During every National Football League (NFL) off-season, the coaches and general managers of the league's 32 franchises face crucial decisions about what new player personnel they should acquire from the collegiate draft, free agency and via trades with other teams. The selection of the right players--adding the best "pieces to the puzzle"--might mean the difference between a Super Bowl victory in February and a sub-.500 season that's over in December.
Much like the men who built the greatest dynasties in NFL history--Lombardi, Landry, Walsh, Parcells and Belichick--hiring managers and executive recruiters carry the same responsibility in finding the best talent to take their company from good to great, or from great to "blue chip."
However, organizations often face the challenge of determining whether a player or new-hire whom they deem "eccentric" will prove to be a strong addition, or ultimately become a "teamwrecker."
The frustration of managing difficult personalities, in sports or business, often leads to fantasies of winning with a team of hard workers with above average talent, and avoiding quirky personalities altogether. The danger inherent in this philosophy, though, is becoming mired in consistent mediocrity.
Here are some tips for differentiating eccentrics from teamwreckers, and managing eccentrics within the team dynamic.
Distinguish Eccentrics from Team Wreckers
Eccentrics should be assessed relative to their function and industry. Creative jobs that reward concentrated abstract thinking will attract individuals who spent their formative years building intellectual rather than social skills.
In both business and pro football, it is critical not to confuse eccentricity with dysfunction. Unfortunately, teamwreckers and eccentrics are often both resistant to authority, insisting on marching to the beat of a different drummer.
How can you tell them apart?
Eccentrics
Eccentrics are driven to help their team win, though they may define their "team" as peers, rather than the formal organization.
Eccentrics are deeply idealistic, and often naïve. They tend to be very honorable and ethical, and are perpetually shocked that the world is not a better place and that organizations do not do the right thing more often.
Eccentrics are ridiculed from a distance, but given more respect by those who get to know them. Their surface social awkwardness eventually pales in the light of their considerable inner qualities.
Eccentrics tend to be intrinsically motivated and care more about the challenge of their work and the quality of their surrounding environment. They crave respect from their peers more than public recognition.
Teamwreckers
Teamwreckers care about winning insofar as it benefits them, financially or egotistically.
Teamwreckers are cynical and self-serving. If they seem clueless, it is because their ego blocks them from seeing. They are perpetually shocked that the world does not spoon-feed them all they desire. They are prone to unethical behavior.
Teamwreckers often project an impressive image, but become less attractive the more you are exposed to them.
Teamwreckers are extrinsically motivated, by financial rewards and formal recognition. Unfortunately, in the words of Mick Jagger, "Too much is never enough." They are deeply sensitive to and suspicious of being "disrespected."
Eccentrics should be assessed relative to their function and industry. Creative jobs that reward concentrated abstract thinking will attract individuals who spent their formative years building intellectual rather than social skills.
To hire eccentrics successfully, you must have a clear definition of the job, as well as critical success factors and qualifications, including cultural fit. Most importantly, you must do your research up front to make sure your eccentric is not a team wrecker, or a flake, which is an unreliable eccentric.When hiring an eccentric, do not compromise your standards of reliability, motivation or production. An eccentric should be all these things, in an alternative fashion.
A word of warning: If you don't have a genuine respect for eccentrics, you will have trouble distinguishing between eccentrics who are stable professionals and unstable flakes.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers selected defensive end Warren Sapp in the 1995 draft despite a serious commitment to drafting high-character players. Their in-depth evaluation of Sapp before the draft gave them confidence that other teams did not have: "Whatever other issues you may have had, you knew Warren was not going to be unsuccessful," then Tampa Bay General Manager Rich McKay said. "He would not allow it. Some teams weren't paying attention to those issues beforehand. So when they came up, they had to pass since they had not researched them."
Managing eccentrics successfully is largely a function of respect. The executive must respect the individual, regardless of quirks, and earn the eccentrics' respect as a manager, for competence, consistency, and defending the (eccentric) pack. Being a talented eccentric doesn't hurt, but I have known many linear, left-brained executives who were greatly respected by talented, eccentric, subordinates.
Bottom line, if you hire the right people, have set a clear set of direction for the organization and are a competent manager, you can manage talented individuals differently, even gingerly, as long as they are committed to leveraging their abilities toward the goals of the organization.
It is pointless to ask someone to stop being unusual on command; it is like asking a terrier not to want to dig. Eccentrics make advance scouts, independent contributors and even navigators. But don't let them fly the plane until they have proven they are disciplined enough not to crash it on a whim.
