There’s an opinion piece in the New York Times on why some teams are smarter than others. The authors, gave a large number of teams a set of real-world challenges, and examined their performance.
Here are the insignificant factors:
- IQ scores
- extroversion
- motivation to contribute
Here are the factors that did matter:
- no individual dominates the group discussion
- number of women on the team
- ability to read others’ emotions
That last point is interesting, because the authors found the same results, with remote teams.
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.