Somewhere along the line, we decided that being connected and social is a good thing. Conversely, doing things alone without the connection to others is just not fun, and in some cases, is deemed pathological. The pressure toward endless interaction has caused some of us to put our own desire for solitude on the back shelf. The modern workplace favors the gregarious, social worker who not only enjoys an open workspace, but is literally almost never alone. Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, argues that loud-talking, brainstorming sessions favoring endless chatting are not serving us well. Thinking alone is hands down a better option—at least some of the time. Even extroverts produce better ideas when they are alone than when they are in a group. However, now that open-door policies, open-office floor plans, and the expectation that people should be reachable 24-7 have become ubiquitous, we have lost our solitude and, quite honestly, lost our mind—if that means the ability to think creatively.
Paradoxically, the rise of social media and the Internet has made people feel pretty lonely. Indeed, most Americans report having fewer close friends and confidants now than they did a generation ago. Sociologist Matthew Brashears at Cornell University surveyed two thousand adults and found that on average they had only two friends with whom they could discuss important matters—down from three in 1985. Millennials spend more time communicating with friends and social networks virtually than they do face-to-face. The frequency of virtual communication far surpasses that of all other types of traditional communication, such as phone calls and face-to-face socializing. Even though people consider it a status symbol to have five hundred or one thousand or even more Facebook friends, in truth, people who have a large group of acquaintances are less creative than those who have more close friends.
E-mail and other forms of virtual communication have created an organizational attention-deficit problem. Corporate employees receive and send an average total of 105 emails per working day, many of which are unnecessary. Indeed, the most productive and least stressed employees are those who don’t check their mailboxes regularly. Some companies have had to introduce the e-mail vacation. In one study, information technology workers agreed to ignore work e-mails for five days, while others kept on reading and responding. Those who continued reading e-mails had more consistently elevated heart rates, while those taking the e-mail vacation had more natural heart rates, felt less stress, and were better able to stay on task. Productivity is not the only thing at risk. A study of forty-one thousand people found that those who never turn off their phones and computers are more likely to have sleeping disorders and suffer from depression and mental illness. Many of my clients and students have told me that there is an expectation that they are available 24-7 for their colleagues and customers and that the boundaries that used to exist between solo work and teamwork have all but disappeared—almost overnight—leaving most people feeling overwhelmed and unfocused.
In this chapter, I am going to make a decidedly antisocial argument that I think will ultimately spark more creativity within teams. I’ll argue that we need to put up some barriers between people so that we can think and be creative when we are with them. I then address the question of just why it is that teams are less creative than individuals—a fact rooted in the dynamics of group behavior. And finally, I’ll lay out ways we can realize our most creative self. Don’t worry, I’m not going to suggest that everyone build a bunker or move into a lighthouse. But I will suggest that there is a time and place for social interaction and that it can be more meaningful when people have had the opportunity to engage in the necessary solo work that should precede group work. And that rather than being at the mercy of electronic media, we use it strategically.
I’ll start by discussing some of the behavioral blocks that keep teams from being as creative as they could be:
- Going with the crowd: The largely unconscious tendency of people to change their behavior so as to win acceptance from others—in other words, conformity.
- Riding the bus without paying the fare: The tendency for people to not work as hard when they are in a group as they do when individually accountable for a project, also known as free riding.
- Team superiority complex: The tendency to think 95 percent of us are in the top quartile—in other words, that one’s own group has been more productive in a meeting than is actually warranted.
- The tyranny of the average: The tendency of groups to regress toward an average, whether that be an opinion, design, or even a group performance effort.
- Cognitus interruptus: The tendency to multitask in groups, even though no one is good at it and the group ends up neither listening nor performing very well.
- Dumbing down: The fact that people are obsessively concerned with what others think of them and thus play it safe by being passive and often not doing anything extraordinary so they won’t attract attention.
Whether we want to admit it or not, we are conformist creatures. Any time we bring our behavior into alignment with others and their expectations, we are conforming. Any time we change our behavior because of the presence of others, we are conforming. Most of the time, this makes a lot of sense—after all, if we did not conform to the rules of traffic lights, we would crash our cars into one another. Or think of the consequences if we did not observe the conventions of standing in queues or participating in business meetings! Most of the time, things work better when we conform to protocol and fall into line. And in most cases, conformity acts as a social lubricant. Things go better when people adapt to and make room for each other. The one notable exception is the creative process!
