Have you updated what you know about teams?

Kalgaard and Malone challenge our current views of what makes teams effective in their book “Team Genius”.

What really resonated with me were some of the following ideas:

• Size and composition of teams matter.
• Teams must be designed to work with members’ brain structures
• Team culture is as critical as organizational culture

So size matters…

• Human beings can handle, much less maintain, only a small number of connections. That is why relationships deteriorate so quickly as the number of team members grow.
• Team boundaries become a problem as team size increases and individual responsibility dilutes
• The best leaders have a limit to their successful spans of control usually 6-10 with 7 being the optimal number for work teams
• 3-5 are the number of people we can be close friends with and 12-15 are the number of people whose deaths we would deeply mourn
• 150 is the number of identities you can maintain in your head with some degree of acquaintance
• If a company reaches 1500 relationships start to be affected. HP splits up divisions when they each 1500.

Now for some brain theory…

• “Mood contagion” happens between the leader and followers and leaders can leverage this system of brain interconnectedness in a positive way.
• The human brain is evolutionary designed so that individuals can adjust to each others’ perspectives and emotions in order to cooperate
• Oxytocin – the bonding hormone – affects the “social brain”. It increases our ability to process social cues, but it can also create aggression against outsiders
• The deeper the engagement, the greater the relationship affects our brain and well-being and activates the genes controlling our immune systems – this is great for our health.
• However, toxic relationships can be physically affect the brain in a bad way

Finally, you need to be clear about your team culture.

• Group members who share egalitarian values form highly interdependent task structures and group patterns. They typically perform well.
• Group members who share meritocratic values tend to form fewer interdependent structures and group patterns. They can perform well.
• Groups with mixed values end up lacking consistent approaches to tasks and group processes and tend to underperform.

Where are your teams at?