Three days after the Super Bowl XLVII dust has settled, the Twittersphere is still buzzing with predictable comments, including Beyonce’s wardrobe choice, the funniest commercials, and what caused the 30-minute blackout. Not surprisingly, Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis was not excluded from popular trending topics. As many are aware, Lewis ended his NFL career on Sunday with his second Super Bowl win, a bittersweet day for Baltimore Ravens fans. While most of the attention around Lewis after the win on Sunday was positive, historically, Lewis’ reputation with the media has been quite controversial. (A quick Google search will give you all the grizzly details). Despite Lewis’ rocky past and the public’s love/hate relationship with him, his influence and impact on his team are indisputable. As another football great retires, there are a couple of key observations to glean from Lewis’ career as a leader.

The performance of his team

The qualities of an effective leader have long been debated and are still not well-defined. Dr. Hogan will tell you that the best determinant for measuring a leader’s success is by the performance of his/her team. Applying this principle to Ray Lewis, his success as a leader is clear. In a recent Yahoo! Sports article, former teammate Tony Pashos was quoted as saying “…you know what happens when Ray Lewis is in the locker room, and on the field? Guess what, you just maximized your entire salary cap, because everyone around him is playing at the highest level he can play. When I hear about the great ones like [Boston Celtics legend] Bill Russell, they say that he made everyone around him better. That’s Ray.”

His impact beyond raw talent

As many sports writers attest, Lewis did not earn his champion status based solely on his athletic talent. Although he has many accolades of which to be proud, including being selected in 13 Pro Bowls, receiving the NFL Defensive Player of the Year award twice, and two Super Bowl rings, his legacy will be known for much more. Sports writer Michael Silver states: “Because he ascended to the top of his profession on the strength of intangibles — work ethic, attention to detail, relentless passion, indefatigable drive — Lewis' locker-room cred is tremendous. I exist in a world in which players routinely take private jabs at one another, especially those whose outsized personalities cause them to become public caricatures. Yet I've never covered an athlete more revered by teammates and opponents than Lewis, who habitually exceeds the lofty expectations of the newcomers that enter the Baltimore locker room.”

Although there may be other determining factors that lead one to such legacy status, these aspirations should be weighted heavily when considering how to make the greatest leadership impact. By focusing on such objectives, current leaders may realize some of the same notoriety upon retirement, just like the football legend himself.

High-Performance Strategies for Business Teams

Society tends to idolize the individual – from the star quarterback to the charismatic leaders of the modern business arena. In business, high-performing teams can achieve superior results to individuals. Yet, when the psychological roles within a team are unbalanced, even teams composed of talented individuals rarely perform to their maximum potential.

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Have you ever been somewhere you felt like you just didn’t fit in?

People's core motives, values, and interests affect every aspect of their lives, from how they behave, to the kind of atmosphere and work environment in which they feel happy and productive. When it comes to team performance, shared values can have a powerful impact:

• Coherence – Having common values assists with team bonding and makes working with colleagues easier and more enjoyable. Conflict tends to be more productive on teams with congruent values, focusing more on substantive, technical, or professional differences.
• Greater efficiency –Team members are on the same page with regard to tasks and situations, understand each other’s needs, and trust one another more than individuals in teams without shared values.
• Stability – Shared values increase individuals’ commitment to the team and its purpose, which increases team motivation and reduces turnover. Members who stay longer with a team are more likely to engage in activities and make decisions that benefit the group over selfish gains.

To find out more about team values, and how personality impacts team performance, check out our complimentary eBook, The Truth About Teams.

Balancing psychological roles is an important step toward creating a high-performing team. It is equally important to understand team members’ derailers.

Under stress, people’s greatest strength can become their biggest weakness – the ambitious salesperson earns a reputation as a cutthroat competitor, the meticulous accountant turns to nitpicking or micromanaging. These tendencies are called derailers.

If too many members of a team share the same derailing tendencies, they can become team derailers. Team derailers fall into three categories:

• Distancing derailers help individuals manage anxiety or pressure by maintaining distance from and pushing others away.
• Agitating derailers are an offensive rather than defensive response to pressure. They help individuals manage situations by manipulating or controlling others.
• Acquiescing derailers help individuals manage their anxiety and stress by building alliances with others.

These derailers can lead to shared blind spots, amplified reactions, or competitive responses, in which team members enter a sort of arms race by responding to each others’ derailed behavior in a manner that triggers more derailed behavior. However, by recognizing their shared characteristics, teams can work to mitigate their tendencies and correct problem behaviors.

To find out more about team derailers and how personality affects team performance, check out our free eBook, The Truth About Teams.

Nearly everyone has been on a team that has simply fallen flat. When that happens, our natural instinct is to assume that the team’s failure was due to a poor choice of team members.

But have you ever considered that perhaps it wasn’t who was on the team that made the difference, but what role they played? People have two roles within a team: functional and psychological. Functional roles are defined by a person’s position or title – chief executive, engineer, accountant, etc. Psychological roles are roles to which people naturally gravitate based on their personalities.

There are five psychological roles to which people naturally gravitate:

• Results (High HPI Ambition) – Results-oriented people seek leadership roles, direct the team, and drive others toward business goals. They may be overly competitive with their peers or subordinates and are not inclined to seek input.
• Relationships (High HPI Interpersonal Sensitivity and Sociability) – Relationships team members are perceptive and cooperative, but can be overly focused on getting along with others rather than results.
• Process (High HPI Prudence) – Process-oriented team members are procedurally driven, organized, and attentive to details and implementation. However, they may be seen as rigid and inflexible and may miss the big picture.
• Innovation (High HPI Inquisitive) – Innovation team members are imaginative and focused on the big picture. They may have difficulty with practicality because they prefer ideas to implementation.
• Pragmatism (Low HPI Interpersonal Sensitivity and Inquisitive) – Pragmatism team members are practical, not easily swayed by emotions, and comfortable confronting conflict; however, they may be seen as ignoring people’s feelings, and the big picture.

For a team to succeed, psychological roles have to be balanced in two ways. First, a team needs to have complimentary fit, which is to say enough diversity among its members to fill every psychological role. Teams also need to have enough individuals to provide a critical mass in each psychological role.

To find out more about individuals’ psychological roles, and how personality affects team performance, check out our complimentary eBook, The Truth About Teams.