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TL;DR: "…the good teams all had high ‘‘average social sensitivity’’ — a fancy way of saying they were skilled at intuiting how others felt based on their tone
by Radim 9y ago
TL;DR:
"…the good teams all had high ‘‘average social sensitivity’’ — a fancy way of saying they were skilled at intuiting how others felt based on their tone of voice, their expressions and other nonverbal cues. One of the easiest ways to gauge social sensitivity is to show someone photos of people’s eyes and ask him or her to describe what the people are thinking or feeling — an exam known as the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test. People on the more successful teams in Woolley’s experiment scored above average on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test. They seemed to know when someone was feeling upset or left out. People on the ineffective teams, in contrast, scored below average. They seemed, as a group, to have less sensitivity toward their colleagues."
"When Rozovsky and her Google colleagues encountered the concept of psychological safety in academic papers, it was as if everything suddenly fell into place. One engineer, for instance, had told researchers that his team leader was ‘‘direct and straightforward, which creates a safe space for you to take risks.’’ That team, researchers estimated, was among Google’s accomplished groups. By contrast, another engineer had told the researchers that his ‘‘team leader has poor emotional control.’’ He added: ‘‘He panics over small issues and keeps trying to grab control. I would hate to be driving with him being in the passenger seat, because he would keep trying to grab the steering wheel and crash the car.’’ That team, researchers presumed, did not perform well."
The weasel-wording around "researchers estimated' and "researchers presumed" doesn't exactly inspire confidence. Though that may be just the NYT article, not the study itself (what's the actual data?).
I can only imagine this well-intentioned research was the seed of some internal directives, which eventually turned into a cargo-cult dogma, leading to things like the James Damore fiasco. The road to hell paved with good intentions and all that.
- gaius 9y agowhich eventually turned into a cargo-cult dogma It's very clearly culturally biased too. If you have ever done any training in this area you know that different cultures (even if they appear racially similar) do facial expressions, eye contact, and so on differently. Maybe all we are seeing here is that white people can read the facial expressions of white people...
- microcolonel 9y ago> It's very clearly culturally biased too. If you have ever done any training in this area you know that different cultures (even if they appear racially similar) do facial expressions, eye contact, and so on differently. Maybe all we are seeing here is that white people can read the facial expressions of white people... I'm under the impression that the cultural differences are largely in how much you let out, not in what the expression looks like when you do.
- gaius 9y agoI'm under the impression that the cultural differences are largely in how much you let out, not in what the expression looks like when you do. Annoyance vs anger is all in how much you let out, no?
- zbobet2012 9y agoUh no? I'm not angry when I'm annoyed... I'm annoyed.
- Tempest1981 9y agoIn both cases, the key is that your team members can detect that something is not right, or could be improved, and respond.
- goialoq 9y agoThat facial-emotional recognition was a famous case of stereotype bias: http://www.creativitypost.com/psychology/gender_bias_in_the_reading_the_mind_in_the_eyes_test http://www.creativitypost.com/psychology/gender_bias_in_the_...
- golemotron 9y ago> One of the easiest ways to gauge social sensitivity is to show someone photos of people’s eyes and ask him or her to describe what the people are thinking or feeling — an exam known as the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test. People on the more successful teams in Woolley’s experiment scored above average on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test. What isn't mentioned is that the 'Mind in the Eyes' test is used to assess autism and spectrum conditions. If that kind of empathy is necessary for good teamwork then the neuro-diverse are at a disadvantage in that type of work and systematically excluded from companies that do all of their work in teams. Companies that take this seriously could assess where teamwork is important - and where it isn't - and hire appropriately.
- andrewflnr 9y agoWhere do you think teamwork is not important? Such circumstances are vanishingly rare at best, mostly debatable, and will get rarer as humanity's ambition increasingly exceeds the capabilities of individuals. Meanwhile, having the ability to work with others will always be better than not.
- golemotron 9y agoSo it's okay to discriminate against people with disabilities? There are many areas where individual work shines. Legal research, accounting, auto repair. I think the same is true in software.
- dasmoth 9y agoWriting novels has always been a primarily-solo activity. I don't see demand for those dropping off drastically. The guy who re-plumbled my house was working there alone pretty much all the time. That seems to be a common way of working in many trades, and plumbers don't seem desperate for work. A fair number of bits of heavily-used software started out as one person's project (many of the successful ones do eventually morph into community projects, but titles like "benevolant dictator for life" show that community doesn't necessarily mean a flat "team" setup). Lots of programming languages fall in this category. Sublime Text. Indy games (and, not so very long ago, the majority of games). Building software as a solo endeavour does seem to be somewhat out of fashion right now, but that doesn't necessarily mean it can't work.
- new299 9y agoInteresting, I just tried a version of the readings the mind in the eyes test here: http://socialintelligence.labinthewild.org/mite/ http://socialintelligence.labinthewild.org/mite/ The test seemed somewhat biased to a certain social background however.