Anita Williams Woolley, Collective Intelligence of Teams

Summary

This video explores the concept of group intelligence and how teams perform across different tasks. The research reveals that collective intelligence, which is distinct from individual intelligence, plays a consistent role in a team's performance. Factors like social sensitivity, the proportion of women in a group, and even distribution of conversational turn-taking significantly contribute to group success. The study's findings suggest that measuring these factors can predict how a team will perform in novel tasks, offering valuable insights for better team selection in high-stakes environments like management and product development.

Takeaways

• 😀 Teams can have a stable underlying capability to perform different tasks, which may not be linked to individual intelligence.
• 😀 Traditional research has focused on teams performing specific tasks or in specific settings, but this study sought to explore general team performance across various tasks.
• 😀 Collective intelligence in groups does not strongly correlate with the intelligence of individual team members.
• 😀 A consistent underlying factor in group performance suggests that groups that perform well in one task are likely to perform well in others.
• 😀 Group performance can be predicted by an underlying 'C Factor,' similar to how individual intelligence can be predicted across tasks.
• 😀 Social sensitivity, the ability to read and understand others' facial expressions and emotions, is a key factor in determining a team's collective intelligence.
• 😀 The proportion of women in a team is positively correlated with collective intelligence, mainly due to higher social sensitivity in women.
• 😀 Once social sensitivity is factored in, the connection between the proportion of women and collective intelligence becomes clearer.
• 😀 The distribution of conversational turn-taking in a group impacts its collective intelligence. Even distribution leads to higher intelligence, while dominance by one speaker reduces it.
• 😀 Predicting group performance on novel tasks can have significant benefits, especially in high-stakes environments like senior management or product development teams.

Q & A

What was the primary goal of the research discussed in the script?

The primary goal of the research was to explore whether there is a stable capability within groups to perform different kinds of tasks, and if this capability could transfer across various tasks, similar to how intelligence works in individuals.

How does the research relate to the concept of individual intelligence?

The research explored team performance in different tasks, much like how individual intelligence is assessed by performance in various areas. It sought to determine if there is a comparable underlying factor that predicts group performance in multiple domains.

What surprising finding emerged from the research about group intelligence?

A surprising finding was that collective intelligence in groups was not strongly related to the intelligence of individual team members. Despite previous research suggesting a connection, the study found that individual intelligence did not predict group performance.

What factors were found to predict collective intelligence in teams?

The factors found to predict collective intelligence included the social sensitivity of team members, the proportion of women in the group, and the distribution of conversational turn-taking within the group.

How did social sensitivity relate to collective intelligence?

Social sensitivity, which is related to social intelligence, was significantly predictive of collective intelligence. It was measured by the ability of team members to read facial expressions and make attributions about others' thoughts and feelings.

Why did the proportion of women in the group impact collective intelligence?

The proportion of women in a group was found to impact collective intelligence positively because, on average, women tend to be more socially sensitive than men, which contributed to better group performance.

What role did conversational turn-taking play in predicting group performance?

The even distribution of conversational turn-taking within a group was a strong predictor of collective intelligence. Groups where communication was more evenly distributed tended to perform better than those where one person dominated the conversation.

What happens when one person dominates the conversation in a group?

When one person dominates the conversation, making the communication uneven, the group’s collective intelligence tends to decrease, as more balanced participation is a key factor for high performance.

How can this research benefit teams in real-world contexts?

By measuring and predicting the underlying factors that contribute to collective intelligence, such as social sensitivity and communication dynamics, organizations can better predict which teams are likely to perform well, thus improving decision-making for team selection in critical areas like senior management or product development.

What was one of the key insights about measuring group intelligence in the research?

One key insight was that the underlying factor of group intelligence is consistent across different tasks, meaning that if a group excels at one task, it is likely to perform well in other tasks as well, allowing for more accurate predictions of team success.