Feature Article: Why Some Teams Are Smarter Than Others

This is an interesting article in the NY Times. This research contributes to the growing literature suggesting that spending time and resources building “soft skills” in your people is important to improving organisational performance. This seems to be even more important in the complex business contexts we find ourselves in today.

The researchers seem somewhat surprised that a measure of a person’s ability to read “visual” cues of another’s emotional state might also predict group performance in a “virtual” collaboration environment where the only interaction is via text. This is not so difficult to understand if you assume that those who scored highly on a test of “emotional reading” of facial expression might also be skilled in other facets of emotional awareness. While these authors have looked at this using a “theory of mind” it may also fit with other research into what is generally termed “emotional intelligence”.

The study concludes that superior group performance was also related to the amount and equity of communication between the group and concluded that “the total amount of communication was positively correlated with collective intelligence”, in other words, groups that communicated “more” performed better on the task. As I was reading this I thought that perhaps they had missed an opportunity to look at the quality and process of communication as they did not analyse the “content” of what was said.
Fortunately they also observed that “groups in which one or two people dominated the discussion and activity were less collectively intelligent, whether the groups were online or face-to-face”. In other words the groups that applied the traditional “leader” model did not perform as well on the tasks as the groups where interactions were more equitable.

This is where we see the true implications for skill development in organisations. The trick is not just to “focus on the task to get it done” but to ensure that your people know how to work collaboratively and to maximise the benefit from what everyone has to offer. My guess, from watching a number of groups in training sessions, that the groups who performed well had “leaders” with a high level of emotional awareness and that these “leaders” facilitated and encouraged equitable input through collaborative processes, making sure everyone had the opportunity to contribute to the group effort. The good news is that these skills can be developed through experiential training and coaching programs.