Who works well together?

According to this study if you are after group cohesiveness select members that are very similar to each other in beliefs and values. Find people you like a lot especially on first meeting them. If however, you are after a group that makes the best group decisions or achieves the highest levels of performance you should select members that vary somewhat in training and ability and that have social skills to add to the collective intelligence. Having more women in a group on average predicts a higher level of collective intelligence. Interesting! From the article.

However, we know that teams that are highly cohesive are not always the same teams that make the best decisions or push each other to the highest levels of performance. In our research on collective intelligence in groups, my colleagues and I find that group cohesion is not correlated with collective intelligence. So if "work well" means "perform well," the question becomes much trickier to answer. To work together well, you actually want a team that is moderately diverse in their training and abilities. My graduate student, Ishani Aggarwal, finds that groups that are moderately diverse in their "cognitive style" have higher collective intelligence than groups that are very diverse or very homogeneous. We also found in our recent study published in Science that social skills are very important; of the many individual differences we explored, members' social sensitivity was the most strongly and consistently predictive of a group's collective intelligence. Because women tend to have more of this skill than men, on average, we found that the proportion of women in the group was also predictive of collective intelligence. While none of this is absolutely definitive nor guarantees that a group will perform well, you raise the probability significantly if you compose the group with members who have diverse and complementary skill sets and individuals with strong social skills.

As I think back on the rehab groups that I was part of in my career as a PT, I can see some of these elements at play. I worked at a hospital, a home health agency, and finally at a skilled nursing facility, the cohesiveness varied but was especially good at the skilled nursing facility, I suppose that group was the most alike in life stages and in values. I can also see that my performance was enhanced in settings where others had more or different experiences than I did and different education and skills. I often had other experts to go to for help in setting up a rehab program for a particular patient. Having a variety of disciplines working together in close proximity was beneficial as well.

Most of the time your work group is something you inherit though as you are hired and you get little say as to its composition. Much like you do not get to choose the family you are born into. If one is a manager and can make decisions about the composition of a group to work on a project this study might be helpful to consider. The study also seemed to show that a bad apple can drag a group’s collective intelligence down, click on the link above.

In group settings here is some wisdom to follow. Romans 12:17-18 NIV ¹⁷Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. ¹⁸If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.

Lou