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    When hiring employees, conventional wisdom dictates that one should always try and select the superstars, those men and women who excel at their job so thoroughly they put the average human to shame. After all, the assumption that a corporate team packed with ten peak performers will outperform a unit that consists of five excellent achievers and five merely good ones seems like a safe bet.

    But while top-tier talent is clearly a must-have for any business, a recent study published in Psychological Science adds a shade of nuance to the talent equation by suggesting that when it comes to team performance, there may be a talent-saturation point.

    In a series of experiments, researchers at Columbia University and other institutions picked apart the relationship between talent and team performance in sports by examining professional athletes playing in the National Basketball League, Premier League and Major League Baseball. To identify elite players, the researchers used a set of criteria in each league – in the NBA, for example, players were ranked via their Estimated Wins Added, a statistic used to approximate the number of victories a player adds to a team’s season total above what a ‘replacement player’ would produce, along with whether or not they were selected for the league’s annual All-Star tournament. Meanwhile, in the Premier League, elite players were chosen by cross-referencing national teams with powerhouse club teams, such as Real Madrid and Chelsea; those who appeared on both lists were considered superstar talent.

    For all three sports, the researchers calculated the percentage of ‘elite’ players’ on each team, and then compared that number to the team’s overall performance (measured by its win-loss record).

    The results varied by sport. In baseball, the more talent the better: Team performance continued to improve as the percentage of elite players on a team climbed.

    But in basketball and soccer, this steady upward trend didn’t hold – instead, the researchers found that while the addition of talent was initially beneficial to a team’s performance, there was a saturation point. Once a team’s ratio of elite players to non-elite ones surpassed approximately 2:1, returns began to diminish. Not only that, but basketball and soccer teams with the highest percentage of top athletes had, on average, worse win-loss records than teams with a more mixed roster.

    The study’s authors chalk this difference up to the inherent difference in baseball’s style of play versus soccer and basketball’s: “Prior research suggests that baseball involves much less task interdependence among team members, compared with football and basketball,” they wrote.

    In other words, basketball and soccer are quintessential team sports, where success depends on players’ ability to work as a cohesive unit, while baseball is more about individual performances.

    “Our findings reflect the disappointing fact that teams of superstars often fail to live up to expectations,” the authors explain. They’re talking about sports teams, but their finding can be extrapolated to include any unit that needs to function as a well-integrated whole. Or, as the researchers explain it:

    “Just as a colony of high performance chickens competing for dominance suffers decrements in overall egg production and increases in bird mortality, teams with too much talent appear to divert attention away from coordination as team members peck at each other in their attempts to establish intragroup standing.”

    In other words, too many top-tier employees can cause a team’s performance to suffer as high-performance individuals jockey for position within the group. Instead, the authors advise, team-builders should consider pairing high-flying over-achievers with a solid percentage of competent, if not exceptional, workers.

    “In many cases, too much talent can be the seed of failure,” the study concludes.

    The study was first written about in August by The New York Times and surfaced again in Scientific American this week.

    本文与《创业者》杂志（Entrepreneur）合作。下文最初发表于Entrepreneur.com。

    传统观念认为，招聘时应该尽量挑选超级明星，即那些出类拔萃，让普通人自愧不如的人。毕竟，由十位顶尖高手组成的团队，胜过由五位优秀成员和五位一般成员组成的团队，这似乎是铁定的事实。

    然而，虽然任何一家公司都必须拥有最顶级的人才，但《心理科学》（Psychological Science）最近发表的一项研究却对这种观点提出了一点不同的看法，研究显示，从团队绩效方面来看，任何一支团队可能存在一个人才饱和点。

    在一系列实验中，哥伦比亚大学（Columbia University）和其他机构的研究人员，仔细审视了一番效力于美国职业篮球联赛（National Basketball League）、英格兰足球超级联赛（Premier League）和美国职业棒球大联盟（Major League Baseball）的职业运动员，并最终拆开了体育运动中天才球员和球队绩效之间的关系。为了鉴别精英球员，研究人员在每个联赛中使用了一系列标准。例如，在NBA中，除了能否入选一年一度的全明星赛之外，研究人员还使用“预计额外胜场数”(EWA)对球员进行排名，该数据被用于估算除了“替代球员”可以达到的胜利场数外，一名球员在整个赛季可以给团队额外带来的胜利场数。而在英格兰足球超级联赛，研究人员则是通过交叉参照国家队和皇家马德里(Real Madrid)和切尔西(Chelsea)等顶级俱乐部的球员名单，来鉴别精英球员——同时入选国家队和顶级俱乐部的球员，将被视为超级明星。

    研究人员计算了三种运动中每一支球队“精英”球员的比例，然后将该比率与球队的总体表现进行了对比（根据其胜负记录）。

    不同运动的结果不同。在棒球中，优秀队员的数量越多，球队表现更佳：随着球队中精英球员的比例提高，球队表现会持续改善。

    但篮球和足球并不存在这种稳定的向上趋势。相反，研究人员发现，增加优秀球员最初对球队表现有益，但却存在一个饱和点。一旦球队精英球员与其他球员的比例超过2:1，回报会开始减少。不仅如此，精英球员比例最高的篮球和足球队，平均胜率低于球员水平高低混合的球队。

    研究人员将这种差异归因于棒球与足球和篮球在比赛方式方面的区别。他们写道：“此前的研究显示，相比足球与篮球，棒球涉及团队成员之间的任务依赖性更少。”

    换言之，篮球和足球才是典型的团队运动，球队的成功取决于球员能否跟其他队友凝聚成一股合力，而棒球则更多地取决于个人的表现。

    研究人员解释道：“我们的研究披露了一个令人失望的事实，即由超级明星组成的团队往往无法实现预期。”虽然他们的研究对象是体育团队，但这项调查结果可以延伸至任何一个需要作为整体运行的组织。或者，正如研究人员所说：

    “就像一群特别能下蛋的母鸡因争夺鸡笼统治权而导致鸡蛋总产量日渐减少，小鸡的死亡率不断增加一样，人才太多的团队似乎也无法把注意力放在协同工作方面，整天只顾着寻思如何把别人踩在脚下，让自己成为团队中的头面人物。”

    换言之，由于高效员工竞相争夺自身的团队地位，拥有太多优秀员工反而可能会影响团队绩效。相反，研究人员建议，团队组织者应该考虑为抱有雄心、出类拔萃的团队成员，搭配一定比例的合格员工。

    这些研究总结道：“在许多情况下，拥有太多优秀人才可能是一支团队最终失败的根源。”

    这项研究曾在8月份被《纽约时报》（The New York Times）率先报道，本周被《科学美国人》（Scientific American）再次刊登。（财富中文网）

    译者：刘进龙/汪皓