As humans, we are hardwired to conform and so we modify our behavior, our speech, and even our unconscious thoughts in an effort to fit in. Psychologically, there are two major reasons why people conform—they want to be liked and they want to be right. In other words, we sometimes conform because we know that others will like us more if we agree with them. There is a lot of scientific evidence that backs this up. People treat nonconformists pretty badly. Psychologist Stanley Schachter studied how groups treat deviants—people who simply hold different opinions than the rest of the group members. He found that such people are the target of extraordinary criticism and group pressure. When a group member takes a different view, the group begins by trying to persuade that team member to change his or her mind. When that does not work, they often escalate their criticism and even express dislike of the deviant. Eventually, the group ostracizes the deviant.
We also conform because we figure that there is wisdom in the crowd. In short, when we are uncertain about how to act, feel, or behave, we naturally look to see what others are doing. For example, suppose you are attending your first underground dinner party. You have been sent a secret password and location a few days in advance, but that is all you know. You are unsure of what to expect so you play it safe when you arrive by barely mingling. By observing others and following suit, you quickly learn that there is no assigned seating and that you should absolutely not ask to see the kitchen, or heaven forbid, ask for any substitutions, even if you have a food allergy—in short, you conform! Conformity is a type of vicarious learning.
Most of the time, we conform unconsciously. We don’t even have to think about the fact that we are monitoring others and adapting to them. For example, many people start to dress like their boss, although they don’t realize it. Even more often, people unconsciously mirror their boss’s nonverbal behaviors during a meeting—using similar hand gestures or crossing the same leg, and so on. This is not crazy behavior. Indeed, there does appear to be an evolutionary advantage for those who mirror. People who dress like their boss actually get paid more and promoted more quickly. When we mirror others, they like us more. Unfortunately, the downside is that we behave in a more conformist fashion.
However, brainstorming demands nonconformist behavior. When we are in a brainstorming meeting, we need to check conformity at the door. Diversity of thought and mind is key for the creative thinking process. This is hard to maintain, though, because we don’t realize how much conformity pressure affects us. Over time, as members conform to one another, they become distinctly more homogeneous. In one investigation, people were given a free association test in which words were flashed on a screen and participants were asked to say the first thing that came to mind. People who were in the presence of others took longer to respond—suggesting that they were mentally editing their responses. And their verbal responses were more clichéd and typical. In contrast, people responding by themselves were faster and they made more unique, nontraditional responses.
The following conditions tend to heighten our own tendency to conform:
- When people feel incompetent or insecure about their knowledge or talent
- When the group has a minimum of three people
- When the rest of the group is unanimous
- When a person admires and likes the group
- When a person has not previously made a public commitment to a point of view
I’m not suggesting that people in groups should become rabid nonconformists. Most of the time, conformity provides the social lubrication that allows people to work together in a harmonious fashion. What I am suggesting, however, is that when we launch a brainstorming session, we put aside conformity norms and act as independently as possible. One study examined how conformity pressure affected the creative output of teams and found that it is generally not effective, except in cases of people who lack creative talent. Specifically, I suggest that leaders and facilitators begin a brainstorming meeting by clearly stating something like:
Look, we’re all colleagues here, and we want to have a productive meeting. However, to really achieve the goals of this brainstorming session, we need to stir up some outrageous ideas and set all questions of feasibility, practicality, and, for that matter, political correctness aside. Believe me, there will be plenty of time to evaluate and rule out ideas, but I want to personally encourage the outlandish this afternoon. And, if we start to stray back to everyday rationality, I’m going to bang this gong [or drum], and you can too!
In my coaching work with leaders and their teams, I encourage leaders to bring in a strange and noisy prop, such as a gong, bell, drum, or even water gun, so as to set the stage for a very different experience. Another favorite technique of mine is to give the team five minutes to talk about their most embarrassing experience in the past year—they often quickly let their guard down. Similarly, when comedians or improvisational actors warm up for a scene, they often do something that is embarrassing or self-revealing. For example, they talk about the most embarrassing part of their body or make gaseous sounds—it is a way to take down their guard.
One of the most pernicious problems in almost any team endeavor is the fact that some people do not contribute as much as others to the group’s effort. Yet they still enjoy the benefits of being part of the team. Free riding is the number-one complaint among people who work in team-based organizations. All of us have had the unpleasant experience of being in a group in which some people fail to do their share of the work, do crummy work, don’t follow up, don’t even show up—and then have the gall to include their name on the report or project or to reap the financial rewards!
