Free riders. Cheaters. Deadwood. Drones. Cowards. Slackers. Hitchhikers.

They go by dozens of scornful labels. During a career, everyone encounters at least a few of the people who strive to do the least they can do without getting reprimanded. Few factors are more corrosive to teamwork than the employee who skates through life taking advantage of the much harder work of others. This is the reason that the Ninth Element of Great Managing, which is measured by the statement, "My associates or fellow employees are committed to doing quality work," is so predictive of a team's output.

The frustration of those surrounded by slackers is evident in their comments. "I don't like the quality of people who are hired and just don't care, don't make an effort, and just show up for a check," one employee complained in a note attached to her 12 Elements responses. "We need to do a better job of filtering out those individuals who bring down what others work hard to achieve."

"I do not like coming into work and having to babysit coworkers who have little or no regard for their job," said another. "I dislike having to constantly tell people how to do their job. It becomes my job to fix what they neglected to do correctly in the first place." Other comments from the low end complain about "people not showing up on time for their shifts," "not doing their jobs and making me do the lion's share of the work," and "no one wanting to take responsibility for anything."

Pulling together

The problem is not new. One hundred years ago, French agricultural engineer Max Ringelmann conducted one of the first studies of how teamwork affects performance. He asked men recruited for the experiment to pull a rope as hard as they could. He did this with various numbers of men on the rope at one time. Not surprising, two men pulled harder than one, three men pulled harder than two, and so on. However, when the force exerted on the rope was divided by the number of those pulling, Ringelmann discovered the force-per-man decreased as the number of men increased. The larger the group, the less the average man pulled.

Assume that the force one man can pull is equal to 100%. If two men are pulling, the average guy exerts himself at 93%. When four men are pulling, they average only three-quarters of their real capacity. By the time the eighth man is added, each man is pulling on average only half of what he could. In fact, eight men on the rope pull no harder than seven because the other seven relax enough to subtract whatever the eighth man adds.

"One of the truly remarkable things about workgroups is that they can make 2 + 2 = 5," states one organizational behavior textbook. "Of course, they also have the capability of making 2 + 2 = 3."

Given how desertions can snowball into devastating defeats, military commanders have always forcefully guarded against them. As George Washington prepared his troops to surreptitiously place cannons, fortifications, and themselves on Dorchester Heights to drive the British from Boston in 1776, he issued orders that "if any man in action shall presume to skulk, hide himself, or retreat from the enemy, without orders from his commander, he will be instantly shot down, as an example of cowardice."

Because 5,000 men of the Continental Army instead worked hard and harmoniously through the night, first light on March 5 found the British completely surprised, one American general remarking, "perhaps there was never so much work done in so short a space of time," and a British officer surmising the feat must have required 15,000 to 20,000 men.

In 1986, when the United States federal government changed the way taxes were calculated, the rate of compliance was discovered to have no correlation with whether a citizen's taxes were going to go up. But they were influenced by whether their neighbors, relatives, and friends said they supported and planned to comply with the changes to the tax code. In a similar vein, the state of Minnesota discovered higher reported income and fewer deductions among residents who were sent a letter telling them that tax compliance was actually higher than public opinion polls were showing.

The lesson from these disparate sources is what makes it so important that a team can positively and strongly respond to the Ninth Element. If a team lacks a strong work ethic and a sense of responsibility to each other, the group becomes a convenient place to hide a little slothfulness, to push a little work to the other guy, or to point fingers when a project doesn't hit its deadlines.

In an average team, about one in three employees strongly agrees that her associates are committed to doing quality work. But the Ninth Element is highly sensitive to the presence or absence of one or more slackers. When a team perceives one of its members is dragging his feet, the proportion that gives the Ninth Element a high rating drops to only one in five. If a team is free of deadwood, the proportion that strongly agrees with the statement jumps to half of the team, with most of the rest giving positive, although slightly less emphatic, responses.

Copyright Ó 2008 The Gallup Organization, Princeton, NJ.  All rights reserved.  Reprinted with permission.  Visit The Gallup Management Journal at http://gmj.gallup.com/

Article from The Gallup Management Journal