Dr. Katy Milkman: What makes an effective team? Talent? Discipline? Courage? In this episode of Choiceology, we'll learn about the ingredients that research shows make teams more successful than the sum of their parts. First, you'll hear an extraordinary story of the journey of a group across the Pacific Ocean that was trying to re-enact an ancient migration. And you'll hear about what made that team so successful, maybe against the odds.
And you'll also hear from Colin Fisher, University College London professor and author of a new book on collective intelligence, talking about the research on what makes teams thrive. I hope you'll enjoy.
Clip Audio: The last we hear of Kon-Tiki in these ancient legends is that he was banished from Peru and disappeared with his people across the Pacific. In the Polynesian Islands too, people speak of the great Tiki who brought their ancestors to the islands. We were now going to follow in his footsteps. We were on our own, afloat on our nine balsa woods. The nearest archipelago lay some 5,000 miles ahead of us. That is to say, the same distance as from Callao to San Francisco or from San Francisco to Iceland or from Iceland to Ethiopia.
Dr. Katy Milkman: That's an excerpt from the Academy Award–winning 1950 documentary Kon-Tiki: The Epic Raft Journey Across the Pacific. In this episode, we'll trace the treacherous ocean route that Norwegian adventurer Thor Heyerdahl and his crew took in their attempt to prove a theory about ancient migration patterns. And we'll look at the kind of team that it takes to survive and thrive in the middle of the ocean with no hope of rescue for months on end.
I'm Dr. Katy Milkman, and this is Choiceology, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. It's a show about the psychology and economics behind our decisions. We bring you true and surprising stories about high-stakes choices, and then we examine how these stories connect to the latest research in behavioral science. We do it all to help you make better judgements and avoid costly mistakes.
Liv Hukset Wang: If you walk around the raft and you go behind it, you will see those huge locks. They're just being held together by normal rope made from hemp, all-natural material. And there's …
Dr. Katy Milkman: You're hearing a guided tour around the original vessel that set sail from Peru in the spring of 1947, carrying six men and a radical idea that ancient South American people could have reached Polynesia by sea, drifting across the Pacific on nothing more than a raft made of logs and rope. The raft was called Kon-Tiki.
Liv Hukset Wang: And there's a little hut in the middle, just room for the crew to lay down, not more. My name is Liv Hukset Wang. I work at the Kon-Tiki Museum in Oslo.
Dr. Katy Milkman: Liv is the head of communications and marketing at the museum in Norway. She works closely with the grandchildren of Thor Heyerdahl, the leader of the famous Kon-Tiki expedition, in keeping Heyerdahl's legacy alive.
Liv Hukset Wang: This year, we are celebrating 75th anniversary, and through those 75 years, we have had around 20 million visitors. And our jewel here is the Kon-Tiki raft.
Dr. Katy Milkman: The raft is something to behold, as you heard Liv describing earlier in her tour. It's approximately 45 feet long and around 18 feet wide.
Liv Hukset Wang: And it has a hut. And the mast is the same height as the length, so it's a big raft.
Dr. Katy Milkman: It's made of wooden logs, nine large balsa tree trunks, each about 30 to 45 feet long and two feet thick, lashed together with hemp ropes to form the base. No nails or metal fasteners were used in keeping with ancient technology. The top was covered with bamboo slats and rope. A square sail made of woven cotton cloth was mounted on a mast made of mangrove wood. The sail was emblazoned with a large stylized image of Kon-Tiki, the Incan creator god.
Liv Hukset Wang: People are really eager to see the Kon-Tiki raft with their own eyes. They read the book or seen the film, and they just come and they say every day, "I just had to see the raft."
Dr. Katy Milkman: Thor Heyerdahl's idea for the Kon-Tiki expedition was bold and controversial. He believed that ancient people from South America could have reached and settled parts of Polynesia by drifting westward across the Pacific Ocean on simple wood rafts. This went against the most popular theory.
Liv Hukset Wang: The theory was and is that the people originally came from Asia to the Polynesian Islands.
Dr. Katy Milkman: But Heyerdahl questioned this wisdom after visiting the tiny Pacific island of Fatu Hiva.
