Team Perfectionism and Team Performance: A Prospective Study

Abstract

Perfectionism is a personality characteristic that has been found to predict sports performance in athletes. To date, however, research has exclusively examined this relationship at an individual level (i.e., athletes' perfectionism predicting their personal performance). The current study extends this research to team sports by examining whether, when manifested at the team level, perfectionism predicts team performance. A sample of 231 competitive rowers from 36 boats completed measures of self-oriented, team-oriented, and team-prescribed perfectionism before competing against one another in a 4-day rowing competition. Strong within-boat similarities in the levels of team members' team-oriented perfectionism supported the existence of collective team-oriented perfectionism at the boat level. Two-level latent growth curve modeling of day-by-day boat performance showed that team-oriented perfectionism positively predicted the position of the boat in midcompetition and the linear improvement in position. The findings suggest that imposing perfectionistic standards on team members may drive teams to greater levels of performance.

Perfectionism and Performance in Sport, Education, and the Workplace

“…Since Stoeber's (2012) review, there have been an additional three studies published that examined perfectionism and performance in sport (Hill, Hall, Duda, & Appleton, 2011;Hill, Stoeber, Brown, & Appleton, 2014;Thompson, Kaufman, De Petrillo, Glass, & Arnkoff, 2011). We describe these studies in detail below.…”

How Other-Oriented Perfectionism Differs from Self-Oriented and Socially Prescribed Perfectionism: Further Findings

“…1 Moreover, there is growing interest in other-oriented perfectionism beyond the role that it plays in dyadic perfectionism. For example, a recent study investigating perfectionism in sports teams (Hill, Stoeber, Brown, & Appleton, 2014) found that other-oriented perfectionism directed at one's teammates ("team-oriented perfectionism") showed significant differences between teams and positively predicted team performance in a competition. Another study investigating interpersonal citizenship behaviors in employees (Shoss, Callison, & Witt, 2015) found otheroriented perfectionism to interact with conscientiousness in predicting helping at work.…”

Comparing Two Short Forms of the Hewitt–Flett Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale

“…In recent years, there has been a reinvigorated interest in other-oriented perfectionism not only in research on personality and individual differences, but also in clinical psychology, applied psychology, and sport and exercise psychology (e.g., Ayearst, Flett, & Hewitt, 2012;A. Hill et al, 2014;Shoss, Callison, & Witt, 2015).…”

“…Finally, other-oriented perfectionism is an important form of perfectionism because it plays a key role in other conceptions of perfectionism such as dyadic perfectionism in the form of partner-oriented perfectionism (other-oriented perfectionism directed at one's partner; Habke, Hewitt, & Flett, 1999;Stoeber, 2012) and partner-oriented sexual perfectionism (other-oriented sexual perfectionism directed at one's partner; Stoeber & Harvey, in press;Stoeber, Harvey, Almeida, & Lyons, 2013) as well as team-perfectionism in the form of team-oriented perfectionism (other-oriented perfectionism directed at one's team members; A. Hill et al, 2014). Consequently, it is important to have a MPS short form that reliably captures all three dimensions of perfectionism of Hewitt and Flett's (1991) model, including other-oriented perfectionism.…”

“…Consequently, the 15-item short form that Cox, Enns, and Clara published in 2002-assessing each dimension with five items-has been used in many studies in research on personality and individual differences, clinical and counseling psychology, and sport and exercise psychology where the full-length MPS was considered too long (e.g., Cox et al, 2009;A. Hill et al, 2014;Mackinnon et al, 2013;Powers, Koestner, Zuroff, Milyavskaya, & Gorin, 2011;Stoeber & Hotham, 2013).…”