What Makes a Team Smarter? Include Women!
As some of you who know us well, Bridge Marketing is a minority owned business. There are three partners; two of us are women and one is also a minority. “So what?”, you may say. Well, to certain organizations and some government agencies, those “qualifications” are important differentiators that distinguish us from the mass of other marketing companies. But recently I learned of yet another great advantage of being “female-owned and operated”. That advantage, presented by Professors Anita Wooley and Thomas Malone of Harvard Business School, is that women can positively influence the collective intelligence of a group or team. The research indicates there is surprisingly little correlation between individual IQ and the collective “intelligence” of a group. High collective intelligence is correlated with high number of women on the team. Subjects aged 18 to 60 were given standard intelligence tests and assigned 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! The researchers go on to stress that diversity is still important. They suggest that an all women team wasn’t as effective as the “more” women teams.
So one more factor to consider when you want to form a team for your next project, volunteer assignment or even family charades game. Bring on the women but make sure you have some men too.