Liv Hukset Wang: They went to a neighboring island, and they found a statue in the jungle that looked very much like a statue Thor knew they had in Colombia, in South America, very similar statues. So he said, "How come they have pre-Columbian statues that are so similar in South America and Polynesia, and there has been absolutely no contact?" And they also listened to this old myth, this legend story that was told on the islands about Kon-Tiki Viracocha. He was like a native chief, and the legend said that he sailed from Peru, going west in the sunset on a large balsa wood raft. And all these things ended up in a theory that Thor Heyerdahl fought for and worked on for a decade, that the pre-Columbian culture of South America could have populated Polynesian islands by sailing with the wind and the current that always go in the same direction.
Dr. Katy Milkman: In that part of the world, the humble ocean currents and the wind always travel from South America west towards the Polynesian Islands. But the distance between Peru and Polynesia was over 4,000 miles. Experts didn't believe that it was possible for pre-Columbian people to travel these distances, certainly not on rafts.
Liv Hukset Wang: The main argument was that it could not have happened because they did not have boats in South America that could bring people all the way to the Polynesian islands. It's 4,000 miles. And then Thor Heyerdahl said that "Well, they had balsa wood rafts." "Yes, yes, we know that," they said, "but they were only used for fishing along the coast, and no way a balsa wood raft could go that far."
Dr. Katy Milkman: But Heyerdahl never gave up on his idea. In 1946, he was speaking with some leading American anthropologists about his theory.
Liv Hukset Wang: And they were probably sick of him. And then one of them, a very famous archaeologist called Herbert Spinden, he said, "Sure, Mr. Heyerdahl. See how far you can go yourself sailing from Peru to the South Pacific on a balsa raft." And then he just said, "Yes, I'll do it." And nobody thought he would. And it was looked upon as a suicidal mission, but he went straight ahead planning.
Dr. Katy Milkman: Heyerdahl's vision was to recreate the conditions of a pre-Columbian voyage using only ancient materials and technologies and then sail a raft across the ocean to demonstrate that such a journey was technically and physically possible. To achieve this vision, he needed a crew.
Liv Hukset Wang: When Thor Heyerdahl was looking for his crew, he sent a telegram to them, and the telegram was very short, didn't have much information, and it said, "Planning expedition. Big thing. Need adventurous crew to prove revolutionary theory. Will sail across the Pacific on a balsa raft. Are you in?"
Dr. Katy Milkman: He had a very specific goal and very clear ideas about who he wanted along for the voyage.
Liv Hukset Wang: First of all, I think Thor Heyerdahl was really interested in finding crew members with strong relationship skills so they could cope on a raft for so long and working together. What we know is that he asked the first one in December, so that was only like five months before the send-off. And the first one that he met was a engineer called Herman Watzinger, a Norwegian, that he met in New York. He kind of supported Thor Heyerdahl's theory, and he was an engineer, and he was a recorder of weather data, so he had good qualifications for such a trip. So he was in from the beginning. He was the first one.
Dr. Katy Milkman: Next, Heyerdahl needed a navigator.
Liv Hukset Wang: He asked his very best friend. His name was Erik Hesselberg. He was probably the best navigator of them all, and he was 33 years old, like Heyerdahl, so they grew up together. And he was also an artist. He liked writing, and he also played the guitar. So he was the entertainment guy on the trip. And then he asked two war heroes because you must remember, this is just after the Second World War ended.
Dr. Katy Milkman: Knut Haugland and Torstein Raaby were both celebrated Norwegian resistance fighters during World War II.
Liv Hukset Wang: The war heroes, they were radio operators. They also gave a little bit probably some status, because, you know, back then as well as today, it's having a name. It's good for publicity.
Dr. Katy Milkman: Bengt Danielsson, a Swedish anthropologist, added another scientific mind to the mix and also did much of the cooking.
Liv Hukset Wang: And Bengt, he was the guy that had the best competence when it comes to the theory and the culture because he was a anthropologist, so he brought with him over 20 books that could be interesting to connect to what they were about to find out. And he spoke Spanish. He was aligned with Mr. Heyerdahl, really interested in finding out more about these questions. So I think they all represented with good values and the right personalities, but also they brought in skills for the expedition.
Dr. Katy Milkman: So they had a diversity of backgrounds and skills, but ironically, none of them were particularly experienced seafarers.
Liv Hukset Wang: Thor Heyerdahl was actually afraid of water. He didn't really know how to swim.
Dr. Katy Milkman: And the rest of the crew …
Liv Hukset Wang: None of them were very good sailors.
Dr. Katy Milkman: But Heyerdahl was a natural leader and a strong communicator.
