Are Superstars necessary? Sundar Pichai, CEO Google

"To do well and innovate,": says Sundar Pichai the CEO of Google, "you need to have a construct by which people can work together, not built on individual people who are superstars."

To some, this may sound that we may not need superstars, or that we should even avoid them as it can be difficult to have superstars play well with others. The entire life and career of a superstar can be built around being better than others, even leading to behaviors that lead to the destruction of team member careers and reputations. Willful or not this is not new. Many times superstars are so focused on their own stardom and its maintenance that they can completely forget about others and the importance of playing well with team members.

This kind of behavior is often made worse by pay structure that rewards individual performance over team performance, leadership that has team members compete with another. and a constant need to prove our perfection.

The need for perfection, by the way, is always in-the-now-and-present. We need to be perfect today, and so seeking out training, or development, or coaching may be regarded as less than perfect and lead to rejection of any sort of development activity. (This seems to get amplified the higher one goes in organizations.)

All of the above will destroy both the team as well as the team's competitiveness and creativity. The best and most creative teams have no need to compete with another, no need to be perfect, and while individual contribution is appreciated there is no need for persistent superstardom as every member contributes more or less regularly and consistently and you may never know where the next big idea or great solution will come from. Sometimes this can come even from the most junior member of the team. One just has to be open for this to happen.

- Bjorn Christian Martinoff, Global Conference Speaker, Award Winning Executive Coach, Author, Breakthrough Results Catalyst

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