Economists coined the term free riding to explain why people do not contribute their fair share in groups. For example, just over 1 percent of the population voluntarily supports public radio and public TV in the United States. Another example: in the United States, tipping at restaurants is completely voluntary. Parties of two, three, and four often leave pretty good tips. However, as the number of people in the party increases, the percentage of the tip decreases. Restaurants and waitstaff are onto this, which is why restaurants often add a mandatory 15 percent tip to the bill for parties of six or more. As it turns out, people in groups are more likely to want to take a free ride—enjoy the benefits of wine and food and company without paying for it. You may have heard of the bystander effect, or the tendency for people to not help a crime victim or someone in need. Well the effect is stronger as the number of bystanders increases.
Free riding also explains why some people consume more than their fair share. For example, as the size of a team increases, people become more selfish in situations in which they must exercise personal restraint. They eat more, take more tokens, and grab more swag when they’re in the presence of others. Researchers have long known that in both animals and adults, consumption of food increases as the number eating increases. The same holds true for children. In one study, when preschoolers ate graham crackers in groups of three or nine, the children in the larger group ate 30 percent more.
In short, free riding is just like what it sounds like. It is the tendency for people to enjoy the benefits of being in a group but do less of the work, contribute less, or take more benefit than would actually be fair. People are remarkably clever when it comes to free riding. And they don’t look at their own behavior as being self-interested. Rather, they justify it. My colleague Dave Messick set up a work-for-pay simulation in which people could work at a small task—grading exams—and then get paid. There was a strong tendency for people to take advantage of the situation by focusing on whatever aspect of the task they did best—and thus overpay themselves. People who worked longer hours believed they deserved more pay; but those who had actually graded more exams (in less time) believed that they deserved greater pay.
Free riding plays out at work, too. Chances are, you have been a member of a study group or work team in which a minority of people are doing most of the work, while other team members are enjoying the benefits. Just how pervasive is the free-rider problem? A meta-analysis of seventy-eight studies demonstrates that free riding is robust and generalizes across tasks and populations. Whether the task is shouting, hand-clapping, paperwork, oral presentations, brainstorming, writing reports, or pure physical labor, people work noticeably less hard in the presence of others than they do alone. There are many reasons why free riders show up in groups. First and foremost is the desire to benefit. In addition, free riders may believe that their own efforts are dispensable and not necessary for the group’s success.
Every term when I teach my classes, I have a similar experience: halfway through the term, a group of students visits my office to tell me that there is one person on their team who is not pulling his or her weight—not contributing to the group project, which has a significant negative impact on their grades. By the time this group visits me, they are frustrated and at the end of their rope. I ask them what they have done to address the problem and usually get a mixed set of responses. Some groups have not taken any action because they fear that any kind of confrontation will only make things worse, and so the problem perpetuates. Other groups hinted at the problem, but the team member in question did not get the hint. Other groups have taken rather drastic measures and have ousted the nonperforming team member in question. I don’t like any of these approaches.
But there has to be an approach, because free riders don’t just stir up resentment among the contributing members—they negatively affect the performance and creativity of the whole team. Take the case of Chris. Chris is a perfectly polite guy and quite friendly. When he first began to show up late for meetings, the rest of the team did not say anything, and even made light of the situation. Chris took the absence of criticism as an OK to skip out on further meetings. When I suggested that the team confront Chris or at least talk with him, the members were reluctant. They somehow thought this was somebody else’s job or that the situation would somehow resolve itself. It did not. In fact, it got worse. I made the suggestion again, but the team assumed that talking would not make a difference. So the team members began to disengage from the team mission; not long afterward, the entire team slipped into mediocrity.
To make matters worse, the free rider is often blissfully unaware of the fact that he is not pulling his weight. The rest of the team grows resentful and this creates a negative “doom loop.”
So, is free riding inevitable? No. It is not always the case that the presence of other people causes some or all people in a group to work less hard. In fact, three possible outcomes may result when people are in the presence of others:
- Free riding or social loafing: Occurs, as we’ve learned, when people in a group work less hard than they would individually. The group member may falsely believe she is contributing or, conversely, may know that she is shirking, but has an incentive to benefit from the group’s work. Example: In a group of managers working on a complex consulting engagement with firm deadlines and deliverables, one or two people are doing most of the work, while others continue to be compensated for their time and praised by the client.
- Social matching: Occurs when people in a group attempt to match their performance or rate of productivity to what others are doing. This illustrates a tendency for people in groups to converge on a group average. Example: A new salesperson in a technology group learns of the average sales quotas produced by other colleagues and attempts to match those.
