Teams can sometimes make us dumber. But these 3 simple teachings from the science of collective intelligence will help you boost your team's performance. --- Hello, my name's Camille and I steal insights from cognitive scientists around me, to help you avoid common traps in decision making. Everyone of us wants to become smarter individually, but there's only so much we can do alone. However, there is HUGE room for improvement when it comes to groups and how they collaborate. Some fascinating research has been conducted into group IQ by MIT researchers Thomas Malone and Anita Williams Woolley. Read their original publication here: https://hbr.org/2011/06/defend-your-research-what-makes-a-team-smarter-more-women

1. 3 HACKS
FOR
SMARTER
TEAMS

2. TEAMS ARE
EVERYWHERE
Launching rockets, Coding apps,
Designing products
BUT DID YOU KNOW
GROUPS HAVE IQ
JUST LIKE INDIVIDUALS DO

3. THIS IS A GROUP’S
“COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE”
“the general ability of a particular group to perform
well across a wide range of different tasks.”

4. SO WHAT MAKES A
GROUP PERFORM
BETTER ?
Researchers tested multiple group
compositions to find out
Thomas Malone Anita Woolley

5. CAN YOU GUESS
WHICH FACTOR MATTERS MOST TO A GROUP’S IQ ?
1
2
3
A cohesive group
A motivated group
A group of smart individuals
BUT FIRST

6. THE ANSWER IS
…

7. “We were surprised but intrigued
to find that group intelligence
had relatively little to do with
individual intelligence."
NONE OF THE ABOVE

8. SO WHAT DOES
MATTER ?
3 MAIN FINDINGS

9. READ THE ROOM
LEARN TO REALLY LISTEN
The best performing groups turned out to
contain over 50% of women,
This is because women tend to be better at
picking up on social cues and guessing what
others are feeling (social sensitivity)
Luckily, social sensitivity is a skill, meaning
you can improve, whatever your gender
They also share criticism constructively and
keep an open mind

10. SHARE SPEAKING
TIME EQUALLY
YOU’RE WASTING VALUABLE INPUT
Think of the communication flow between
members as bandwidth that should be maximized
To do so, set egalitarian rules, for example :
• Everyone gets a say, but authority figures speak last
• Encourage people to write down their thoughts
before sharing them

11. DIVERSIFY
THE MORE VIEWPOINTS THE BETTER
To solve problems with many moving parts
and no clear answer, assemble diverse teams
This works because the most effective teams
are those with the most different viewpoints,
tools and experiences. Once combined, they
help paint a fuller picture
How should you combine opinions ?
• Simple deliberations (limit to 5 people)
• Prediction markets, to forecast events
• Collaborative surveys, to gather scattered
knowledge

12. YOU’RE PROBABLY
WASTING
YOUR COMPANY’S
COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE
I steal insights from cognitive
science to help you:
• Make smarter decisions
• Have more and better ideas
• Forecast with accuracy