Four Things Successful Teams Do Differently

Issue 161: We put our own research team to the test–see how we performed!

We write a lot about cooperation & team performance, but talk is cheap. It is easier than ever to talk about how your team or organizational culture is excellent. There is an endless stream of this type of commentary on podcasts, social media, and conference stages.

But what really matters is how a team actually performs. One of the beautiful things about sports is that the results are easy to see. After each game, the result is plastered on the scoreboard and the wins and losses are there for everyone to see. But in many organizations—or research labs, for that matter—it can be hard to see if a team is working well together.

One challenge is that many tasks take a long time before they bear results. Another is that teams start with radically different resources, challenges, and talent. This makes it hard to know when a team is flourishing or floundering—and obscures the keys to collective success.

This creates a ripe field for pundits: People can easily pontificate about the secrets to team performance without ever having to deliver anything that others can count. This makes it difficult to know if their advice is merely hot air.

Our newsletter is grounded in science: We run studies to the learn what drives various outcomes and we reguarly read the latest research on these topics. We even wrote a book on this topic. However, a sceptic might ask if these lessons actually drive success.

So, we invited organizational consultant and author of The Business of WE, Laura Kriska, to put Jay’s research team to the test. Laura has 30 years of experience working on 4 continents with Fortune 500 corporations, and she regularly has groups of executives play “The Team Machine”. It is an exercise designed to help teams identify—and overcome—internal barriers to collaboration. The exercise mimics the structure of many organizations and requires a blend of communication, cooperation, and innovation.

She came to Jay’s lab meeting (The NYU Social Identity & Morality Lab) and had them do her "Team Machine" exercise for assessing cohesion. The mission was to build a complex machine in 90 minutes. She broke us into 4 groups of 3 to build each component of the machine, then we had to come together to integrate all the components into a working machine.

Here is Jay’s lab working as four different subgroups to build different components of the team machine. We had 45 minutes for this first phase and were not allowed to put all the components together until each component was built and passed three consecutive tests. Then we had to integrate all the components to create a working machine in another 45 minutes.

Laura has given this exercise to corporations around the world: some teams complete the task and others end up bickering and fail. She told us that one team of highly trained engineers made cutting insults to one another and was unable to cooperate. In other organizations, people hoarded resources—making it impossible for other subgroups to build their component. Both of these habits can doom the team to failure and roughly a quarter of all teams fail to complete the task in the 90 minute window.

How did our band of unruly scientists do?

• First, it was a ton of fun! Everyone had a blast. The entire lab was cheering by the end (you can hear everyone excited when our machine passed the final test in the video below: we had to trigger two marbles to go down different pathways and have one land in a cup and the other pop a balloon).

• Second, we made a successful machine in under 40 minutes (Laura carried a stopwatch and took notes the entire time)! Laura told us it was record time—completing the task in half the time it takes most groups of seasoned executives.

Here was Laura’s reaction (which she shared on LinkedIn):

What happens when you challenge a group of academics, who have devoted their careers to researching collaboration, to achieve a specific goal within a fixed timeframe?

This group vastly outperformed any corporate group I have ever worked with in my 30 year career working on 4 continents 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼.

To be honest, I was shocked!

After finishing, Laura told us she noticed that we used four successful strategies. Jay and Laura wrote a column about these lessons for Harvard Business Review, but wanted to share the science behind these strategies here, and practical actions anyone can use in their own places of work, from the lab to the boardroom (with some quotes from our HBR column).

1. Focus on the Superordinate Goal—Team Success!

   In Laura’s experience, the biggest barrier to building a successful TeamMachine is an overly competitive and siloed approach to achieving a common goal. The problem of silos is not new, but hybrid work, polarization, and globalization magnify divides. And over 70 years of research has found, over and over again, that superordinate goals are among the most powerful strategy to bridge divides. In fact, Jay’s research team found that superordinate goals could even reduce the intense feelings of affective polarization between Republicans and Democrats.

