Being smart about a smart team

Imagine you need to choose a group of people for a specific task. The job is important and you need the smartest team you can get. Which one of the following would you choose?

1. The team with the most extroverted people; talkative and open with their thoughts.

2. The team with the highest average IQ as measured on a standard intelligence test.

3. The team whose members say they are the most excited and motivated for the challenge.

4. The team which in aggregate has highest amount of related work experience.

It turns out none of these are necessarily the typical characteristics of the smartest group.

As individuals vary in cognitive ability, so do groups. Psychologists have been probing for years as to what the optimal group composition looks like. While we may still idolize the charismatic leader and the creative genius, more and more decisions and tasks of consequence are made by teams. To get to the best decisions, requires that the cleverest team be formed in the first place.

So what do the smartest team look like?

Based on extensive research done at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology:

• Smart teams had members contribute to the discussions and enterprise equally; they did not allow or have one or two members dominate the group. All had a chance to voice opinions and all contributions were welcomed. There was equanimity in shaping and choosing the best ideas of the group.
• Smart teams scored higher individually on a test called Reading the Mind in the Eyes which gauges how well people can read the emotional state of others by looking at pictures of faces with only the eyes visible. This is one of the components of EQ; the ability to read and infer the emotional state of another.
• Smart groups had at least as many, and often more women on the team than men. The researchers attribute this to the general ability of women to be better at mindreading and cooperation. Women it would appear are leaders at bringing out the best in a group, while also being part of the group.

One would suspect that all this holds where a group convenes physically and has actual contact with each other. Surprisingly, the research team found the same holds when teams communicated with other members on-line only. What makes a team good face to face, depends to a great deal on their ability to detect what others think and feel; even through the mediums of email, Skype and Google Drive.

These findings on what makes for a smart team come down to three simple principles: choose true collaborators, choose people high on EQ and choose a mix equally between men and women.

Be smart about choosing your smartest teams.

(Based on research done by Thomas Malone of MIT, and others, and published in the Journal of Science)