Liv Hukset Wang: He was a storyteller. And I think after telling them about what he wanted to find out, I think they just believed in him.
Dr. Katy Milkman: There was one more team member who wasn't as widely celebrated.
Liv Hukset Wang: The sixth team member that was forgotten for so many years. You read and heard about these guys doing the expedition, but nobody maybe thought of all the work that has to be put into plan for this. And Heyerdahl met Gerd Vold Hurum. She was a very capable woman. She was a spy during the war in Britain, and she was also Norwegian. And she worked for the embassy, and she was called the secretary, but she was the project leader of the whole expedition. But she could not go on the raft because she was a woman. She would be the perfect sixth member.
Dr. Katy Milkman: On April 28th, 1947, under the hot sun of Callao, Peru, the Kon-Tiki raft was eased into the Pacific Ocean from the harbor and towed slowly away from land by a navy tugboat.
Thor Heyerdahl: Inspect it, before our departure. Large crowds turned up, including ambassadors and ministers representing nine different countries. We were treated to numerous dire forebodings. The country's leading shipping exporter maintained that the raft would sink before we were halfway across. The port authorities insisted on a written declaration before we set off, absolving them from all responsibility. While a naval attache somewhat rashly bet us all the whiskey the entire crew would ever be able to consume that we would never make it to the Pacific islands.
Dr. Katy Milkman: Heyerdahl and his crew watched the coast of South America recede behind them as they embarked on this ambitious mission to drift 4,300 miles west to Polynesia on a raft made only of wood, rope, and cloth. Life aboard the Kon-Tiki was harsh. The sun scorched by day, and the cold bit by night. Salt water soaked the supplies, and giant waves often threatened to pitch the raft and its crew into the vast ocean. Sharks circled the raft, sometimes following it for days, and storms would pound the balsa logs until it felt as though the raft itself might splinter. Ominously, the wood was becoming waterlogged.
Liv Hukset Wang: It's very light material and when it drinks water, it gets twice as heavy. It was very crucial the first two weeks because they could see that the balsa wood logs were sucking water. And if the balsa wood had got completely soaked, then the expedition wouldn't be able to succeed because the logs would probably sink, but it stopped after 10 centimeters. That gave them a little bit of extra excitement in the beginning.
Dr. Katy Milkman: Several weeks into the voyage, Heyerdahl wrote about an encounter with a rogue wave. In his book, he writes, "During a night shift with quiet seas appears an abnormal huge wave followed by two more waves. The raft is being swept up and down and is covered in water." And that wasn't the only encounter, as rough storms brought more dangerous waves.
Liv Hukset Wang: There's a story that when the waves rise in front of the crew members, they could see the fish swimming in front of them in the wave. So it looked like a huge television screen and up and down and up, and there are not very many places to hold yourself, but they kind of clinged into the mast and everything they could. So the rough storms, they were prepared for that, but it must've been quite scary. Most of the time they had good weather, and they had wind. They always had tailwind. So when you see the documentary, of course, they didn't film when they had storms, but most of the days, they were playing around, catching shark, trying to eat shark meat, cooking, catching fly fish, going down into a special-made basket to inspect the raft from underneath so that they were sure there were no, nothing wrong with it. And twice a day, they made reports on the radio to different newspapers.
Dr. Katy Milkman: That's where Knut Haugland and Torstein Raaby came in.
Liv Hukset Wang: So they were a little bit like influencers because they had everyday reports. So I think most of the days were like this, but then you had those heavy storms, and the waves were as tall as the mast.
Dr. Katy Milkman: The crew had to be constantly vigilant, and each member had many jobs. Herman Watzinger, the engineer and meteorologist, monitored weather patterns. Erik Hesselberg served as navigator and sketched daily life on the raft in journals that became both historical record and morale boosters. Remember, they were spending months together in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with no land or ships in sight.
Liv Hukset Wang: I think they felt very small. And Thor Heyerdahl said that when he was on the raft, he felt like a little ant when he looked up on the stars and the sky.
Dr. Katy Milkman: They had to function as a micro society, afloat on the world's largest ocean. Arguments happened, of course, but decisions were made democratically.
Liv Hukset Wang: The atmosphere was good. The mood was good.
Dr. Katy Milkman: Each man knew his role, trusted the others, and adapted when plans failed, as they often did.
Liv Hukset Wang: They had some episodes that were more difficult than others. For a short period, there was no wind, and they were very worried about the progress and frustrated.
