HOW GROUPS BRING OUT THE BEST IN PEOPLE… AND THE WORST

“Like I always say, there’s no “I” in team. There’s a “me” though, if you jumble it up.”

– Hugh Laurie as Dr. Gregory House

One of the essential qualities that makes us human is the way that we work together in groups. Understanding how to bring out our best within a group can make the difference between success or failure, personally, professionally, and financially.

You see it in sports teams, in musical groups, in work groups… when highly skilled individuals bring their best, and cooperate with each other, they create a level of excellence that’s unparalleled.

One player is a great shooter, another is exceptional at defense, another sets up plays, another, though not exceptional at any one thing, is uncanny in his ability to get the team to work together and connect well.

You also see the downside when an individual, no matter how skilled they are, can’t or won’t work together for the good of the group as a whole. One prima dona who hogs the ball, or a virtuoso soloist who has no emotional connection with his bandmates.

But the most common negative is when members of a group merge into a single blob, undifferentiated, following the momentum of wherever the group happens to be heading. Nobody stands out, nobody brings their unique talents and abilities, they all ooze together like a bland smoothie of humanity.

We see this on social media, where groups of people coalesce around a similar point of view on something, and the confirmation bias drives everyone into beliefs that become more rigid and extreme over time. Or political groups where to disagree in any way is treated as a threat to the group itself.

The essential factor that leads to successful groups lies in each person bringing their unique, responsible, individual self to the group.

What brought human beings to the place where we’ve populated every corner of the earth, is our ability to communicate and work together as small groups to overcome our adversaries, and the wider challenges of nature. No other species on earth does what we do in this respect.

Chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, will hunt as a group, and it can look like cooperation, but they don’t actually work together as a group – each one is out for themselves. If one catches prey, they’ll eat as much of it as possible before the others arrive. If one gets injured, they’ll be left by the other members to suffer and die.

So we humans have this incredible ability to work together, yet it’s not often that we enjoy the full potential of this ability. Let’s look more closely at what brings out the worst in groups, and the best (courtesy of Roy Baumeister’s wonderful book, “Explaining the Self”):

Worst:

Mob violence

When people merge into an angry group, surrendering their individual moral sense of agency into the frenzy of the group, they can act in ways that most of them would never act as individuals. People will destroy property, break laws, do physical harm to others, or even kill as a mob.

Groupthink

When members of a group all hold the same views and values, those views and values are continually reinforced, and the kind of self-reflection that allows us to consider other perspectives and possibilities becomes constricted or lost entirely. This gets even more intense when some members of the group actively suppress any kind of dissent. The group ceases to learn and grow, and can become blind to mistakes, which can sometimes lead to tragic consequences.

Social loafing

Anyone who’s ever participated in a school project where several kids are working together knows that often one or two kids do most of the work, while the others do as little as possible. As long as everyone’s success or failure is merged, it’s common for some people to relax a bit, assuming that others will take up the slack.

The antidote is to make individuals accountable. Each person’s work is evaluated separately – for example, when a swimming relay race shows only the team’s overall time, swimmers tend to swim more slowly. When their individual times as part of the relay are recorded, they swim their fastest.

The Tragedy of the Commons

When property is owned in common, people tend to misuse the resources; when it’s owned individually people tend to manage the resources more carefully. When grazing land is shared in common, people will tend to let their herds eat as much as possible, chewing it down to the point where it won’t regenerate, and ruining that resource for future use.

Information loss

When people work together on a committee, the individuals tend not to bring up all the information they have – whether from fear of ridicule, or reluctance to rock the boat, or any number of other individual concerns. When people are faced with either saying what they know is true, or what the group agrees on, all too often they will go with what the group agrees on.

The group ends up functioning based mostly on the information they share in common, and they miss out on the unique perspectives of each person.

The antidote is to find a way for each person to share their unique individual knowledge, even if -especially if – it goes against the tide of opinion, or the common understanding of the group.

Collective brain fog

Back in the 1950’s brainstorming sessions were invented, and it was a popular mode of creativity for a time. But it turns out that it’s actually counter-productive. People come up with more and better creative ideas working alone than as a group. Much better to have people generate their individual ideas, then share them afterward.

Good:

Accountability

Groups function best when there’s clear accountability. When everyone knows that they’re responsible for their actions and choices, we just end up bringing our best. When we’re individually accountable to the other group members, it counteracts all the worst tendencies of groups.

Division of labor

The more the members of a group are able to apply their unique skills and abilities, the more productive and effective the group can be. The assembly line is a great example of this. Instead of one or two people having to learn and master many different skills, many people can each learn and master one or two.

The worst of groups comes out when people abandon their individuality and merge themselves into the group. The best comes out when people bring their individual skills, abilities, knowledge, creativity, and perspectives to work together as allies and teammates with others.

Any great team is most definitely made up of many different “I”s, but all in the service of the goals of the team as a whole.

Joel F. Wade, Ph.D., is the author of The Virtue of Happiness,  Mastering Happiness,and his new book, Mastering Emotions, Moods and Reactions. He is a marriage and family therapist and life coach who works with people around the world via phone and video. You can get a FREE 30-minute initial conversation with him if you sign up at his website, www.drjoelwade.com. Joel saved Jack’s life in Tibet in 1987 by rescuing him off a collapsing cliff. They’ve been life-long friends ever since.