Research has identified three key factors outstanding teams have in common, whether they work together in the office or remotely.
Intellectual diversity
In the corporate world, the term "diversity" is primarily used to refer to racial or gender diversity. However, intellectual diversity goes much further and includes all aspects of a person's or group's views, experiences and perspectives.
People who come from different backgrounds or have different life experiences tend to have different perspectives. Conversely, if teams are significantly homogeneous, whether members come from the same background, have a similar education, or racial or gender affiliation, then their ideas tend to be similar. The range of ideas and innovations is not as rich as for diversified teams.
A 2011 study showed how gender diversity can create more intellectual diversity and therefore more value. The researchers examined many different teams and found that when the team included more women, it made better decisions. This is true for almost any other measure of diversity as long as it provides basic intellectual diversity.
Psychological security
While most organisations recognise the need to strive for intellectual diversity, many teams struggle with the fact that, despite their intellectual diversity, not all members are free to share their ideas. They do not feel able to contribute fully.
Psychological security is a measure of how safe people in a team feel when it comes to sharing ideas, experiences, and self-assertion in general. It also affects how willing people are to take risks and admit mistakes.
For example, a study by Professor Amy Edmondson of the Harvard Business School examined leadership of nursing teams at various levels of the hospital. Nurses rated by their teams as better leaders often had a higher rate of documented errors than nurses whom the team considered worse leaders.
On closer inspection, Edmondson found an explanation: better leaders create a sense of psychological security so the subordinate nurses were free to admit mistakes and ensure redress. In addition, everyone benefited by learning from the errors which were revealed. In contrast, the worse team leaders did not create sufficient psychological security, so the nurses felt they had to hide their mistakes.
Psychological security is what actually allows a team to benefit from its intellectual diversity.
A purpose worth fighting for
Often, mission statements or statements about an organisation's goals are too vague for their own teams to recognise properly and apply to their day-to-day work. The group lacks a binder, a superior goal that would make sense for them really to fight for. It is not enough to have a goal people merely work for; outstanding teams have a goal to fight for.
Studies by the Artis International research group on how individuals join armed revolutions, uprisings, and terrorist organisations have found that when communicating consistently, what is at stake and its significance for the future has two effects:
- Core values become sacred values for people. They are worth fighting for. People's daily work is transformed from work that needs to be done to work required to defend values or to spread them further.
- Team members gain a stronger sense of group identity. The fight itself defines the fighters and connects them to one another. As a result, they work for one another as well as for the mission.
Purpose, mission and vision are extremely important. When you look at outstanding teams that consistently create value, they usually state that their goal and purpose is worth fighting for.
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