   One of Laura’s clients, an aircraft company with offices in the United States and in Europe, had such an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ approach toward the other office that they competed with one another to get service from a vendor. Rather than leverage the value of their combined business to get better prices, they vied for the specialized vendor’s attention and paid higher prices to the vendor—diminishing their own competitiveness! Whether in finance, manufacturing, or technology, most corporate groups fail to recognize a common superordinate goal. Instead, they default to ‘us’ versus ‘them’ behavior where people in subgroups (departments) focus solely on achieving their own subgroup’s goal.

   When Laura facilitated the TeamMachine with a financial service company in New York, they started out strong with one subgroup completing their portion of the machine within 20 minutes. But instead of helping the other subgroups or trying to figure out how the entire machine would fit together, members of the successful subgroup took out their phones, drank coffee, and ignored the others. When the other subgroups finally met the preliminary goal there was no spirit of cooperation and valuable time had been wasted.

   In comparison, Jay’s research team was quick to recognize the superordinate goal. In fact, when Jay’s subgroup finished their initial task, he immediately asked Laura if his team could help the other subgroups to ensure their lab team was success. In most organizations, if any subgroup fails the whole group fails. Instead of waiting for the others to succeed, Jay’s subgroup immediately approached other subgroups asking this simple question, “How is your group doing? Do you need any help?” By taking this action, other subgroups quickly gained knowledge. It also greased the wheels for the next phase by building a sense of camaraderie—rather than competition—and allowed everyone to gain additional insights into the other components of the TeamMachine.

2. Using Collective Pronouns & Avoiding Disparaging Language

   One early signal that a group will have difficulty running a successful TeamMachine is the language they use. It immediately reveals how they view their team members. Are they viewed as collaborators or competitors? When individuals in the group use “I” and “my” instead of “we” and “our,” they are revealing their priorities.

   The TeamMachine uses simple items such as wood blocks and balloons. Hearing phrases such as “my balloon,” and “my blocks,’ suggest a highly individualized approach to a group challenge. No one owns these items. In fact, no team can succeed without sharing them!

   Use of collective pronouns alone is not the only indicator. Speaking about the other subgroups in disparaging ways is another sign that the ‘us’ versus ‘them’ competitive nature of the group outweighs collaboration. For example, a company in Houston had one subgroup that used these phrases to describe themselves and other subgroups:

   “We got the harder task.”

   “We are at a disadvantage.”

   “They got the easier task.”

   “They’re never going to get it done.”

   In comparison, Jay’s research team communicated in a highly positive and collaborative manner from the beginning. When one subgroup struggled with a function that was similar to a function that another subgroup had successfully navigated, a member of the successful group said, “We struggled with that too. Here is a solution we found that worked.” When an individual wanted to help another group they said, “I have a suggestion for you.” Other comments included, “We’re just trying to help.” “I like how you did that.” “What’s the goal?”

   During the entire 45-minute period that the NYU team worked together, Laura didn’t hear a single negative or disparaging comment. This is a striking difference from organizations she’s seen who spent the entire time insulting one another or teasing any subgroup who struggled with their task.

3. Allocating Resources Fairly

   The TeamMachine simulates resource allocation by having a fixed and limited number of wood blocks, balloons, and marbles. All subgroups utilize wood blocks but only two groups need marbles and only one group utilizes a balloon. Thus, it’s critical to share the resources and ensure each group has the necessary equipment it needs.

   In the first few minutes of facilitating the TeamMachine in Mexico City, one subgroup took the entire bag of wood blocks. Another group took the all the balloons and that group did not even need balloons. When a separate subgroup approached the resource-rich subgroup that had taken all the blocks, they were given a single wood block only after the resource-rich subgroup consulted with one another. This made it impossible to the team to build the machine—they had effectively sabotaged themselves.

