Bring Out the Best in Your Team

When teams form to take on tasks, they are seldom able to tap the full knowledge of every member, in large part because the most confident, outgoing people get the most airtime, even if they’re not the most expert. Meanwhile, the real experts take a backseat and therefore have a limited impact.|But we’ve found that this dynamic can be changed through a brief intervention: Early in a task, team members should be encouraged to discuss the relevant knowledge each brings to the table. In a series of lab experiments, groups that underwent this intervention outperformed other groups.