Want a Better Team? Mix In Some of This…

This has been an interesting article making the rounds for some time now.

In January, the New York Times publicized research by several scholars that provides some new insight into what makes teams click…

YOUR LINK

The operative portion:

…the smartest teams were distinguished by three characteristics.

First, their members contributed more equally to the team’s discussions, rather than letting one or two people dominate the group.

Second, their members scored higher on a test called Reading the Mind in the Eyes, which measures how well people can read complex emotional states from images of faces with only the eyes visible.

Finally, teams with more women outperformed teams with more men. Indeed, it appeared that it was not “diversity” (having equal numbers of men and women) that mattered for a team’s intelligence, but simply having more women. This last effect, however, was partly explained by the fact that women, on average, were better at “mindreading” than men.

So, while some of you read this as being a call to have more women in the mix, some others may read this as a call for a more inclusive and reflective team dynamic regardless of gender mix.

This study would probably say you are both right.