Dr. Katy Milkman: When the rudder broke, they jury-rigged a solution. When supplies ran low, they fished together. When radio silence stretched on too long, they worked together to identify the problem.
Liv Hukset Wang: They went a little bit too much to the north, so they were afraid of ending up at Hawaii instead. They worried, but they coped with the challenges.
Dr. Katy Milkman: One of those challenges was potentially deadly.
Liv Hukset Wang: The most scary thing that could happen was man overboard because they could not stop the raft. It went with a Humboldt Current and quite fast. And one day in July, somebody yelled, "Man overboard," because a sleeping bag just fell into the water by the wind. And Herman Watzinger tried to catch it, and he fell overboard. And he struggled for life, even though he was an excellent swimmer. And rest of the crew frantically tried to hand him a life belt, and they were just seconds away of losing him. And then Knut Haugland, he just plunged headfirst into the sea with a life belt in his hand and he gave it to Herman just in time, and they were rescued. And Thor Heyerdahl said many times that that was not only the scariest part on this expedition, but his whole life. And after the incident, there was a new rule. So there was a life belt always hanging on the raft, and there was a long line in case someone fell overboard.
Dr. Katy Milkman: Thankfully, most days were not as dramatic as that one. Tasks from cooking to fishing to recording events in their journey log were shared fluidly. Morale was buoyed by nightly music, reading, and laughter amid the ever-present discomfort and danger.
Liv Hukset Wang: I think they went along in a very uplifting way, a very positive way, and they motivated each other. That's because they were very different men.
Dr. Katy Milkman: After over three months at sea, they were finally getting close to land. The crew was nearing Raroia atoll in French Polynesia.
Liv Hukset Wang: When they approached land, they all could feel that they would succeed. There was one big challenge, and that was getting over the coral reefs because they could not steer the raft very much and they're very sharp, and they were afraid that the raft would be crushed into pieces not very far from land. And they tried different things, and they planned for it, but then Thor Heyerdahl was very clear and said, "Nobody leaves the raft. Nobody jumps into the sea. We're in this together. We're going to be on the raft." So he demanded effort, loyalty, and adaptation to extremely demanding conditions.
Dr. Katy Milkman: Late in the day, huge breaking waves slammed the raft into the outer reef.
Thor Heyerdahl: And then it happened, the worst moment of the whole voyage. The crest of the wave reared up like a wall above us, hurling us into the breakers and down onto the reef. Twelve curling breakers propelled us in. But every time we were sucked back by the undertow. The 13th break was so powerful that it held us over the edge of the reef. And when it receded, we were left suspended on top of the coral. With the arrival of low tide, as the ocean slowly ebbed, we found ourselves safe and sound on top of the reef and were now able to salvage our belongings. The Kon-Tiki was now an absolute wreck. The ultra hard wood of which the mast was made had snapped like a matchstick. The hut had been flattened. The stern cross beam was …
Dr. Katy Milkman: The crew quickly abandoned the raft, leaping into the surf and dragging supplies to a nearby coral outcrop. They clung to slippery rock as the surf hammered them. They spent the night stranded on the exposed reef with little food and no shelter, exhausted and bruised but alive. The raft was partially intact, still caught on the reef, but it had served its purpose. It had carried them all the way from South America to Polynesia. The next day at low tide, the crew waded across the reef and made it to the inner lagoon of Raroia. Over the following days, they were discovered by local Polynesian islanders who welcomed and assisted them. The crew was eventually taken by boat to Tahiti. And from there, news of their success spread around the world.
Liv Hukset Wang: When you stay on the raft 101 days together and there were no other people, and you cannot be rescued if something happened to you, you need people that took risks and were willing to give what it takes. Thor Heyerdahl picked the right guys. They coped with the challenges.
Dr. Katy Milkman: Liv Hukset Wang is the head of communications and marketing at the Kon-Tiki Museum in Oslo, Norway. You can find links to the museum and more information about the Kon-Tiki story in the show notes and at schwab.com/podcast.
Most archeologists today reject the idea that Polynesia was primarily settled from South America. The evidence still points strongly towards west-to-east migration from Southeast Asia. However, later genetic studies have found traces of Native South American DNA in some Polynesian populations, suggesting that some contact did occur, though likely after Polynesia was already settled. So while Heyerdahl's theory wasn't fully validated, his voyage proved that ancient people could have made such transoceanic journeys and forced researchers to ask some new questions.
