The biological basis for building and bonding great teams.

In the beginning, man made fire. He hunkered down in his cave and put his bare hands to work on a spark. Soon, glowing embers gave way to a roaring flame. Then, his manager came in and asked if the fire-maker could teach everybody else to make fire at the 1 p.m. strategy meeting. There, it was suggested that perhaps a better, faster way of making fire could be developed. But discussion stalled when the Committee for Cave Aesthetics felt birch burned cleaner while the Gathering Division preferred sticking with easily accessible juniper. It wasn’t long before everyone in the tribe found themselves high atop a ropes course building trust and synergy and all manner of corporate buzzwords.

But were they any closer to building a better fire? 

If the tribal managers weren’t concentrating on stimulating the human brain’s pleasure centers with an eye toward productivity, in addition to relationship building, the next day’s strategy meeting might be more amicable, but just as unproductive. As teamwork continues to become the established corporate norm, experts say an understanding of neuroscience and psychology is essential when building the most effective groups. And creating the best group comes down to what can be known about what goes on inside the individual brains that make it up.

“Many people think teams are better because many heads are always better than one,” said Dr. Karsten Jonsen, a research fellow at the IMD business school in Lausanne, Switzerland, who specializes in organizational behavior.

This is, however, not always true, because all teams don’t automatically come with what Jonsen calls “psychological safety.” 

The best teams, he says, are the psychologically safe ones in which “people are encouraged to speak their mind and challenge each other, conventional knowledge and the team leader.”

Even though teamwork is the default in today’s work environment, Jonsen envisions the best teams as those that are empowered at an individual level, where team members are encouraged to speak up for themselves and play their own best game.

According to Jonsen, managers often try to accelerate trust through outdoor exercises or events at which team members must rely on each other, but trust requires time and effort to be constructed. What gets lost, he says, is respect for the individual, which can play second fiddle to the easy, traditional rhetoric of team building.

It’s not enough to tell everyone to speak up and feel confident about constructive criticism of their teams. It’s certainly not enough to make everyone participate in trust-fall activities and hope they’ll develop the next big thing as a result. As more is learned about the human brain and neurophysiology, scientists and team-building experts believe that personal, individual interaction—which helps stimulate neurotransmitters that engender positive feelings and empathy—coupled with an understanding of neurocognitive processes will result in the best teams.

The key to an effective team falls first in stimulating individual members’ neurological well-being receptors that disseminate neurotransmitters such as endorphins, oxytocin and serotonin. In fact, the word endorphin comes from the phrase “endogenous morphine,” referencing analgesic and well-being effects from a kind of naturally human-produced drug. Oxytocin has been called the “cuddle hormone,” released when women breastfeed and when anyone from either sex experiences orgasms. Serotonin regulates mood, sleep and appetite. All of these chemical releases are triggered by, among other things, social interaction—both physical and virtual, research shows—with other humans.

“To be an effective team member or to be creative or innovative in a team requires that we pay attention to what’s going on in the human mind,” said Bob Eckert, a senior partner at organizational development firm New And Improved.

He believes brain-chemical induced feelings of pleasure and power must be associated with innovation and productivity, or else it’s all for naught.

“The pleasure of bonding does not translate to productive work,” said Eckert, whose background is in psychotherapy and neuropharmacology.

After completing a thrilling high ropes course, he says, at the end of the day, team members are most likely to simply say, “That was really cool,” and feel afraid to disrupt their newfound bonds with criticism. 

“Here’s the trap,” Eckert continued. “We have a bonding experience, the dopamine and the oxytocin release, serotonin release. Now what are we going to say at the end of it?”

Here is the intersection of the psychological, social and biological. Here is where team members can choose to manipulate metacognition, the willful decision to build vigilance to override a primitive impulse that fears change and innovation. 

Because medical technology allows us, more and more, to see live, thinking brains in action, Eckert is more concerned not with the thoughts themselves—which he says can inspire a reductionist, fact-based, no-mystery approach to brain science—but with how humans decide which thought-paths to take. Those decisions are made in spite of what Eckert calls the “gator brain.” 

“That primitive brain says don’t mess with me!” Eckert said.