- Social competition: Occurs when people in a group work harder in the presence of others than they do working alone. For example, joggers speed up their pace when they’re with others, cyclists ride faster when others are around them, and some Olympic athletes make their best times when competing against their archrivals.
Ideally, we would like social competition to occur—provided that the competition is healthy and constructive. But that doesn’t always happen, even when attempts are made to stimulate competition. One study examined how giving group members public information about the performance of others affected their behavior. Instead of competition, there was a strong tendency for group members to engage in social matching.
Team leaders often unwittingly create conditions for free riding to occur in teams. How can leaders set the stage to minimize the likelihood that free riders will pervade the group? It is important to be proactive about free riding before the team sets off to work. Consider one or more of the following practices.
DON’T MAKE THE TEAM TOO BIG. Free riders often experience diffusion of responsibility—in short, they don’t feel personally accountable for performing because there are others who can do the job. Consequently, the larger the team, the less likely it is that any given member will work hard. This is why small, diverse teams are ideal. A good rule of thumb is: don’t put people on the team unless there is a good reason. (We discuss team size more in the next chapter.)
ASSIGN ROLES. Teams in which members have clear roles and responsibilities are less likely to harbor free riders. Conversely, when members are assigned special, meaningful tasks, they are less likely to loaf.
STRENGTHEN TEAM COHESION. People who are more identified with their team are less likely to shirk. In exercises in which people are tempted to be selfish rather than cooperate with a group and potentially be exploited, people are much more likely to cooperate if they perceive themselves to be similar to others. One example of perceived similarity? Wearing similar t-shirts while focusing on a shared goal. Similarly, studies of cooperation in online interaction, in which people are not face-to-face, reveal that even using the same lingo, such as “lol,” increases similarity! When people using Instant Messenger (IM) employed the same linguistic terms or adapted or matched to their contact’s linguistic terms—for example, using the European term soccer instead of the American term football—they collaborated more. When less similar linguistic terms were used, people tended to focus more on personal gain and less on collaboration.
Similarly, teams that talk about what they have in common are less likely to free ride than those that talk about their differences. In short, focusing on their collective identity, rather than individual identities, increases cooperation and decreases free riding. One executive student of mine was poised for an aggressive, contentious negotiation that was headed for mutual disaster, but when he discovered that the key negotiator on the other side had been a graduate of his own alma mater, the tide turned and a win-win agreement was forged. This also explains why people from collectivist cultures are less likely to free ride.
However, if you want to increase divergent, creative thinking, make sure you do not create too much homogeneity. Creative, divergent tasks are best accomplished by groups that value individualism and uniqueness.
CRAFT A TEAM CHARTER. A team charter is a living document, written by all team members, specifying the mission of the team and the expectations they hold of one another. People are much less likely to renege on an agreement that they have agreed to in writing.
MAKE TEAM MEMBERS IDENTIFIABLE. Free riders often get away with murder because they can hide in a crowd. When team members believe they are identifiable or personally accountable for their performance, free riding is less likely. In one experiment, my colleagues and I had groups engage in a brainstorming task. However, we added an unusual twist: we placed a tape recorder on the middle of the table in half of the groups. The other half of the groups did not have a tape recorder on the table. We told the groups that we might want to know who said what after the brainstorming session. Even though we never listened to the tapes, the groups that thought that their ideas were identifiable outperformed the groups that were not recorded.
PROVIDE TEAM PERFORMANCE REVIEWS AND FEEDBACK. Because free riders are often blissfully unaware that they are not contributing as much as they should, it is important to provide feedback about their behavior. I use a dialogue-based peer review that involves four steps.
- Generating feedback: Every team member writes three pieces of positive and three pieces of developmental feedback for every member of the team. Initially, people will resist and make plausible-sounding excuses, such as, “I really don’t have anything to say … that is negative.” I simply respond that each team member is a work in progress and it is our responsibility to help one another on our journey to improve. I don’t use the terms negative feedback or critical feedback; I call this type of feedback developmental feedback.
- Anticipating feedback: I always ask members to anticipate the feedback that they will receive. When they have received the feedback (step 3), I ask members to make a note of what they expected to hear and what is surprising. All of this is done in a team setting, with members summarizing their expectations and noting the information that is confirming as well as the information that is surprising.
- Delivering feedback: Once I have collected all the positive and developmental feedback for each member, I assemble it and give the individual team members their feedback with the strict understanding that no one should attempt to guess who made the comments. I usually type the comments and put them in individual envelopes for members.