Whether you are coaching others in sports or business, remember that 'competent' is not a dirty word. Encourage eccentrics to bolster their weaknesses. It is unlikely they will become great at tasks they don't do well or dislike doing. But achieving adequacy will allow you to rely on their strengths without having to supervise them closely.
Isaac Cheifetz is author of Hiring Secrets of the NFL: How Your Company Can Select Talent Like a Champion (Davies-Black, Sept. '07). The founder of Open Technologies, he has more than 20 years of experience consulting on executive search, organizational design and strategy.
Sidebar 1: "T.O.": The Ultimate Teamwrecker
Terrell Owens is the ultimate teamwrecker, a cartoon-like archetype of the temptations and perils of bringing talented, but poisonous, individuals into an organization. "T.O." is a big, fast, powerful, hard-working receiver, but is deeply self-destructive; and for all his touchdowns, Owens has never played for a winning team beyond the first round of the playoffs.
Granted, his San Francisco teams were mediocre, and he did have several great games in the playoffs for them. But his attempts at publicly degrading 49er quarterback Jeff Garcia, led the team to implode.
When Owens forced a trade to the Philadelphia Eagles in 2004, he joined a team on the verge of greatness, but which had lost in the conference championships 4 years in a row. He put up gaudy numbers during the regular season, but missed the first two playoff games due to injury, which the Eagles won without him. With great fanfare, he played injured in the Super Bowl, which the Eagles lost.
The next season, Owens held out for a new contract and more money, taking his case public by again publicly attacking his team's quarterback, in this case superstar Donavan McNabb. His disruptive behavior cast a pall over the Eagles, who eventually cast him away.
Owens, a fan favorite in the 2004 Super Bowl year, was reviled in 2005 for his obnoxious behavior. Few pointed out, however, that he had no obvious contribution to their getting further in the playoffs that year. The Eagles won during the regular season with him, as they had in previous years before his arrival. They won two playoff games to get to the Super Bowl while he was out due to injury, though his presence seemed to give confidence to the team.
So at most, in 2004 Owens served as a psychological shot in the arm for a team with some self-doubt--a playoff placebo, as it were. The next year, he was bad medicine indeed, devastating the team emotionally.
Owens has deeply rooted emotional reasons for his dysfunctional behavior. These reasons are murky to others, but are critical to him, or he would not be so regular and decisive in acting them out on one team after another.
Now with the Dallas Cowboys, he will likely torment fans in Dallas for another year or two before imploding once again. By then his extraordinary gifts will have eroded enough to reduce the temptation of owners, coaches and general managers to bring the ultimate teamwrecker into their organizations.
Randy Moss is on the bubble between being a team wrecker and an eccentric, but is ultimately an example of how a superstar can distort his teams' strategy, while underachieving on his true strategic potential.
Moss, like the much-maligned Terrell Owens, is a receiver with striking gifts. He is 6'4" with track star speed, the leaping ability of a basketball star, and amazingly soft hands.
Unique among NFL receivers, these gifts allowed him to catch passes almost at will, (in the same way the NBA's Kareem Abdul-Jabbar could score with his height and skyhook whenever he wanted).
Moss does not have a history of major conflict with teammates, and has been enormously productive in his career, with more touchdowns his first six years than any receiver in NFL history. But paradoxically, his sensational production was a hidden barrier to the success of the Minnesota Vikings when he played for them. His immaturity ultimately had a stunting effect on the Vikings offense.
Moss was a tremendous offensive weapon for the Vikings, and a safety outlet (and perhaps occasional crutch) for their talented quarterback, Daunte Culpepper. Moss also thrived on pressure and had his best games on Monday Night Football, before a national audience.
Moss at his best was one of the few true "game changers" in NFL history, so dominating that he could deform an opposing team's strategy simply by being on the field. But Moss failed to realize his ultimate potential as a gamechanger. He began to ostentatiously not run routes on plays where he was not the quarterback's target.
Moss was reviled for his poor attitude by some football commentators, but the larger issue was ignored. If Moss's only goal had been to win, he would have put the same energy into serving as a decoy as he did into catching touchdowns. This would have systemically stressed opposing defenses to the breaking point. Instead, he pressured new Vikings coach Mike Tice in 2004 to have more plays run for him, which Tice agreed to, installing his ill-fated "Randy Ratio", which gave Moss a guaranteed portion of passes thrown his way each game.
Moss was traded to Oakland in 2004, where he languished on a terrible Raider team until he signed with New England in the latest off-season. Tice was fired at the end of the 2005 season.
