Power of 2: Sometimes the Best Person for the Job Is Two People

RODD WAGNER

Principal

Gallup Consulting

twincities@gallup.com

gallup.com

Topic: Leadership

We have a blind spot in our business strategy.

How many of us, faced with a major challenge, begin with the assumption we should go it alone? When looking for someone to take on a project, how often do we look for just one person — an MVP, a star, one go-to guy who has everything needed to guarantee success? When sizing up a company, why do we so often count the individual performers?

When Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary first climbed Mt. Everest, everyone wanted to know which man stepped first on the summit. When Karl Malone and John Stockton were becoming the most successful partnership in professional basketball, sports writers wanted to know which of them was the real secret to their success. And businesses routinely look for the answer to their leadership problems in just one senior executive, a near-perfect CEO who can single-handedly guide the entire enterprise.

We do this despite the fact that often the best person for a job is two people. Humans are made for collaborating; much of our brains are built for effective dialogue, for tracking reputations, and — as when paddling a canoe — for coordinating our movements with another person. We have these abilities because we are all descendants of collaborators, people who survived by working together while their solo cousins died. Yet with all our technology, we seem to have lost the inclination to create powerful partnerships.

For all of our collaborative instincts, most of us today form far fewer strong partnerships than we could, or than we should. Gallup’s research reveals that the median number of work partnerships for an American employee is just four, but even that number hides a more troubling truth. The small proportion of people who have dozens of close teammates inflates the statistic. When asked how many strong alliances they have, most people say they have just a few, even though the highest levels of happiness and employee engagement kick in when a person has 5 to 10 good alliances.

The most disturbing statistic is that the most common number of work partnerships — the answer given by 16 percent of the population — is zero. Asked if they have ever had a great partnership at work, nearly one-quarter of employees say no.

We’re missing a fundamental fact: Each of us has unique strengths, incredible abilities that are much of what’s needed to accomplish a goal. But each of us also has weaknesses, imperfections that are often serious enough to derail many of our greatest endeavors — unless we double up with someone who has complementary strengths.

All things being equal, the better of two companies will be the one led by a strong partnership — not just one person. More engaged teams are led by managers perceived less as a “boss” than as a “partner.” And a company’s strength is not just in the collection of talent within it, but also how well those talented individuals form powerful partnerships.

Rodd Wagner is a New York Times bestselling author and principal of Gallup, Inc., based in Minneapolis. He and Gallup World Poll leader Dr. Gale Muller are authors of Power of 2: How to Make the Most of Your Partnerships at Work and in Life, to be released in November 2009. For more information on this topic please contact twincities@gallup.com

2010-04-30 00:00:00 -0500