Facts About Collaborative Teams That Every Creative Needs to Know If you look at the success story of any organization, you will find a great team behind it who raised each other's game. When we think about productivity, usually we focus on the individual yet it is by optimizing teams that we can truly take our projects to the next level. But, How? One method is to appreciate the psychological factors that turn a group of individuals into a cohesive team unit.
Following are five facts that can help you get the most out of working with others: 1. Presence of other People can Increase your Performance: You must have heard of social facilitation effect, means the way the mere presence of other people engaged in the same task can boost motivation. A 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. 2. Virtual teams can outperform face-to-face teams: 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. He said that the most important factor in the success of a remote team was having processes in place to make sure each member contributes fully and they collaborate with each other. 3. A Good Balance of extroverts and introverts makes for a better team: Neha Parikh Shah and Corrine Bendersky at UCLA organized hundreds of MBA students into five-person teams for ten weeks of group assignments. The researchers found that introverts started off with the lowest status, but at the end, the students had seen that their status had climbed while the extraverts status had fallen. Extroverts will grab your attention and showcase their abilities, you need to search a little harder to spot the talented quiet types. But also don't ignore extroverts because the balance of complementary personalities is often the most effective mix.
4. Effective teams depend on social sensitivity: Research has shown that the collective intelligence of teams is based not on the average IQ of individual member, but on the way team members take turns during conversations and having a higher proportion of women in the group. Anita Woolley research suggests we should road-test our teams for these characteristics, just like we assess individuals. And if a team flops at this assessment, adjust the personnel to find a better mix or train the team in better communication. 5. Best teams communicate outside of formal meetings: MIT's Human Dynamic Laboratory researchers found that conversations outside of formal meetings are the most important factor that contributes to team success. They showed that the energy and engagement of these informal interactions accounts for one third of the differences in productivity between groups. There are 5 simple steps that you can take to increase these valuable encounters, including small coffee breaks so that all team members get to chat with each other and plan social events. But, the most productive creative teams are those that strike the perfect balance between exploration and engagement. Which conditions do you think lead to better collaboration?