Boosting Team Intelligence

The CIPD recently featured an article in its People Management section making the case that when it comes to boosting team intelligence greater diversity and 'social intelligence' is more important that team IQ 

Vast amounts of data show that diverse teams perform better. (For example) research by Chris Chabris PhD from Union College, at the University of Washington, and an associate at MIT, shows that team intelligence is variable, measurable, and most surprisingly correlates more to the social intelligence of the team members rather than to the team’s IQ.

Chabris’ research suggests the IQ of a group is actually about communication. This can be either non-verbal and unconsciously understood or verbal and explicit. Women tend to be better at reading unconscious signals and social cues, so the higher percentage of women in a group correlates with higher group intelligence. His research shows that for a more intelligent team the gender and diversity mix matters. The research also found that encouraging all members to have a voice to offset women’s tendency to hold back also increases team intelligence.

So where is this business case? It's easy to quote turnover and wasted training money but if you are in an intellectual business surely the horse power or rather brain power of your team must make for a more persuasive business rationale.

The proposition that more diverse teams perform better makes sense in many situations but the assumption that some may make that by simply having a diverse team 'social intelligence' will follow, is not (in our experience) necessarily true. While many may recognise the synergistic outcomes that diverse teams can achieve, it is not always the case that people can identify or codify the (social) mindsets and skillsets of team members that determine whether the outputs of a team will be optimal, or not. 

In FranklinCovey's work with teams, a starting point is an abundance mindset that values and seeks out diversity of perspective, followed by communication skills which allow people to appreciate and learn from the experience of others. This is then 'topped off' with a method which allows team members to channel these inputs to conceive alternative approaches, which can help them shift performance from incremental to transformational.