Essential Behaviors of a Winning Team

In 2008, a group of psychologists from Carnegie Mellon and MIT attempted to measure the I.Q. of a group. Their work resulted in the identification of two behaviors that are shared by good teams:

1. Equality in distribution of conversational turn-taking

2. Social sensitivity

What this means is that during meetings, each team member talked in roughly the same proportion and team members were careful to be sensitive to how others felt. Together, these two elements—shown not only in the work of Carnegie Mellon and MIT but in others as well—create an environment of “psychological safety” where team members feel safe in risk taking, interpersonal trust, and mutual respect.

Personally, in addition to what studies tell us, I know what working as a team can accomplish. Recently Skillful Means provided business development coaching and training services for a team of four women partners from a large law firm. Here are some representative comments from the participants:

* “I wanted to take a different approach to business development and got some of my colleagues involved…The value of working together paid off: it was useful in increasing our understanding of what each of us does and we’ve put cross-selling into practice.”

* “The best part of this was participating with others in the group in business development and also developing those professional relationships within the firm….we continue to work together on business development.”

The next time you are putting together a group of individuals for a project related to work or otherwise, consider these elements during the vetting process. It will no doubt allow for a more successful team dynamic.

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