What the cruise adventure did illustrate is that a small team of dedicated people can achieve great things, provided that they have clear goals and can work well together. A lot of luck doesn't hurt either. My next guest has spent his career writing, researching, and teaching about what makes an effective team. Colin Fisher is an associate professor of organizations and innovation at University College London School of Management, and he's the author of the new book The Collective Edge: Unlocking the Secret Power of Groups. Hi Colin, thank you so much for taking the time to join me today. I'm really excited to have you here.
Colin Fisher: Hi, Katy. It's great to be here. Thanks so much for having me.
Dr. Katy Milkman: Well, I'm thrilled to have you, and I'm really excited to talk about how to build effective teams. But first, I actually wanted to get your take on one of the big challenges that can prevent teams from achieving that goal of being effective, which is social loafing. Could you just start by defining what that is?
Colin Fisher: Social loafing is this pervasive phenomenon where when we're around other humans, and we see them doing the same thing that we're doing, we don't try quite as hard as we would if we were alone. So social loafing, also sometimes known as free riding, means we just don't give it our all when we know there are other people who might pick up the slack.
Dr. Katy Milkman: I love that definition. And could you talk about some of the classic experiments or a favorite experiment showing that social loafing exists? I think some of the ways that this has been demonstrated empirically are really clever.
Colin Fisher: Yeah. Social loafing basically is at the root of group studies in social psychology. And in fact, one of the first empirical studies that showed the social loafing effect wasn't by a psychologist at all. It was by an agricultural engineer named Maximilien Ringelmann. And he wasn't actually trying to discover social loafing. He was trying to understand what was the best number of oxen to pull carts on farms in France at the time. And he discovered it was really hard to do his experiments, where he had this clever setup where he could measure the amount of power that was being exerted on a rope, which was pretty good for the late 1800s. He had this contraption to measure pulling power, but he had trouble actually getting oxen to be the ones to do the pulling. So he decided instead, "I'm going to do this study with humans. I'm going to ask humans to pull on this rope, and I'm going to have one person pull on the rope and then two people pull on it together and three people," etc.
And what he found was that there was a loss of the individual pulling power, so he knew how much pulling power each individual could do alone. And then he saw how much they had collectively, when you had the same two people pull on the rope, how much force they were pulling the rope with. And he found this really consistent loss of pulling power with each individual who you added to the group. So two people had less pulling power than you would predict from their individual capability, and three people had even less than that, and four, etc. And so what eventually became known as the Ringelmann effect was the sum of the individual capabilities is always going to be greater than the group's actual demonstrated capacity. So if you just add up all the individuals, each working alone, you're going to end with less actual group output from what you would predict from what the individuals could do alone. And that that keeps happening for each individual you add to the group.
Dr. Katy Milkman: So interesting. And what I really want to contrast that with is what you focus on in your amazing book and in lots of your research, which is the idea of what it takes to create group synergy instead of this kind of social loafing. Could you describe what group synergy is and how it contrasts with what we've been talking about?
Colin Fisher: So synergy is when a group is more than the sum of its parts. So we don't get social loafing. We actually get what we call process gains, that we inspire each other to try harder than we would've alone, that we come up with a unique strategy where we're compensating for each other's weaknesses and do more than we could by ourselves. And that sometimes when we learn and grow from our participation in groups that we actually become more capable because we're part of a group.
Those are examples of synergy, and that one of the interesting things about social loafing and what we now call process losses in groups is that they tend to happen in really simple tasks. So things like pulling on a rope. But when we actually have complicated interdependent work, then whether or not we get these process losses or we actually get synergy is much more a function of how well the group is structured.
So do we have well-defined shared common goals? Do we have varied rich tasks that we can see the results of? Do we form social norms that are in favor of us coordinating and trying hard? These kinds of structural factors make a huge difference on whether or not we see synergy or we see things like social loafing.
Dr. Katy Milkman: And so the sort of key takeaway there for you is that if we want to see group synergy, and we want to think about when do we put people together and get benefits from that, we want to think about complex rather than simple tasks. So tugging on a rope is a simple task, for example, and we're going to have process losses. But something complicated like solving a puzzle that has many different constraints, that's when teams can really thrive. Is that kind of a takeaway?
