Social Loafing: Killer traits for a High-Performance team

I am certain all of us have come across such challenges in a team context, named Social Loafing.

Social loafing is the phenomenon of an individual exerting less effort to accomplish a goal when they function in a group than when working alone.

I am sure during your coaching engagement you might have come across such a condition.

In 1913, Max Ringelmann, a French agricultural engineer, conducted what many believe was the first recorded social psychology experiment.

He carefully measured how much force people exerted when they pulled a rope alone, and when they pulled it with up to thirteen additional people.

He conducted additional studies in the lab and in the field and summarized all these results together.

His results were mind-boggling.

Applying his findings back to the rope experiment, Ringelmann found that when a person was added to the rope, everyone pulled with less strength.

When two people were on the line, they each pulled with 93 percent of the force of a person working alone.

Three people each pulled with 85 percent of the force, and so on.

By the time eight people joined the rope, they were each pulling with half the force of a single person.

As a result, a team of eight pulled the rope with no more total force than a team of seven.

In a set of simple rope pulling experiments he discovered that, in what is now known as the Ringelmann Effect, people’s efforts quickly diminish as team size increases.

According to Ringelmann (1913), groups fail to reach their full potential because various interpersonal processes detract from the group’s overall proficiency.

Namely, two distinct processes have been identified as potential sources for the reduced productivity of groups: loss of motivation and coordination problems.

How do we come out from this Social loafing problem?

Let us concentrate on a few issues.

The Sucker Effect: When individuals start to feel that others are slacking off, they try not to get stuck “holding the bag” themselves. In the attempt to escape becoming the “sucker,” overall group output goes down. What do we do about this issue?

Let us connect with all the individuals and try to understand why they are slacking? this could be a personality issue, skill issue, communication barriers, etc challenges.

As a coach, we need to single out such individuals and fix such issues.

Missing accountability, Every team member has to hold each other accountable. Once they recognize that they have to contribute, they will less likely miss their own accountability issues. This is generally practiced to explain the bystander effect, or the tendency to be less likely to help a person in need when others are present.

Some time Social loafing happens when the team does not have stretched goals identified for themselves. There should be a clear SMART goal identified for each team member. Every team member should have a clear distinct goal identified for themselves. And at a certain regular interval, we should check how well those goals are happening.

Team size also matters, more team members do not necessarily mean faster work. More team members more social loafing will be noticeable. 

Team agreement, there should be clear team rules and an agreement needs to be written. Team members only write those rules and maintain those. Team members need to modify those rules whenever it is requisite, and they should abide by those rules. An exception could be there, but the majority of the time team should follow those. As a coach, look for these team agreements and guide the team whenever we find the team is not following the written rules.

Peer Review helps most of the time. The team can set the rule of the team agreed that some of their team members will review artifacts produced by other team members and improve those.

Need to enhance Team cohesion. Team cohesion occurs when a group of individuals feels connected and driven to achieve a common goal. They share values, goals, and processes.

One of the best ways to get everyone involved is to make sure that they feel as though the Manager or leader values their contribution. When they believe the benefits they bring to the table are key to the success of the team, they will be more likely to play an active role.

There should be a team performance reward system also there should High performers within the teams should be recognized and rewarded to alleviate this effort.

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