As most of you know, the glazing industry isn’t exactly flooded with women. I was listening to a podcast the other day and they sited a study from MIT regarding team performance.
The study was performed to understand what made a high performing team. The initial thought was that the IQ of the individual team members would result in higher performance. This did not play out.
Professors Woolley and Malone, along with Christopher Chabris, Sandy Pentland, and Nada Hashmi, gave subjects aged 18 to 60 standard intelligence tests and assigned them randomly to teams. Each team was asked to complete several tasks—including brainstorming, decision making, and visual puzzles—and to solve one complex problem. Teams were given intelligence scores based on their performance. Though the teams that had members with higher IQs didn’t earn much higher scores, those that had more women did.
So, the finding was that a higher percentage of women on the team was the best way to predict team performance.
The other factors in the study were the team’s ability to gauge each other’s mood and the way that the team communicated. More dialog and less arguing would also contribute to team effectiveness.
Creating a more diversified workforce should be everyone’s goal. This study definitely lends credence to the fact that more women on your team and in your company can improve the company’s performance.
Hope everyone has a very merry Christmas!
Hi Steve – great post. I find this study quite interesting and refreshing. I used to work in a company that made integrated circuits. Most of the employees were men and veteran’s and had all played on sports teams growing up. Most of them held the opinion that this experience made them the better team players and more effective employees. It’s nice to see a study that suggests another opinion.
Thanks Stacy! You might find this podcast interesting: http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=3212
This is Sharon Vosmek. Her venture capital company is working towards more equality in new ventures. This is where I heard about the study and she has a lot of very interesting points beyond that. Definitely gets you thinking!