Research into what motivates teams

In today’s issue, we explore recent research into what motivates teams. This research can help us design better teamwork by understanding team dynamics and what motivates different people.

It got me thinking about a group or teamwork in a school or academic setting, so I have shared some guidance and thoughts about that.

An essential affirmation I had was the critical nature of the design of teams and what they do.

Together, everyone achieves more — or less?

A team at TU Dortmund University in Germany have published an interdisciplinary meta-analysis on effort gains and losses in teams.

You can access either the academic paper or a summary blog post from the researchers on Aeon.

From the beginning, the authors highlight the importance of intentional design.

Our analysis of the data shows that whether teamwork boosts motivation or saps it strongly depends on how the work is designed.

And it looks like one of the keys to boosting motivation is how we perceive our contribution. As educators, facilitators, and designers, we need to ensure each team member can make a meaningful contribution to their team’s performance.

when people perceive their contribution to the team’s outcome as indispensable, they tend to show greater effort than they would when working alone. These ‘effort gains’ can be due to team members aiming to be prosocial: they care about others and want to make a difference to the team.

You might apply dispensability in a range of ways, such as:

• What roles do people take on in a meeting?
• What do people do during a breakout in a workshop?
• What specific tasks are assigned during a discussion session in a class?
• Do people understand how their workshop contribution is integral to our collective success?

On reflection, the level of dispensability is a proxy for what we value. You would hope anything we design is worthy of the learner’s time.

Social Comparison

One of the critical factors that impact motivation for team members is social comparison.

The desire to evaluate oneself is a basic one, and when working in a team, individuals commonly compare their own performance with their teammates’ performances.

The researchers discovered this comparison could go in different directions. If a team member displays significantly superior abilities, it leads to demotivation, frustration and feelings of failure.

Team membership is most beneficial when it creates a visible, proximal, and relative advantage.

People often strive to match or exceed the performance of others, which makes working with slightly better teammates a very motivating experience…it is advisable to compose a team such that members are similar in their abilities, but with some of them being somewhat superior to boost the others’ motivation.

Some thoughts from a different direction.

I struggle identifying the ‘slightly superior’ teammate — how do we measure this?

We are also assuming we have an accurate understanding of our ability. The Dunning-Kruger effect often masks this. This cognitive bias leads us to mistakenly assess our abilities as being much higher than they are.

I am also thinking about mixed ability grouping in schools, but I need to read further into the collision of that strategy with these ideas.

Collaborative Learning

When we consider these findings in relation to schools and student learning, it is clear that collaborative learning is an essential part of the educational process.

The Evidence for Learning summary on Collaborative Learning is an excellent overview. It explains that collaborative approaches have a consistently positive effect on learning.

I noticed the emphasis on intentional design, which aligns with the research analysis from the team at TU Dortmund University. Here’s a further passage from the Evidence for Learning summary:

[Collaborative learning] requires much more than just sitting students together and asking them to work in a group; structured approaches with well-designed tasks lead to the greatest learning gains.

Some other key considerations are:

• Students need support and practice to work together; it does not happen automatically.
• Tasks need to be designed carefully so that working together is effective and efficient, otherwise some students will try to work on their own.
• Competition between groups can be used to support students in working together more effectively. However, overemphasis on competition can cause learners to focus on winning rather than succeeding in their learning.
• It is particularly important to encourage lower-achieving students to talk and articulate their thinking in collaborative tasks to ensure they benefit fully.

Your Talking Points

Here is a range of key takeaways and provocations from today’s issue:

1. Design teams that create a visible, proximal, and relative advantage.
2. How intentional are we in the design of our group or team activities?
3. How dispensable is their contribution? Is this worthy of their time?

🕳🐇 Down the Rabbit Hole

Complement this issue with Create Safety and Togetherness #249, Willful Blindness — Medium article, If You Are The 1st Responder To New Ideas, You Have A Critical Job #243, The Three Pillars of Powerful Team Collaboration — blog, Successful Teams Are More Open About Their Mistakes — blog