The basic idea behind chemistry is that a team’s interpersonal dynamics will have an impact on its performance. On teams with good chemistry, the thinking goes, the members see themselves as a family and enjoy a heightened sense of personal loyalty that pays dividends in competition. The legendary American football coach Vince Lombardi, who led the Green Bay Packers to five NFL titles in the 1960s, was a proponent of this idea. “Individual commitment to a group effort,” he once said, “that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.”
