In sports, some people are famous for “making other players better.” Magic Johnson, the great basketball player and winner of five National Basketball Association championships, was not merely a terrific scorer, passer, and rebounder; he also transformed his teammates, some ordinary players, into stars. Early in his career, Michael Jordan was known to be great, maybe even the greatest of the great, but his teams just didn’t win. People wondered whether he could ever win a championship because he “wasn’t a team player.”
In business, some people are thought to be like the young Michael Jordan — individual superstars who, apart from their own skills, don’t add much to team efforts. But there are others, like Magic Johnson, who are widely thought to make their teammates better. Is it possible to say something about what kind of person raises the performance of an entire group or team? Not something impressionistic, intuitive, and anecdotal, but something that is actually based on evidence? Intriguing answers are starting to emerge, and they involve something called “Factor C.”
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