As a young person who loved basketball I often wondered how
a team with much less talent beat a team with better players. When they did it once you chalked it up to
luck but when they constantly beat the team with better talent you knew there
had to be something going on beyond pure luck.
As I grew up and became part of teams in the workforce I noticed the same
thing often happened. Teams with less
talent many times were more productive than the more talented team. Why did this happen?
The answer to this question became clearer when I ran across
some research. Researchers gave several
teams twenty pieces of uncooked spaghetti, one yard of transparent tape, one
yard of string, one marshmallow which had to end up on the top and told each
team to build the tallest possible structure in 18 minutes.
Now there were teams consisted of lawyers, kindergarten
students, CEO’s and MBA students. Now who won the challenge? The kindergarten students! How did that happen?
The researchers came away with a couple of factors that make
good teams.
1-
Everyone in the group listens and talks
equally. A lot of times with the adult’s
people wanted to take charge
2-
Members feel safe and connected. The kindergarten students learned from
mistakes.
3-
Eye contact
4-
Members who gain info immediately share it with
the rest of the team. The adults sometimes saw knowledge as power
Now when I reflect upon the great teams that I was on there
was no egos, everyone contributed equally and all we were concerned about is
winning. Nobody worried about rank or
who received the credit we were just worried about producing the best product.
Which one of the above characteristics can you improve upon
to make yourself a better team player?
As always I would love to hear your feedback
This is a question I seem to think about quite often.This is actually an extremely interesting study. What is the experiment called and how can I find it, I would like to observe a more in depth view of the test.
ReplyDeleteHere is a link to a TED talk about the marshmallow challenge. Hope that helps.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.ted.com/talks/tom_wujec_build_a_tower
I remember in 8th grade coming to Calvert Hall to build a spaghetti tower fora team building activity. I noticed that the more confident teams had a larger struggle building the towers due to their inability to communicate their ideas. Although my team didn't come close to winning i was proud of what my team had put together. These factors were certainly not the first things that came to mind when i think of a good team, but now that i think about it and look back to the spaghetti tower i realize that these were all factors that my team had acquired and that some of the other teams were missing.
ReplyDelete- Vincent Young