Teams Less Effective When Stakes are High
At Harvard Business School students are increasingly taught the importance of managing and working in teams effectively. The time (and market worth) of the star lone performer is fast coming to a close in this era of shrinking resources and instant global communications.
As a result, academics have a renewed interest in the dynamics of teams, attempting to answer questions such as when do they perform best? Is there an ideal team size? How should teams be evaluated?
HBS professor Heidi K. Gardner's recent working paper looks at how teams use the expertise available to them. Surely a team that has a variety of experts among its ranks leverages that expertise effectively to tackle the issue at hand, right?
Well, sometimes. One barrier: performance pressure. Gardner reports that when the stakes are high, team members default to the opinions of high-status members rather than to team members with the best domain knowledge.
In other words: "The more important the project, the less effective the team."
Read her paper, Feeling the Heat: The Effects of Performance Pressure on Teams' Knowledge Use and Performance.
As a team leader, this is news you can use. In a high-stakes project, make sure your crew is properly using the expertise of individual members, and not just looking to high-profile members for answers.