- Learning from feedback: As a final step, each member is expected to prepare a personal development plan. This is where the rest of the group can be helpful and make suggestions as to what could be acted on and how.
Why construct a qualitative, dialogue-based peer feedback system like the above rather than simply a system in which people get numeric scores? First, we learn more from dialogue than from numbers alone. Second, no one is singled out because everyone goes through the same process. Everyone receives feedback from everybody else—and most important, everyone receives an equal balance of positive and developmental feedback. Asking members to anticipate their feedback encourages self-reflection. It is worth noting that self-evaluation does not increase creativity unless people feel that they can improve. Asking team members to propose a personal development plan assures that the information is followed by action.
Once a free-riding problem has emerged, the team and the team leader need to take action. The key is to do three things: (1) raise awareness (often the free rider is unaware that his or her contributions are falling short of expectations; (2) get the team member to commit to change his or her behavior; (3) plan a follow-up to assess whether the behavior has changed. To make this even more concrete, team leaders can take the following actions.
First, the team leader should tell the group that she will be speaking to all members individually concerning the issue of workload and contributions. This does two things: (a) makes the free-riding problem a group issue and (b) indicates that no one is being singled out.
Second, the team leader needs to hold those discussions, being careful to follow a similar protocol with each team member. I suggest questions such as, “What is your assessment of the contributions and workload in this group?” “If you had 100 points to assign to reflect the contributions each person is making, how many points would you give to yourself? Others?” It is very important that the team leader share her evaluation of that team member’s contributions. If that person is one of the free riders, the team leader should say something like, “My personal assessment is that you are not contributing as much as others. I would like to know whether my observation surprises you or is consistent with your own perception. And then I would like to discuss how we might change that.”
The free rider will often either deny or, more commonly, make excuses for this behavior. The team leader should persist with the discussion of how the team member could modify his or her behavior and should express confidence in the team member’s ability and willingness to change. Finally, the team leader should ask for a commitment from the team member; for example, “Can I have your word that you will, as of this point, do x?” The team leader should ask every team member for his or her personal assessment and action plan in writing.
Third, the team leader should schedule a follow-up meeting with each team member to provide feedback on what has been learned during this period and to see whether things are improving. The key is to make the free rider an active participant in the change process.
If these steps don’t work, then I suggest that the team leader schedule one more meeting with the free rider in which she provides a review of when the problem was first noticed, recaps all the ensuing conversations, and simply announces that the problem will no longer be tolerated. The team leader can tell the team member that she has reached a conclusion that was not easy to reach, but necessary. The leader should pause at this point and ask if the team member knows where this conversation is going. More than 50 percent of the time, the team member will simply finish the sentence by saying, “So, I’m off the team?” The leader should nod and say, “That is correct.”
“Ninety-five percent of us are in the top quartile.” That statement is just logically impossible. Yet most people regard themselves as above average on everything from driving ability to nonverbal acuity. The same is true for their groups. Most people think their team’s performance is most assuredly above average. And most people believe that they perform better in a group than they do individually. This is called the illusion of group productivity. It’s the unfounded belief held by millions of people that our groups are more productive and are more creative than they actually are. Research has clearly shown, however, that this is dead wrong. Groups are distinctly less productive than individuals when it comes to creative performance. You might wonder how millions could be wrong. The answer is that we are social animals—people like being in groups. It feels good to be around others. Our mood improves. In short, teams have an inflated sense of their own productivity primarily because they have enjoyed being in the group and being in a group feels good.
However, this does not mean groups are more creative. Nevertheless, people cling to the illusion of group productivity. For example, people who have been part of a brainstorming group session believe they have generated more ideas than individuals who have brainstormed alone. However, these brainstorming groups are only about half as productive as an equal number of individuals brainstorming alone.
What can you do to avoid falling victim to the illusion of productivity? Try these three steps:
- First, be clear about the mission of the group: Yes, we want to have fun, but we also want to accomplish some real work. Commit at the outset to a clear stretch goal.
- Second, think about having three distinct phases to your group meeting: a beginning, a middle, and a close. The beginning should be social time. Because we are social animals, we have a distinct need to socialize and bond, so recognize that and set time aside for that to occur. I recommend around five to ten minutes, maximum. Then at the appropriate time, roll up your sleeves and begin the process of conducting the actual work of the meeting.
- Finally, set aside three to five minutes to close the meeting. Ask the following questions: What worked well/not so well about our process? How is our output? What can we do to improve both?