Colin Fisher: Yeah, absolutely. That teams thrive when they have what my mentor, Richard Hackman, called well-designed tasks. So those tasks usually are complex. They have variety in the kinds of skills that they demand. So any task where it's very repetitive, that it's the same skill over and over, those tend not to be great tasks for teams and for promoting synergy. So we want task variety. We want what researchers call task identity, meaning that you can see the results of your own work, and you can see the contribution of your labor in the end product. So if you're making a car, you want to be able to say, "I made that car," not "I make cars in general."
Dr. Katy Milkman: I see.
Colin Fisher: And that the tasks are also personally significant, so they're important to the people involved, and that if tasks have that variety, identity, and significance, then they make much better team tasks that can promote synergy than tasks that are lower in those characteristics.
Dr. Katy Milkman: You've also written about how team composition affects synergy, and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what the best composition of a group is, if you want to promote synergy, and any research that helps point to that answer.
Colin Fisher: So I think there's two factors in composing a group that are really important for promoting synergy. One is group size. It's really hard to have synergy if you have a team that's too large. And so even though we talked about social-loafing research didn't find that coordination costs were the main cause, coordination costs are real. That when you have a really big group, when you have 25, when you have 30, 40 people, it takes a lot of work just to communicate, just to be heard, just for us to not get in each other's way. And so there's been a lot of research that examines, what's the optimal size for a group? When is a group too big? And that, although of course it depends on what task you're doing, the number comes back anywhere from three to seven in terms of groups actually performing their tasks well.
But then there's also a matter of when are we satisfied with being a member of a group? It's important that people want to be members of these groups, that they want to continue to be part of a group so the group can continue to exist. There's a great study by Hackman and Vidmar where they asked people, "When is your group too big? And when is your group too small?" They plotted satisfaction against the answers to these two questions. And they found that people who were in three-person or four-person groups would often say their group was a little bit too small, and people who were in six-person, seven-person groups would often say their group was too large. But these lines crossed right at about 4.5. So it appeared that people are most satisfied with being part of a group that has four or five members, to really maximize your chances of synergy.
Dr. Katy Milkman: Got it. That's really interesting. And how about diversity of personality, work style, background? Does that matter, and is there an optimal level of diversity, and what kinds of diversity matter?
Colin Fisher: So diversity is almost essential for synergy, especially in knowledge-related tasks. So if we're doing a project, if we're doing research, if we're making music, any of these things, if we all think exactly the same thing, there's almost no room for synergy. It's very difficult to have it. And so we need to have some difference in the knowledge, the information, the perspectives that we're bringing to whatever that task is. And that for a long time, groups researchers have imagined that diversity has kind of a Goldilocks effect on team performance.
Dr. Katy Milkman: Not too hot, not too cold, just right?
Colin Fisher: Yes, exactly. Yes.
Dr. Katy Milkman: Like the porridge.
Colin Fisher: Right, right. Yeah.
Dr. Katy Milkman: OK.
Colin Fisher: When you have too little diversity, there's no real opportunity for synergy and better team performance. But when you have too much, and at the extreme, you can think of people speaking different languages, like if we're too different from one another, we're just not going to be able to collaborate because there's going to be some barriers in communication and mutual understanding. So generally speaking, the prescription ends up being most people are in teams that don't have enough diversity.
The saying "Birds of a feather flock together" or the more psychological science term of homophily suggests we're going to be in groups of people where it's likely we think a little bit too alike. We're going to be more comfortable with people more like us. So usually, the right thing to do when you're trying to improve your chances for synergy, when you're trying to improve group performance, is to add more what we call deep-level diversity. People who think differently, who have different information, who have different perspectives.
Dr. Katy Milkman: That's really interesting. I also want to ask you about collective intelligence, and what that is and what skills you should seek if you want to attain it on your team.
Colin Fisher: Collective intelligence is really interesting in that there's been fabulous research done by Anita Woolley at Carnegie Mellon, Tom Malone, Chris Riedl. All these researchers have been trying to figure out what it is that makes groups not just do well on one task, but the same group of people do well on a wide variety of tasks. So collective intelligence is kind of the same as general intelligence in individuals, supposed to be this factor that allows you to perform well across a variety of tasks. And so collective intelligence is searching for that same thing. Is there something special in groups that cannot just do one thing well but can do a wide variety of things well?
In searching for collective intelligence, the researchers looked at all kinds of personality factors, demographic factors, to see, is there an optimum mix of introverts and extroverts that you should have on your team? Is there some perfect blend of different kinds of backgrounds? And despite being fabulous researchers with all these measures and tools at their disposal, they really didn't find many patterns in the kind of personality work style sorts of variables. So that was pretty surprising.
