The Apollo Syndrome

This page describes ‘The Apollo Syndrome’, a phenomenon discovered by Dr Meredith
Belbin where teams of highly capable individuals can, collectively, perform
badly.

Dr Meredith Belbin is one of the original ‘gurus’ of Team Building.
In his first book on Management Teams (Belbin, 1981) he reported some unexpectedly
poor results with teams formed of people who had sharp, analytical minds
and high mental ability – he called this the Apollo Syndrome.

His criteria for selecting these teams have elements in common with
criteria for selecting IT, academic or scientific staff – using ability and aptitude tests to select
those with high analytical skills. The initial perception of Belbin’s Apollo
teams was that they were bound to win in the team competitions. However,
the results were quite the reverse, and the Apollo teams often finished
near the bottom of eight teams.

This failure seemed to be due to certain flaws in the way the team operated:

They spent excessive time in abortive or destructive debate, trying
to persuade other team members to adopt their own view, and demonstrating
a flair for spotting weaknesses in others’ arguments. This led to the discussion
equivalent of ‘the deadly embrace’.
They had difficulties in their decision making, with little coherence
in the decisions reached (several pressing and necessary jobs were often
omitted).
Team members tended to act along their own favourite lines without
taking account of what fellow members were doing, and the team proved difficult
to manage.
In some instances, teams recognised what was happening but over compensated
– they avoided confrontation, which equally led to problems in decision
making.

How Apollo teams succeed

There were successful Apollo teams, however, that were characterised
by

the absence of highly dominant individuals, and
a particular style of leadership.

Successful leaders were suspicious and sceptical people who sought to
impose some shape or pattern on group discussion, and on the outcome of
group activities. They focused attention on the setting of objectives and
priorities, and shaping the way team effort was applied. Rather than ‘drawing
out’ team members, the successful leaders were tough, discriminating people
who could both hold their ground in any company, yet not dominate the group.

A key lesson from Belbin’s work is that putting together a team of the
cleverest individuals does not necessarily produce the best results, and
the team needs to be designed ensuring that there is a blend of team roles.

Apollo Syndrome (Version 2)

The term ‘Apollo Syndrome’ has also been used to describe the condition
where someone has an overly important view of their role within a team.
It is based on the (supposed) claim of someone to have played a vital role
in the success of NASA’s Apollo missions to the Moon, where scientists
had to work all through the night on many occasions, battling against fatigue.
One person claimed a vital role to the whole programme – by making the
coffee that kept them awake!

Perhaps a ‘Double Apollo’ is where a team is composed of highly capable
people, that achieves little, but claims great success!

Definition of The Deadly Embrace
This is a term used in computing some years ago to signify a problem
between two computer programs – where each prevents the other from making
progress.
What happens is that Program A takes exclusive control of record
1, and program B takes record 2. Program A then tries to get exclusive
access to record 2, but as this is under exclusive control of the other
program, it can’t. The program then waits until record 2 is released. Meanwhile,
program B tries to get exclusive control of record 1, but can’t, as it
is under the exclusive control of program A. Program B waits until record
1 is released. Therefore, neither program can make any progress because
it is waiting for the other program to give way. A similar situation can
occur in discussions if each person is trying to get the other to concede
the flaws in his/her argument, without conceding the flaws in his own.
The way out of this situation is to look for the points of agreement, rather
than trying to spot flaws.

References

Management Teams – Why They Succeed or Fail, (Belbin, 1981), ISBN: 0-7506-0253-8

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