Most people seem to intuitively understand that others in a group don’t want them to stand out in a way that might bring unwanted attention to the group as a whole. At the Chicago Hawthorne Electric company plant, workers on the line experienced a curious group phenomenon: they got “binged”! When one line worker felt that another was working too hard or not working hard enough, that overperforming or underperforming worker got smacked sharp and hard on their upper arm—a physical attack called binging. To the binged worker, the message from the group was clear: “Don’t stand out.” The group did not want free riders, but they also did not tolerate rate-busters—the name given to those who worked harder than the rest of the group and sent the message to management, “Well, if one of us is working this hard, then it is reasonable to expect others to work hard as well.” Even though binging (or other physical intimidation) is rarely reported these days, workers have devised other ways of signaling to their colleagues just what is expected of them. In one nursing home, a new nurse’s aide found herself accused of rate-busting when she fetched coffee from a downstairs cafeteria for a resident. A fellow aide confronted her, telling her that she couldn’t do that because she (the veteran) wouldn’t want to have to do the same: “Just tell [the patient] no,” she added.
Regression toward the mean is the tendency for a given person’s behavior to converge toward an average. On an individual level, each one of us has a “normal” or “set point” on just about anything that we aspire to do. For example, suppose that you take a standardized test and get a rather low score. You study and take the test again, and your score improves dramatically. However, when you take it a third time, your score gets lower. Regression toward the mean also explains why athletes cannot get a personal best every time they train, much less perform. Certainly, athletes, students, and executives all want to get better, but after a while it is hard to show consistent, steady improvement.
Groups, as we have seen, easily fall victim to the tyranny of the average—a strong tendency for people to establish norms and for groups to converge to those norms. This is clearly not conducive for breakthrough performance. But it gets worse. There is a tendency for the lowest performers to pull down the average of the team. What this means is that a low-performing team member might cause an otherwise high-performing team member to be worse. Why would this be the case? As an example, consider a group of salespeople whose sales are tracked on a daily—sometimes even hourly—basis. Anyone in the group can quickly see how much product others on the team have sold that day. When this group initially forms, there might be large differences in individual sales performance, with some being particularly high performers and some significantly less productive. Over time, however, they tend to converge toward a group average that is usually lower than the simple arithmetic mean of what their individual sales are. Why? Well, for one thing, a high-performer may simply stop working so hard. He may think to himself, “Why should I bust my butt trying to work hard if my team is not performing at my level?” Moreover, people are more likely to harm a higher-performing team member by interfering with their work, getting into arguments, and gossiping about them—particularly when they feel they cannot perform at that level. Finally, it is harder for a low performer to start performing at a higher level than for a high performer to start performing at a lower level. It takes motivation and skill to improve performance. Bottom line: the productivity levels of people around us have a powerful norming effect on our own performance.
The tyranny of the average is yet another reason to think carefully about whom to put on a team. It also suggests that there is some truth to the adage that one bad apple can spoil the whole bunch. Think of it this way: in general, it is not considered desirable to be too different from other group members. In a brainstorming task, group members may not want to outperform their fellow team members. Accordingly, low-productivity people may attempt to increase their output so as not to appear incompetent or unmotivated. Yet low-productivity people may simply not be able to perform much better, and so there is a competency ceiling. Conversely, high-productivity people may decrease their output because they don’t want to do all the work and let others ride free. As this suggests, and research has shown, the difference in the sheer volume of ideas generated by people is lower for interactive groups than for nominal groups. And, more sobering, in the interactive groups, the partner with the higher rate of output attempts to match the partner with the lower output more than the reverse.
In sum, several investigations have found evidence for performance-matching in creative teams. Not surprisingly, there is more of a group-averaging tendency in interactive groups than in nominal groups: the performance of people who are in interactive groups is more similar than the performance of those in nominal groups. More notably, researchers have found that groups often settle on a level of performance early on and don’t change it over time. For example, the performance of a group in their initial session predicted their performance on a different problem two sessions later.
Yet is it always the case that teams converge toward a group average? Are there ever cases where teams will attempt to reach a new level set by a high-performing group member? A quite different view of performance matching is that groups stimulate competition or raising the bar. Simply stated, people in a team might challenge one another to perform better. For example, in one investigation, the productivity gap between interactive and nominal groups was eliminated when the interactive groups were given a performance standard comparable to that of the typical performance of nominal groups. Thus pressure from outside a group—in the form of information about the performance of others—might be effective in spurring competition; and when some degree of competition is introduced in the group, people are motivated to match the performance of the best group members.
