The Too-Much-Talent Effect: Team Interdependence Determines when more Talent is too much versus not Enough

Five studies examined the relationship between talent and team performance. Two survey studies found that people believe there is a linear and nearly monotonic relationship between talent and performance: participants expected that more talent increases performance and that this relationship would never turn negative. However, building off research on status conflicts, the authors predicted that talent facilitates performance…but only up to a point, after which the benefits of more talent will decrease and eventually turn negative as intra-team coordination suffers. The authors also predicted that the level of task interdependence would be a key determinant of when more talent would be detrimental versus beneficial. Three archival studies revealed that the too-much-talent effect only emerged when in tasks where team members were interdependent (football and basketball) but not independent (baseball). The basketball analysis established the mediating role of team coordination. When teams need to come together, more talent can tear them apart.