Look behind any creative
success story and you’ll usually find a great team, a group of passionate
people who raised each other’s game.
When thinking about productivity we often focus on the individual, yet
it’s by optimizing teams that we can truly take our projects to the next level.
How? One secret weapon
you have is to appreciate the psychological factors that turn a group of
individuals into a cohesive team unit. To help you optimize your team selection
and working habits, here are nine facts that can help you get the most out of
working with others:
1. The mere presence of
other people can boost your performance.
One the earliest findings
in social psychology was the “social facilitation” effect – the way the mere
presence of other people engaged in the same task as us can boost our
motivation. In 1920, social psychologist Floyd Allport showed that a group of
people working individually at the same table performed better on a whole range
of tasks even though they weren’t cooperating or competing. Allport’s research
illustrates how the energy of other people can act as a substitute team even if
we’re working solo (this is why many creatives enjoy working at their local
café surrounded by industrious strangers).
2. A familiar team has
benefits like a home stadium.
Everyone knows that
sports teams enjoy an advantage when they compete in the familiar surroundings
of their home stadium. Less recognized are the benefits of having familiar
faces around you. Consider a 2006 Harvard study that showed the performance of
heart surgeons improved over time when working at their main hospital
surrounded by their usual team. Crucially, this improvement didn’t translate to
other hospitals with unfamiliar personnel when the surgeons would cover for
other doctors. The surgeons knew these other hospitals well, but didn’t have
the same tacit understanding with the local personnel as they did with their
main team.
By working repeatedly
with the same people, you get to know their strengths and weaknesses; you have
shared experiences to draw on; and you develop unspoken habits and rules that
aid your mutual understanding. A related lesson here: take a star performer out
of their usual team environment and you might find their performance
disappoints.
The mere presence of other
people engaged in the same task as us can boost our motivation.
3. Virtual teams can
outperform face-to-face teams.
A 2009 survey by Cisco of
thousands of teleworkers found 69
percent said their productivity was higher
when they worked remotely and 83 percent said their communication with other
team members was either unaffected or enhanced by being dispersed. And in 2009,
a research team led by Frank Siebdrat assessed the performance of 80 software
companies around the world and found that more dispersed teams often
outperformed “co-located” teams.
Siebdrat and his
colleagues said the most important factor in the success of a remote team was
having processes in place to make sure each member contributes fully, including
adequate support and communication. Other good practices include scheduling
time for virtual camaraderie building, including chatting in an informal
context (see point 9).
4. A balance of
extroverts and introverts makes for a better team.
When Corrine Bendersky
and Neha Parikh Shah at UCLA organised hundreds of MBA students into
five-person teams for ten weeks of group assignments, they found that
introverts started off with the lowest status: their peers didn’t think they
had much influence, nor did they expect them to contribute as much to the team
as the bolder, brasher team members. Yet, by the end of the quarter, the
students had seen what introverts have to offer – their status had climbed
while the extraverts’ status had fallen.
While extroverts will
grab your attention and showcase their abilities, you might need to search a
little harder to spot the talented quiet types. But don’t go too far the other
way and ignore extroverts — a balance of complementary personalities is often
the most effective mix.
More dispersed teams
often outperformed “co-located” teams.
5. Most good teams have
one analytic thinker on board.
Team members with a big
picture thinking style are great for brainstorming and creative problem solving
but when it comes to idea execution a study published this year suggests it’s a
good idea to have at least one focused, analytic thinker on your team — that
is, someone who can focus on the details of your project.
Ishani Aggarwal and Anita
Woolley at the Tepper School of Business found that teams with an analytic
thinker tended to perform better on “execution tasks” because they paid more
attention to “process focus” – identifying sub-tasks and the resources needed
to complete them. Aggarwal and Tepper warned this benefit needs to be balanced
as big picture thinkers and analytical thinkers can disagree on strategic
priorities, harming team performance. To avoid this, foster a team-wide
appreciation of process focus and get team members to agree explicitly on
strategic priorities. Recruiting a rare individual with a mixed cognitive style
(big picture and analytic) can also help foster communication between team
members with different thinking styles.
6. Teams perform better
when they include both men and women.
In 2012, Credit Suisse
published an analysis of nearly 2,400 international companies, finding that
those with at least one woman on their boards tended to be the strongest
performers. The benefits of having both men and women in the controlling team
were especially apparent in tougher operating conditions and was attributed by
the report authors to issues such as better team diversity (see point 5) and a
balance of leadership skills.
What’s the optimum gender
balance to aim for? An experiment published in 2011 by European researchers
found that teams of business students with a 50-50 mix of men and women
performed best at a business venture game. The researchers said this was at
least partly due to mixed-gender groups engaging in more “mutual monitoring” –
making sure everyone pulled their weight for the team’s benefit.
7. There’s a danger of
teams splitting into sub-groups.
It’s inevitable that allegiances
and friendships will form within teams. Research with space crews and arctic
explorers has shown how these “micro-cultures” can be particularly strong when
they’re based on forms of social identity – such as ethnicity or gender – that
predate the creation of the team. For multi-disciplinary teams, these divisions
can also form along shared professional identities.
A study led by
psychologist Doris Fay investigated this problem in the UK’s healthcare system.
Fay found that diversity was a bonus – multi-disciplinary teams produced better
quality innovations than more homogeneous teams – but only if certain processes
were in place to help prevent internal splits. These included making sure all
team members were committed to the same cause; ensuring everyone felt listened
to; the team reflected on its own performance; and there was plenty of
communication between team members (see point 9).
Companies with at least
one woman on their boards tended to be the strongest performers.
8. Effective teams depend
on “social sensitivity.”
Research has shown that
the “collective intelligence” of teams (as judged by their ability to perform
well across a range of challenges) is based not on the average IQ of individual
team members, but on the way team members take turns during conversations, and
having a higher proportion of women in the group (see points 6 and 9).
The research led by Anita
Woolley suggests we should road-test our teams for these characteristics —
known as “social sensitivity” — just like we assess individuals. If a team
flops at this assessment, then adjust the personnel to find a better mix, or
train the team in better communication.
9. The best teams
communicate outside of formal meetings.
Researchers at MIT’s
Human Dynamics Laboratory have found conversations outside of formal meetings
are the most important factor that contributes to team success. Their research
showed that the energy and engagement of these informal interactions accounts
for one third of the differences in productivity between groups.
There are simple steps we
can take to increase these valuable encounters, including scheduling coffee
breaks so that all team members get to chat with each other and planning social
events. Related to this, the most productive creative teams are those that
strike the perfect balance between “exploration” and “engagement” – sourcing
new ideas from outside the team and integrating ideas within the team.
—
How about you?
What conditions do you
think lead to better collaboration?
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