Thus, my best advice on how to raise the bar rather than regress to the mean is to take the focus off intra-team comparisons and instead focus on comparing one’s team to a model team or yes, perhaps even a rival team—because when people compare themselves to others, they improve their performance and they are more creative.
Do you know that it takes the average person seven minutes to regain focus after he or she has been interrupted? Think about it. Every time you check your e-mail when it pings, it takes seven minutes to get back on track. Do you also know that fewer than 95 percent of adults are able to multitask effectively? The rest of us are downright multitasking failures.
Unfortunately, the problem is that we are not aware that we are easily distracted and don’t multitask well. Cognitus interruptus is the term I use to refer to the fact that when we’re in a group, or even logged into a computer, we must battle constantly to keep our focus of attention. In a study conducted at the University of California at Irvine, it was found that when someone is interrupted, the person does not resume to the original task until two other activities are completed.
Being in a group involves a complex symphony of skills: people have to listen, speak, regulate taking turns, show appropriate nonverbal behaviors, and sometimes—heaven forbid—take notes or summarize. In short, whenever we are in a group, we are usually multitasking, not the least of which involves listening and speaking. Have you ever noticed how people at meetings compete for attention and floor time? Sometimes they jiggle in their chair just before they want to speak, or draw a loud breath, or clear their throat. Sometimes they are successful, other times others simply ignore them and take the floor themselves. One of the major reasons why groups are less productive than individuals when it comes to creative thought generation, or ideation, is that they are simultaneously competing for the floor. Production blocking refers to the kind of interference people in groups encounter when more than one person is trying to speak at the same time. The mere act of “taking turns” to express ideas severely curtails the volume of ideas that a group can generate. It is not surprising that the production-blocking problem grows exponentially as the size of the group increases; two people experience a rather small level of production blocking (10 percent), but a group of four suffers a 25 percent reduction in productivity!
Production blocking refers to the time wasted while group members “queue up” and wait to take turns expressing their ideas. There is a complex set of mental behaviors that occur when people think of an idea and then begin to verbally express it. The delay between idea generation and articulation interferes with the generation of the next idea. Long or unpredictable delays are particularly detrimental for teams. In one telling investigation, people working at computer terminals were assigned a creative task, but their ability to produce ideas was blocked by a computer program that simulated production blocking. The program prevented some participants from entering brainstorming ideas for a fixed period of time. This delay interfered with idea generation in two ways: (1) it disrupted the organization of idea generation when delays were relatively long; and (2) it reduced the flexibility of idea generation when delays were unpredictable.
People in groups usually try to act in a way that is acceptable to others. Being nice and agreeable, making small talk, and listening is part of what is known as the politeness ritual. People who are not good at it are often labeled as lacking in social skills or simply awkward. Groups usually follow a self-imposed politeness ritual that includes taking turns, which, as we have already seen, is bad for ideation. Taking turns interferes with creative idea generation at two stages of the idea-generation process: knowledge activation (i.e., thinking of ideas) and idea production (speaking up about ideas).
If one person is talking, others must remain silent, and their ideas may be forgotten by the time their turn to communicate eventually arrives. In addition, when the speaker’s ideas are different from what the listener is thinking, this may have an inhibitory effect on the listener’s ideas.
So, being in a group is a little like multitasking. Research clearly indicates that most people are abysmal in this regard. People who are regularly bombarded with several streams of communication often do not pay attention, or they pay attention to irrelevant things. In one investigation, researchers compared people who did a lot of media multitasking and those who did not. The groups were shown sets of two red rectangles alone or surrounded by two, four, or six blue rectangles. Each configuration was flashed twice, and participants had to determine whether the two red rectangles in the second frame were in a different position than in the first frame. Even though they were told to ignore the blue rectangles, the high-achieving multitaskers were constantly distracted by the irrelevant blue images, and they performed very badly. Moreover, it was not even the case that the self-reported high-achieving multitaskers had better memories. In all tests, they performed worse than low-achieving multitaskers because they were not able to filter out the irrelevant information from the relevant information.
