On Substituting for a Star

Star performers are rare, but their contributions generate so much value that they can influence the success or failure of entire organizations. [Aguinis & O'Boyle 2014] When a Star is a member of a task-oriented work group, and when that star is reassigned, someone must step in to cover the ground the Star was covering. Substituting for a Star is risky business. In this post I explore some of those risks and suggest mitigation strategies for substitutes for stars.

A fictitious situation

In what follows, I use the name Ramon to refer to the Star who has been Reassigned to another group. I use the name Serena to refer to the person Substituting for Ramon. Here's the situation:

• Serena is joining a group that has been together for almost a year.
• Their task is important to the organization.
• Progress has been slow and the deliverable is now needed urgently.
• Serena's joining this group came about because Ramon has been reassigned to a task even more critical.
• Ramon was a key group member and is highly regarded as a Star performer in the organization.
• Serena was asked to take Ramon's place.
• Serena knows she is qualified to do the work, but in this organization she hasn't yet done anything quite like this, or quite so important.
• Some group members doubt Serena's ability.

Situation-specific guidelines

The usual advice to newcomers relates to communications best practices. Tips available on the Web suggest active listening, asking clarifying questions, being open to feedback, and so on. This is good general advice, but it doesn't address directly the challenges of being a substitute for a star performer. Here are four examples of those challenges.

Forming and Storming

Because the change from Ramon to Serena is a change in group composition, the group will enter a Forming stage of group development. And from there it will enter a Storming stage. This activity can compete with task activity, which can lead to schedule slippage. None of this is Serena's "fault." The concept of fault is inapplicable. See "The Storming Puzzle: Six Principles," Point Lookout for January 8, 2025, for more. [Tuckman 1965] [Tuckman & Jensen 1977]

Nevertheless, some group members might interpret the schedule slippage in such a way that Serena is held responsible. Management can mitigate this risk by educating the group about Tuckman's model of small group development and by making appropriate schedule adjustments.

The risk of false equivalence

False equivalence is an informal fallacy of argument that perpetrators use to reach false conclusions that appear superficially to be valid. The false equivalence fallacy is also known as an "apples and oranges" comparison.

To employ the fallacy, the perpetrator compares two entities, A and B, so as to demonstrate that B has a property Delta that it doesn't actually have. Suppose A and B both have property Gamma, and A has property Delta. The argument goes like this. A and B both have property Gamma. A also has property Delta. Therefore B has property Delta. This conclusion depends on making a false equivalence between A and B.

For example, some claim that the only fair income tax is a flat tax, because everyone pays the same fraction of their income in taxes. This is a false equivalence because it assumes, without proof, that if two individuals pay the same portion of their income in taxes, then the value to those two individuals of the benefits received and sacrifices made must be equal. But if one individual has ten times the income of another, the value to them of the benefits and sacrifices can hardly be expect to be equal.

In task-oriented work groups, most "stars" are regarded as stars because in case after case, the Star's contributions have addressed the central issues confronting the group. They helped the group advance its work. When other group members — and management — compare the newcomer's contributions to the star's contributions, they're comparing the newcomer's total production to the star's total production.

But such a comparison is inherently unfair because it draws a false equivalence. It's an apples-and-oranges comparison because the newcomer has been on the job just a short time, while — typically — the star was in place for much longer.

In most cases the people whose judgment is affected by the false equivalence fallacy are unaware of it. Even if we could make them aware, we can't be certain that the star and the newcomer were presented with problems of equal difficulty or equal potential for desirable solution. More apples and oranges. So the comparison is inherently unfair and we can't make it fair.

Nobody works alone — not even stars

Entering a situation in which the newcomer knows
that there is skepticism as to their ability to perform,
some newcomers try to prove the doubters wrong.
The trying itself validates the doubters' skepticism.

The Star's contributions, impressive though they might be, do benefit from interaction with the work of other members of the group. Contributions created by stars alone, in total isolation from all contact with other group members, are rare in modern task-oriented work groups.

In a real sense, the contributions of stars depend on the quality of the relationships between the stars and the other members of the group. To expect Serena's performance to match Ramon's is to ignore both the contributions of the rest of the group during Ramon's tenure, and the fact that Serena's relationships with other group members are relatively new, and therefore — potentially — less likely to prove fruitful than Ramon's.

That's an important reason why we tend to over-estimate the value of the contributions of stars. The many minor contributions on which the major contributions are based are less visible than the major contributions. And so the value of Serena's work is compared not to the value of the Star's work, but to our over-estimate of the value of the Star's work. Because of this unfair comparison, Serena's work is more likely to be found wanting.

A defensive posture is self-defeating

Entering a situation in which the newcomer knows that there is skepticism as to the newcomer's ability to perform, some newcomers might feel defensive. They might adopt a stance of trying to prove the doubters wrong. Such an approach is unlikely to succeed.

Examples of defensive behaviors include speaking condescendingly, failing to enjoy light-hearted collegial humor, making excuses, engaging in unwarranted attacks, and misinterpreting constructive suggestions as criticism.

Employing defensive tactics is ineffective for newcomers, because people recognize the tactics as defensive. The doubters interpret the newcomer's choice of tactics to mean that the newcomer, too, feels unqualified for the job. In effect, the newcomer is validating the doubters' doubts.

The Pygmalion Effect

In a 1969 article in the Harvard Business Review, Livingston succinctly describes this phenomenon as: "If a manager is convinced that the people in her group are first-rate, they'll reliably outperform a group whose manager believes the reverse — even if the innate talent of the two groups is similar." [Livingston 1991]

For Serena, substituting for Ramon, the general view of her prospects is dim, because Ramon is well known to be a star performer — someone whose performance outshines everyone's. The Pygmalion Effect will tend to cause Serena's performance to be seen as, and to be, inferior to Ramon's, even if Serena is a star-performer-to-be, who is as yet unrecognized.

Managers who are aware of the Pygmalion Effect would do well to educate the people they manage — in our fictitious scenario, Serena and the rest of the group — as to this insidious phenomenon. Also helpful would be creating an all-organization "technical mentor" program, under which Management could keep Ramon involved as a technical mentor for Serena, without risking the interpretation that Serena was in special need of assistance.

Last words

Certainly there are dozens of other reasons why people are asked to substitute for stars, and other ways substituting can go awry. One way might be called scapegoating, in which the group finds itself in deep trouble, and decides that Serena is the main reason, even through she joined the group only six weeks ago. The risk of scapegoating is elevated if Ramon actively sought reassignment. In that case, it's possible that Ramon knew about trouble before anyone else, and decided to bail out to save himself. If you know of other scenarios, rbrenjTnUayrCbSnnEcYfner@ChacdcYpBKAaMJgMalFXoCanyon.comsend them along.   First issue in this series   Top    Next Issue

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Footnotes

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