What factors are strong predictors of a team’s collective intelligence and performance? Research by psychologists Anita Williams Woolley and colleagues reveals some surprising and counter-intuitive results. The research supports the idea that teams are complex adaptive systems, and are much more than the mere sum of their parts.

What might be surprising are the factors which do not correlate very strongly with team performance:

• The IQ of team members.

Neither the average nor maximum IQ of team members predicts team performance.

• Member’s ‘positive’ personality traits.

Personality traits that we assume would help the team don’t strongly correlate with performance. Conversely, members with extremely negative personality traits, such as neuroticism, are good predictors of poor team performance. A single team member with an extremely negative personality trait can wreck a team.

• Group cohesion / social bonding

Surprisingly, how well we like each other does not correlate well with how we perform collectively. Some psychologists have theorized, however, that team success may cause a higher degree of cohesion.

So then, what are the factors that best predict team performance, according to this research?

• Social perceptiveness and sensitivity

Teams perform well when their members are aware of the social dynamic, others’ emotional cues, and are attentive to the group’s needs.

• Equal contribution in team conversation

When one or a few team members dominate team discussion, performance suffers. Teams thrive when everyone has roughly equal voice.

• Gender mix: high proportion of female team members

Teams where females are in the majority perform better — up to a point. Gender diversity matters, because all-female teams did not perform as well.

• Collective memory, a.k.a. transactive memory

Teams need to know each other’s individual strengths and expertise, and how to work together leverage those individual strengths. Long-lived teams are far more likely to possess this ‘transactive’ memory, according to Anita Williams Wooley in this Hidden Brain podcast.