CYBERSTORMING. What’s one solution to production blocking? Cyberstorming. Cyberstorming is brainstorming via computers, or any other device that allows people to type into a shared database when and where they want to. Cyberstorming works because members don’t have to fight for a conversational turn in a meeting; instead, they simply have to type their comments and ideas, which are immediately projected onto a screen for all to see. No production is blocked! A form of cyberstorming is becoming more popular in the classroom as well. The Sloan Consortium, an organization that tracks emerging trends and data for online education found that, in 2011, 31 percent of higher education students took at least one online course compared to students in 2008 when only 24 percent took online courses. There has been a 10 percent growth rate for online enrollments compared to only 2 percent for traditional instruction. More students asked questions via Twitter to their university instructor than through the traditional method of raising their hands. By not feeling that their questions or comments would be blocked by other students, students participated more, and learned more in the classroom. We discuss cyberstorming more in chapter 6.
BRAINWRITING. Brainwriting is another technique developed precisely to counter the production-blocking problem. In brainwriting, instead of team members vocalizing their ideas in an unconstrained free-for-all, team members simultaneously, but independently, write down their ideas. When each member of a team is given permission to write ideas down simultaneously amid silence in the group, the focus of attention is just on ideas—no eye contact, no turn-taking, and no politeness necessary! We’ll explore brainwriting in more depth in chapter 6.
OTHER TECHNIQUES. Other solutions require a bit more work on the part of the group facilitator. I know of a group that uses a timer and when a group member has “timed out,” he or she can’t talk any more. I have worked with a company that gives everyone a stack of eight to ten “speaking cards” and once people play their cards, they need to be quiet. Speaking cards help ensure equal input—if team members simply take turns, there is no limit to how many turns an overly loquacious team member may take and monopolize the group.
Most people are so self-preoccupied that they falsely believe that others are constantly thinking about them. In my research with Dr. Tanya Menon of The Ohio State Business School, we discovered that most people believe that their personal assets are a threat to others when in fact others are not envious of them. We call this the “don’t hate me because I’m beautiful effect.” The problem is this self-serving assumption is just plain off-base—the people who we think are envious of us simply don’t like us!
OK—so we are self-absorbed, preoccupied with how others view us, and wrong about how much of a threat we pose to others. What does that have to do with the creative generation of ideas? The first rule of Osborn’s cardinal four rules of brainstorming is “expressiveness.” Brainstorming and idea generation cannot work when people feel that they cannot express themselves. There has been a lot in this chapter about how people conform in groups and about several other negative group dynamics that conspire to squelch creativity. Another factor that can thwart the effectiveness of brainstorming groups is evaluation apprehension—the concern that people have that others are judging them and may feel that their ideas are silly. Whereas it is normal to be concerned about how we are viewed in the eyes of others, there are factors that can make this concern worse, or even immobilize people. As the group grows larger, concerns about evaluation apprehension increase. To the extent that a person values and admires his or her team, that person’s concerns with evaluation apprehension are greater. The problem is that people who are concerned about what others think of them are more likely to behave not only in socially acceptable ways, but in ways that avoid the possibility of unfavorable evaluations—not a recipe for creative thought!
Some people are more concerned with how they are perceived than others. Are you one of these people? The fear of negative evaluation scale (FNE) measures the degree with which people are concerned about being evaluated negatively. Here are a few items from the FNE.
- I worry about what other people will think of me, even when I know it doesn’t make any difference.
- I am usually worried about what kind of impression I make.
- I often worry that I will do or say the wrong things.
- If I know someone is judging me, it has little effect on me.
- Other people’s opinions do not bother me.
- I rarely worry about what kind of impression I am making on someone.
If you agreed with the first three statements, but not the last three, you are most likely high in terms of fear of negative evaluation. If you agreed with the last three statements, but not the first three, then you are extremely low in terms of fear of negative evaluation. Another way of looking at your responses is to rate yourself from 1 to 5 on each statement (1 = not characteristic of me; 5 = extremely characteristic of me). Then flip your scores on the last three items (i.e., if you gave yourself a 5 on statement 4, then convert it to a 1, and so on). An average score, according to psychologist Mark Leary, is about a 3 (indicating “moderately characteristic”).
Chapter CapstoneThis chapter reviewed the several factors that conspire to hinder the performance of creative teams. Taken as a whole, these factors pose some rather daunting challenges for the survival, much less success, of such teams. I am not suggesting for one minute that we eliminate teams in organizations—we do not want to disassemble teams! Rather, we want to do three things. First, we want to capitalize on what teams are good at. Teams are great at convergent thinking and good at mobilizing people within the organization. Second, we want to capitalize on what individuals are good at. Individuals working independently and not in the presence of others are good at divergent thinking. Third, we need to introduce some cost-effective best practices to aid the creative team, such as brainwriting and cyberstorming. In the chapters that follow, I introduce even more best practices that are highly cost-effective.