Why Some Teams Are Smarter Than Others

HughPickens.com writes Everyone who is part of an organization — a company, a nonprofit, a condo board — has experienced the pathologies that can occur when human beings try to work together in groups. Now the NYT reports on recent research on why some groups, like some people, are reliably smarter than others. In one study, researchers grouped 697 volunteer participants into teams of two to five members. Each team worked together to complete a series of short tasks, which were selected to represent the varied kinds of problems that groups are called upon to solve in the real world. One task involved logical analysis, another brainstorming; others emphasized coordination, planning and moral reasoning. Teams with higher average I.Q.s didn't score much higher on collective intelligence tasks than did teams with lower average I.Q.s. Nor did teams with more extroverted people, or teams whose members reported feeling more motivated to contribute to their group's success. Instead, the smartest teams were distinguished by three characteristics (PDF). First, their members contributed more equally to the team's discussions, rather than letting one or two people dominate the group. Second, their members scored higher on a test called Reading the Mind in the Eyes, which measures how well people can read complex emotional states from images of faces with only the eyes visible. Finally, teams with more women outperformed teams with more men. It appeared that it was not "diversity" (having equal numbers of men and women) that mattered for a team's intelligence, but simply having more women. This last effect, however, was partly explained by the fact that women, on average, were better at "mindreading" than men.

Interestingly enough, a second study has now replicated the these findings for teams that worked together online communicating purely by typing messages into a browser . "Emotion-reading mattered just as much for the online teams whose members could not see one another as for the teams that worked face to face. What makes teams smart must be not just the ability to read facial expressions, but a more general ability, known as "Theory of Mind," to consider and keep track of what other people feel, know and believe."

Comments

What a load of rubbish

[Anonymous Coward]

The more women, the better. I suppose that's why there are so many successful "all-women" companies out there.

Re:The white in your eyes

[RabidReindeer]

are thought to be there specifically so others are able to see who you are communicating with. Improving cooperation between people.

This doesn't bode well for those of us who lean autistic.

Imagine if having more men increased a team's

[Anonymous Coward]

intelligence. The study would not be publishable.

Re:could be fems average better at groups, men one

[AmiMoJo]

I think the genetic differences are overblown. Social differences are a much bigger factor, and either gender can easily learn the skills needed to be a good communicator and team player. Rather than being a gender issue, it sounds more like a training issue.

I have grown skeptical of these experiments.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

It all sounds sciency enough but I have grown very disenchanted with these experiments that use "simple tasks" to judge "$parameter". As my company switched to Agile I was forced to undergo "Agile for managers" or whatever. They made senior manager stuff envelopes and place stamps and had a few gotchas. It made me realize the root of the con game is to pick the tasks that are so simple any team member could do it. The variability in skill set, the varieties of skills needed to complete the project is not fully addressed.

Instead of some simple tasks which anyone can do, if we throw in some tasks that could only be done by one or two persons in the team, then it would be more realistic. Something like some step needs derivative of a function and only one team member remembers calculus 101, or requires translating a passage from French to English.. The moment you introduce variation in skill sets among the team members, agile for software breaks down. This experiment too might have different results.

Re:A known "Fact"?

[jbengt]

This is bullshit. Who needs to "read minds" more? The female whom sexual advances are aggressively made towards, or the male who must discern his mate's passive body language, subtle flushing of the skin and lips, sidelong glances, etc? . . .
The oversimplification of "having more women" is insulting to women.

So what were they supposed to say about the study? That their actual observation (that the more women in the group, the more successful the collaboration) was wrong - after all someone on Slashdot with anecdotal experience knows better because figuring out whether women are open to sexual advances is difficult for him?

Re:Significant correlation?

[west]

And just to make it clear, r = 0.25 is pretty darn strong, especially for anything involving as many variables as human interaction.

I'm quite amazed it's this large, but then again, it matches my real life experience for complex team-based problems (rather than combining parallel single-person tasks, which is more common, but not nearly as tricky).

Teams are overrated anyway

[Viol8]

Teams are great for doing parallel repetetive tasks such as testing thousands of compounds to pharmacological activity or building a bridge or whacking out 10K lines of boiler plate code. But if you want inspiration or genius or a completely take on a problem then you're looking at individuals (even if they've stood on shoulders of giants). Einstein didn't think up Relativity in a scrum with powerpoint presentations (ok they weren't around then but you get the point), nor did Turing come up his theories on conference calls.

