William Muir bred two groups of chickens for six generations. The high-producing "super" hens became so aggressive they killed each other, leaving only three alive. Susan argues hyper-competitive cultures collapse the same way, and that valuing cooperation over constant winning keeps people and teams healthy.
Susan here with a quick story about an interesting study that has been called the Super Chicken Experiment. So here's how it goes. There's an evolutionary biologist by the name of William Muir, and he was studying the egg-laying productivity of chickens. And so he had a hypothesis, and that was that if you bred super chickens, really high-producing hens, that you could then eventually create higher-producing chickens on a regular basis. So his experiment had two groups. He had a control group that was made up of average chickens to lay their eggs, and they were left to reproduce over 6 generations. And then the second group was a test group, and that was composed of the higher egg-producing chickens to start with, and they were left to reproduce as well. The experiment involved measuring the egg produ— ah! The experiment involved measuring the egg production of the chickens, and interestingly, what they found at the end of it all was that the control group had healthier, more feathers, plumper, and higher egg production than when they began. But the super chicken group was a little bit of a sobering sight. They actually fared much worse, and there were only 3 hens left out of that entire process because the competitive culture of those super chickens caused them to be aggressive and peck one another to death. So again, not a pretty sight and kind of brings a sobering insight to the thought about pecking order. So the connection is clear. Competitive cultures are not sustainable and can produce really wounded people in the process who aren't going to be as productive as they normally could be. And then I have another lens to consider about that, and it strikes me that we ourselves can create in our own minds that sort of super chicken syndrome. We can let that saboteur voice go and run rampant and sort of peck ourselves to death in the process. So if you know people who might resemble that super chicken syndrome, where they're sort of beating themselves up, remind them, or yourself, that average can actually be much more productive in the long run.
Susan’s ICF Educator Award | The Heart Behind the Impact Katy Montgomery, PCC