And they were really surprised that this one factor that they measured did predict collective intelligence. And that's something they called social sensitivity. And social sensitivity is our ability to intuit others' emotions without being told, and that the average level of social sensitivity in a group predicted collective intelligence. Better than any other factor, it was really the only meaningfully predictive thing. And again, it's surprising that even the average intelligence of the members of the group was not nearly as predictive as the average level of social sensitivity.
Dr. Katy Milkman: OK, so we want groups that are doing complex tasks, that are of size four to five, that are diverse, and that are socially sensitive. But could you talk a little bit about the goals we might want to set to help ensure this super team we've just built is as successful as possible because I know that's another factor that can matter a lot?
Colin Fisher: Goals are so important in group dynamics, and that I'm sure listeners to your podcast and people who are interested in this don't need to be told that goals are important. You hear this from so many different angles, if you're trying to better yourself or better your organization or your groups. But that's because we mess it up so often, and that especially when we're collaborating, it's easy to understand conceptually that if I say, "Hey, Katy, I'd like to meet up with you. Can we meet in California?"
That's not a very helpful instruction, and we're actually not very likely to find each other if I say meet in California. But when we're actually in groups, we kind of give each other the equivalent of "Let's meet in California" as a goal, that we give what feel to us like clear enough goals but actually aren't precise enough for us all to arrive at the same place at the same time, that there's no way we can actually coordinate unless we have a really clear destination that we're both trying to get to.
And this is sort of the core importance of goals, that if we don't have clear goals, there's almost no basis for coordination because every other decision we're going to make is going to be pushing us in different directions. When JFK was trying to transform NASA, he didn't say, "I want to transform NASA and make a better scientific organization." What really helped to transform it was to say, "Let's put a man on the moon in 10 years."
Now that was something that everyone could picture. They could rally around, and then they could really collaborate as a group in a much more meaningful way because everybody had that shared vision of what the future was supposed to look like. So those are kind of the two big things about goals, that we want to have really clear goals, and we want to have vivid goals. And sometimes it's hard to have both, and that that's really the work that we have to do as members of a group or as leaders of a group.
Dr. Katy Milkman: I love that. Well, this has been such a fascinating interview. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today, Colin, and also for all of the fascinating research that you have done and that you've organized in your amazing book. I'm really excited for our listeners to learn from you. Thank you for today.
Colin Fisher: Thank you so much, Katy. It was a real pleasure.
Dr. Katy Milkman: Colin Fisher is an associate professor of organizations and innovation at University College London School of Management. You can find links to his research and his excellent new book, The Collective Edge: Unlocking the Secret Power of Groups, in the show notes and at schwab.com/podcast.
Many of the lessons of building effective teams—like the importance of setting clear goals—also apply to your relationship with a financial advisor. To learn more about establishing trust and open communication when working with an advisor, check out the Financial Decoder episode titled "What Should Your Advisor Know About You?" You can find it at schwab.com/FinancialDecoder or in your favorite podcasting app.
The story of the famous Kon-Tiki expedition illustrates many of the principles Colin shared that science suggests are key to building team synergy: a small group, ideally closer to five people than 30 or 60; a group with diverse skills and insights; a group with social intelligence; complex tasks to perform; and a clear vivid goal. Our hope is that today's episode will help you identify how to build great teams when you're in a position to do so and will help you bring out the best in any team you join. If your objective is to avoid social loafing, which is common, and instead generate synergy, we've offered a checklist of best practices, and we hope it will serve you well. Of course, there's no rule of nature that says a team of 20 can't achieve extraordinary things or that teams can excel at simple tasks. But when you follow the science, you put your group in the best position to thrive.
You've been listening to Choiceology, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. If you've enjoyed the show, we'd be really grateful if you'd leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, a rating on Spotify, or feedback wherever you listen. You can also follow us for free in your favorite podcasting app.
And if you want more of the kinds of insights we bring you on Choiceology about how to improve your decisions, you can order my book, How to Change, or sign up for my monthly newsletter, Milkman Delivers, on Substack. Next time, I'll speak with UC Berkeley Professor Clayton Critcher about new research that identifies why we struggle to backtrack on our decisions, even when doing so is the best option. I'm Dr. Katy Milkman. Talk to you soon.
Speaker 6: For important disclosures, see the show notes or visit schwab.com/podcast.