This will sound arrogant but I don't care - teams are great for the slightly dim and/or lazy people in the world because it means they don't have to put so much effort in or think too much. Hence why management tend to be so fond of them.

Re:Teams are overrated anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

No it doesn't sound arrogant, it sounds defensive and most of all stupid. Stupid because you are missing the whole point, the article is not about who is better, it is about what is needed to make a good team. And yes teams are important, not just for your stupid examples. More generally there is a need for organization, you can't just let people do their thing in their corner and hope that you get everything you need. So there is a need for "smart" people and a need for "social" people, we need various qualities to achieve things.

Re:Teams are overrated anyway

[AmiMoJo]

Most tasks don't require genius, they require quality. Rockstars often produce interesting stuff, but in a company you can't rely on them. If they leave you have an unmaintainable system that only one person ever understood. The lack of diverse ideas and experience leads to an extreme kind of monoculture. Teams are better for most tasks.

Re:Teams are overrated anyway

[swillden]

Einstein didn't think up Relativity in a scrum with powerpoint presentations (ok they weren't around then but you get the point), nor did Turing come up his theories on conference calls.

Yes, they did. Both of them.

Okay, not scrum, powerpoints or con-calls, obviously, but both of them deeply relied on collaboration with others. Einstein relied heavily on chats with various friends, especially Besso, Solovine, Habicht and even to some extent his wife (during his early work, before they separated) to refine his ideas. There's no doubt that he was the ultimate source of the core elements of his theories, nor that he did nearly all of the work to elaborate them, but bouncing ideas off of others was critical to his method of work. Turing I know less about, but I know that he also worked as part of a team, and many of his brilliant ideas built upon the work of those around him.

I do think your examples are well-chosen, though, because I think they're examples of the sorts of people who least benefit from teamwork. For everyone else, it's even more important.

Re:could be fems average better at groups, men one

[operagost]

Man here (from birth)... I don't see how selfishness is an inherently male trait. I would never think taking someone else's food was OK as long as I replaced it. Obviously, at the moment there's a problem, and fixing problems you created is clearly inferior to not causing them in the first place. I would not want someone who wasted time and professional reputation, by constantly fixing the problems they caused, on my team.

What I see with men-- including myself, of course-- is that we DO want to fix problems, and save the discussion for later. "Lessons learned", "post-mortem meeting", etc. Women don't seem to like that. For some reason, they want to address the collateral issues at the same time, or even defer the solution in order to perform in-depth problem analysis. This seeming lack or urgency is frustrating to me, personally.

not the eating, but fixing different problems

[raymorris]

I _think_ Barbara's point wasn't about the eating, but about which problem we address. Suppose a stereotypical woman accidentally eats the cake - she wasn't listening or whatever. It's discovered and you "confront" her. She'll address the problem - the fact that you're mad. That's the main problem that she sees, the offense caused. She'll apologize, offset it by doing something else nice, etc - never once thinking to go get a another piece of cake.

An hour later, she'll ask how you're feeling about the event. The man will reply "I feel hungry, because you ate my damn cake.". :)

The guy is more likely to identify the problem as the fact that the cake is now gone, and forget to address the offense he caused.

This might be a somewhat silly example. Where I think it has practical application is when a friend is telling you about a problem they are having. A woman most wants to vent, a friend should listen. Her male friend's first instinct may be to help her SOLVE the problem. She may you to listen to her problem and perhaps her feelings about it. When a male friend is telling you about a problem, it means they want to borrow your trailer, which will solve the problem.

    Obviously this is a big generalization, but there is significant truth in it.

Re:Really? Theory of Mind

[AmiMoJo]

That's not a very effective way of communicating. The way you phrase it you seem to blame people for being ignorant, but often the reason they are coming to you for information is to fix that, or maybe they just have a different area of expertise. No-one can be an expert on everything.

Being a good communicator requires you to be objective and helpful. Figure out what the important information is, what the listener is likely to know and what their current understanding is likely to be. I think a lot of people really struggle with the last part, because they assume that if someone doesn't have the same understanding as them then they are just wrong or stupid and must be corrected with a simple statement of fact. Aside from anything else they are much more likely to agree with your position if you explain it well and in terms of their current understanding and beliefs.

It's not about who has a problem or winning and losing, or weeding out the morons etc. It's about getting everyone on the same page so that you function as a team, as a hive mind.