "Right" and each team member would lose 1.

It is reasonable, but if as team leader you could coordinate everyone on 4 Lefts, then each person would win 1. Can you do that? Can you do that after winning 2 from each Left on the first round? Can you do it without communicating with them, until the third round?

Now, let's make it harder - reward the team leader with an big bonus at the selected times, rounds, 3, 6, and 9, if he or she can get the group to say "Left" while he or she alone says "Right". Increase the size of that bonus - to reflect the "talent" of the team leader on the bonus round.

Will the group stay disciplined, or will it grow resentful? Will your followers expect you to eventually say "Right" and so "protect" themselves by guessing "Right" before you do? If everyone says "Right" on one round, who is going to say "Left" on the next round?

Try this exercise at your next franchise convention - see who can and who cannot effectively discipline the group. You might be surprised with the results. It would be very telling if none of the franchisor's C-Suite were effective leaders in this simple discipline game.

If your franchisor executives cannot lead in this simple game, then how are they doing in the real world?

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