Yet, because “the team is responsible for causing change,” many times a group’s first impulse in a problem-solving meeting is to find fault with proposed solutions rather than praise and explore new opportunities. When the endorphin rush comes from excitement about a new idea, rather than propelling off a rope swing, new mental connections are forged that allow individuals to shift old teamwork paradigms.

Eckert believes it’s not enough to have pleasurable experiences, although certainly those are important for bonding and endorphin release. The important thing is to make innovation and problem-solving themselves pleasurable. That’s why the first thing he encourages groups to do with a new idea is praise it and brainstorm what new opportunities might come out of it, rather than going straight to negative issues or complications.

Productivity acts as a kind of drug, encouraging the brain to see innovation and change—associated with positive, group-related work—as the most pleasurable kind of work.

But again, that’s all based on the effort of each individual team member, who has to be taught to believe in what Eckert calls “radical responsibility” for bringing their best to the team.

“Building effective, innovative teams is about improving people’s ability to use their will to choose thought patterns,” he said.

Great sports teams are made up of individuals who think, “I need to bring my best game, and I need to challenge my colleagues to do this,” Eckert says. This helps alleviate the problems associated with “groupthink,” which Jonsen wrote about—in a team with his IMD colleagues, it should be noted—last fall for the business school’s Tomorrow’s Challenges series.

Jonsen and his colleagues noted that “groups tend to suppress dissent,” and “focus discussion on things that they already agree about rather than what they disagree about.” Teams that want to make sure a potential member “fits” often only ensure that the new member won’t rock a boat that really could use a tip or two. 

Expanding on the too-cohesive, too-proud team idea, Eckert believes these overconfident but ineffective groups happen because team members and leaders get so caught up in the excitement and mystery of the successful team that little is done to make real, radical change. As a result, innovation and creativity are stymied, and bad decisions made. Eckert encourages his teams to focus on metacognition and on changing their will to receive new ideas as positive, rather than dangerous, which overcomes the gator-brain status quo. 

“The pleasure they get comes from co-creation of stuff that has to do with work flow,” Eckert said, not from cheering for some established, imagined team but from continuous co-creation with other individuals. “We know from the psychological sciences, if something feels good, you’ll want to try it again.” One+

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Building Virtual Teams

To continue the caveman metaphor: What happens when a fire needs building, but the good flint is in Vancouver and the best steel is in Mumbai? That 1 p.m. strategy meeting happens over the phone, or if Cro-magnon Inc. is lucky and forward-thinking, teleconferencing software. How can they get a spark going without working in the same cave?

Brooklyn-based Yael Zofi, CEO and founder of AIM Strategies, interviewed more than 150 virtual team members in hopes of answering a modern version of that question for her upcoming book, A Manager’s Guide to Virtual Teams. She says an effective virtual team—that can be one that works in the same building but on different floors, or one that spans oceans—needs to feel bonded by familiarity and empathy.

“The idea of connection is fundamental,” Zofi said.

She recommends at least one in-person meet-up, if possible, for any virtual team so that a connection can be established and later maintained via phone, e-mail or video. Just one face-to-face meeting can build the relationship and lifts the spirit.

Once a connection is established between team members, future interactions can trigger the same neurotransmitters that build great in-person partnerships and teams. Neuroeconomist Paul Zak at Claremont Graduate University has found that oxytocin—that “cuddle chemical”—is released when people who know and care about each other communicate through social media. Science backs up Zofi’s idea that just one in-person meet-up can be key, however expensive it might be. The benefits will come in the long run.

Virtual teams need both focus and cohesion. Zofi says establishing ground rules during an initial team set-up can avoid conflict down the road—kind of like a “global driver’s license.”

For example, response times should be established so team members know they’re being heard. Issues as simple as the meaning of the word “yes”—whether that means “Yes, I’ve heard you” or “Yes, I will implement this plan”—need to be laid out at the very beginning. 

After a team’s set up, Zofi says the best virtual teams share in activities that give them common ground. She interviewed one leader who ensured virtual team members across the world all shared the same ethnic snacks during conference calls, while another celebrated team members’ birthdays by giving everyone the same small gift.

“These are ways to replicate the water cooler environment,” said Zofi, giving workers who may be miles apart something to share.

“You have technology to run your meetings [with virtual teams],” Zofi said, “but your meetings will fail if you don’t have some human elements to get your team to bond and connect.”

TAGS: executive leadership , management , One+ May 2011 , teams