The Team Battle
No matter what havoc Nik wreaked, one group he was part of
did not go down in flames. The other members kept their eye on the goal
eventually succeeding with flying colours on the task. But, when he tried the
same tactics in other groups, they struggled. What was the magical juice of the
first group?
Negativity is highly infectious. It travels fast below our
level of consciousness affecting behaviour in all realms of our lives, shutting
down the relationship parts of our brains. In any team or group environment,
one negative member can “infect” teammates with the same vibe. Productivity
suffers. Trust plummets. Tribalism takes over because it is no longer safe to
be in the group. This is a common story that most teams struggle with either
all the time or occasionally when team membership changes.
But is the opposite true? Can one positive team member
resuscitate the team’s culture despite the pervasive negativity? In that the
root cause of “culture” is derived from the Latin word ‘cultus’ which means care, team leaders and members alike
know intuitively that constant negativity is a detriment to success. Better to have
a ‘caring’ or benign environment at the least because it is less stressful,
more relaxing. This switch from fight or flight to rest and relax allows
members to listen to each other and dare to share. Positivity literally and
automatically opens up our connecting minds stoking idea flow and creativity.
The Magic of
Positivity
Daniel Coyle’s most recent book, The Culture Code, describes an experiment in which an actor with
the pseudonym “Nick” deliberately plays three different roles in up to forty
small groups:
- Jerk – aggressive, defiant and argumentative
- Slacker – a with holder of effort
- Downer – negative type
The group is tasked with developing a marketing plan for a
start-up. In the majority of the groups, performance drops 30% to 40%. Team
member energy, interest in the task and caring about succeeding take a hit. In
almost every group, Nick’s negativity is picked up by everyone as evident by
various signalling such as heads on table, crossed arms and other negative
non-verbal behaviours. But, in one group, despite Nick, team members stay
engaged and the group overall does well. Why?
The researchers solve the mystery by viewing the video of
the outlier group. One group member (assigned the name “Jonathan”) always
deflects Nick’s negative moves with body language that conveys warmth making
the “unstable situation feel solid and safe”. He asks “simple” questions to
elicit viewpoints. He smiles, listens closely and acknowledges the ideas. The
result is higher energy levels, riffing with the ideas cooperatively and
eventually achieving a quality outcome.
The Win-Win Bonus
Decades of research on social conflict point in the same
direction. For example, when group members who play the prisoner’s dilemma game
eventually ‘get’ that sharing in the bounty creates a win-win for all, they see
the limitations of win-lose (tit-for-tat). By dialing up a group mindset of
inclusiveness, prosperity for the many overtakes prosperity for the few or as
economists put it – win-win instead of zero-sum. In an organizational
environment, this also applies to sharing and communicating among teams. The
positive culture helps people to cooperate leading to higher quality
decision making. This is a universal
effect.
If the “secret juice” is positivity, what are the
ingredients? According to MIT’s Alex Pentland, two factors are critical:
Switching
out status or power differentials, even temporarily, creates an atmosphere
of equality (everyone matters)
Social
sensitivity, especially positive signaling, as our ancestors did before
language emerged, kick starts mutual sharing and the vetting of ideas. The vibe
of “it’s safe to say something” permeates the team. All ideas are worthy for
consideration.
Positive “social physics” according to Pentland and his book
of the same name, generate higher performance returns by enhancing the flow of
ideas and by association the “collective intelligence” of the team. Special Ops
teams in the military know this well.
Two-Way Street
Team conflict has a healthy and unhealthy side. On the
healthy side, differing opinions enable an environment of challenging
assumptions and digging deeper. But non-respectful conversations simply
escalate bad feelings. The good news is that one person can make a difference
one way or the other.
In Thinking Fast and
Slow, page 54, Daniel Kahneman explains how “simple, common gestures”
“unconsciously influence our thoughts and feelings”:
If you “act calm and
kind…you are likely to be rewarded by actually feeling calm and kind.”
Consider this - every member of a team imagines this mindset
in advance of each team meeting and during tumultuous times in team meetings.
Even visualizing a positive scenario seems to help!
Tips for building
positive conversational intelligence in a team:
·
Be
curious – ask lots of open-ended and clarifying questions.
·
Watch
your non-verbal signaling – no rolling of eyeballs, crossing your arms in
disgust or defiance, ignoring other members, glaring and checking your smart
phone.
·
Convey
respect in both your verbal and non-verbal signals– inject humor, laugh
appropriately, smile, acknowledge good ideas, give your full attention in the
moment (as if you are in an improv class).
·
Guide the
group to dig deep, challenging conventional wisdom and assumptions.
·
Let go of
being right.
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