   Many professionals can relate to the struggle over resources. Let’s be honest, limited resources are a part of life. When participants only prioritize their own subgroup, they may be able to quickly achieve their own goal but it harms the entire group. In Mexico City, it was only after the resource-rich group completed their own task that they begin to share wood blocks with other groups. Again, precious time was wasted and opportunities to collaborate were lost. In the end, they ran out of time and were not successful.

   Unlike the corporate group in Mexico City, Jay’s research team immediately opened the bags of materials and shared them with everyone. “Here’s some,” Jay said as he pulled out the bag of wood blocks and shared it across the table to the other subgroups. They quickly identified the various resources and figured out which group needed specific items. No time was wasted, and this action immediately created a culture of collaboration.

4. Engaging in Constructive Criticism

   Constructive negative feedback is a useful tool for any organization. Pointing out problems and seeking advice is critical to growth and improvement. But creating an environment where critical feedback is well received is easier said than done. Although people often assume that dissent and criticism come from the crankiest group members, research has found that the people who are most likely to speak up when things are going wrong are just as likely to be the people who care the most about the group.

   Of course, it’s critical to speak up and to ask for input from other members of the group. Not only is feedback useful, but groups without dissent are also destined to suffer from groupthink or mindless conformity. Even the presence of a single dissenter makes it easier for other people to speak up and increases the performance of the entire group.

   Groups that perform the best often have higher psychological safety. Psychological safety means that members of the team feel safe to take risks, speak up, and disagree openly without fear of negative repercussions. A study of teams at Google found that the highest performing teams reported greater safety. In corporate groups around the globe, Laura found that groups that succeeded within the timeframe were able to listen to and offer feedback around one central question: “Who will adjust in order to achieve the superordinate goal?”

   Laura noticed that members of Jay’s team were able to offer constructive feedback to one another—including suggestions about how to solve sticky problems, and new ways of doing things—without facing any backlash or defensiveness. Using WE-language when sharing negative feedback is a way to clearly point out problems while also underscoring unity in an organization. It is not an attempt to sugar-coat bad news or shy away from real problems. Instead, WE-language firmly keeps the focus on outside competition and on the shared goals of the organization.

Of course, we were hardly perfect. Laura took notes about our strengths, but also offered a few tips for improving our team performance. For instance, we could have completed the task even faster by sharing novel information more efficiently. The best teams are always looking to improve and we were grateful for the constructive feedback.

We have noticed that many researchers fail to use the lessons from the scientific literature to guide how their run their lab, department, and university. It is particularly jarring to see experts in bias and discrimination fail to use structured interviews or people who study group dynamics become victims of groupthink themselves. But, as humans, it’s easy to fall into bad habits or stick to the status quo.

We have always tried to apply the insights from science to create an excellent research culture and this test suggests it has paid off in more ways than our publications or grants. Thankfully, these are insights that almost any team can use to get better.

If you are looking to assess your team or just want a fun team building exercise I highly recommend reaching out to Laura (here)! You can mention you heard about the Team Machine from our newsletter.

To read Laura & Jay’s full column in Harvard Business Review on 4 Research-Backed Ways to Help Your Team Collaborate Better use this LINK.

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News and Updates

We have created a new meeting series for Spring! These meetings are a chance for paid subscribers to meet one-on-one or in small groups with Jay and Dom to talk about anything you want (e.g., our book, the topics we cover in this newsletter, our latest research, a problem you’re struggling with, or whatever else you want).

If you’re a paid subscriber, look for the meeting RSVP email in your inbox! Upgrade your subscription using the button at the bottom of this newsletter to join these meetings and recieve even more benefits.

• April 3rd 3:30-4:00pm EST with Jay

• May 1st 3:30-4:00pm EST with Dom

• June 12th 3:30-4:00pm EST with Jay

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Catch up on the last one…

What does it take to be a leader? Leadership qualities can be cultivated in all of us. Author and Professor Adam Galinsky reveals the science behind effective leadership and impact in last week’s interview: