The power of connections

Star connections can open doors and make individuals appear more capable than their peers. But there’s a catch

“IT’S NOT ABOUT what you know, it’s who you know,” is an oft-repeated maxim, and to a degree it is true. It doesn’t just open doors, though. A recent paper from a group of researchers found that who you know can stick to your reputation for long after you move on ― for both good and ill.

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A group of researchers came up with an interesting way to try and quantify this long-term effect of working alongside a star performer, examining the careers of 179 NBA coaches. “We found that coaches who had previously served under legendary leaders, like Phil Jackson for example, were less likely to be fired when their new teams performed worse than industry expectations,” the researchers wrote.

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The opposite turned out to be true, as well. “When connected coaches’ teams performed exceptionally well, they were at greater risk of being fired relative to head coaches who lacked any prior star connections.” In other words, the study concluded, “having a star connection helped buffer head coaches from the consequences of underperformance but could hurt them when they performed well.” And this “star effect” lasted for up to nine years, the report found.

The real practical insights though, came when they applied this effect in the real world by running the same study on a group of 500 working professionals. What surprised researches was that the effect held fast. “Study 2 showed experimentally that a star-connected employee, relative to a nonconnected peer, was buffered from the effects of work performance,” because of the “high work performance expectations” of their colleagues.

For the average employee, the data suggests that being well-connected to industry stars must be carefully deployed. Employees can bring these connections up when they are in a phase of relative underperformance to buffer the effects, but they might try not to bring them up when they’re performing well, although the researchers acknowledge the connections “tend to be imprinted in the minds of both employees and their evaluators” regardless.

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The authors recommended two adaptations in the workplace. “If you’re evaluating rising leaders: Don’t let reflected prestige cloud your judgment. Your (often unconscious) high expectations for star-connected employees can create blind spots in how you evaluate them,” the researchers wrote in the Harvard Business Review.

And if you’re a rising leader: “Own your accomplishments. Proximity (or distance) from stars can cause biases among evaluators. This makes it even more important to highlight specific outcomes you’ve delivered, challenges you’ve overcome or innovations you’ve led that clearly demonstrate your individual contributions.”