Micro-behaviors Can Determine Team Effectiveness

Bobby Parmar, U Va Darden School of Business professor and researcher, helps teams thrive and navigate complex motivations

Bobby: I teach and research at the Darden school of business at the University of Virginia. I have a background in social psychology and moral philosophy. And I think my burning interest is in helping individuals and teams thrive and all the richness that that means.

Having strong relationships at work and in your personal life is a really important thing. I'm called to research and better understand how individuals can thrive and how teams can thrive in organizational settings.

When you think about morality and the study of moral philosophy and moral psychology, it's really about understanding how individuals and groups relate. How individuals and groups inter-relate is what morality is about, what constitutes good team behavior, what constitutes effective team behavior.

Escape Room Studies

I will say at the outset that this is preliminary work. This is in collaboration with my colleague at Harvard business school, Francesca Gino, and my colleague at George Washington University, Helet Botha. The three of us have gotten together and we're really studying group dynamics in the context of escape rooms. Communication is really important in the context of escape rooms. It's a great setting because there are teams that succeed and their teams that struggle.

What we do is we videotape everything that happens to a team. We collect a bunch of data ahead of time about who's in the team and we collect psychological scales as well as points of difference amongst the team. One of the things that's interesting, what we found in the preliminary data, is that how a team communicates is highly predictive of their success.

Humor and how a team communicates can predict its success.

For example, one of the things that we find is the amount of humor, laughter on a team is highly predictive of the number of hypotheses that a team throws out when they're solving these puzzles. And the number of hypotheses in turn is predictive of how quickly they solve puzzles and how many puzzles they solve.

So, it's a really interesting dynamic between how a team relates to each other and their actual effectiveness of performance.

Carlos: So, if all I heard was that, and I stopped listening to the podcast, I might think, Oh, great. Here's what I'm going to do for my team. We're all going to go out to a comedy club and we're going to do a team building stand-up night because clearly having a sense of humor is going to make my team better.

I'm pretty sure you're not creating that connection for people, but I just want to test my assumption that sense of humor seems to make a difference in communication. Well, and maybe it's true going out and doing activities to get at people's sense of humor could therefore help our communication. Is that true?  Is that not true or is it remained untested?

Bobby: It's a really important question. And I think predominantly it's remained untested, but I think what you're getting at is a really important piece around translating back those experiences into how we work.  There's a lot of team training, whether it's doing improv or comedy clubs, or even escape rooms that are fun team building activities and people have a really great time in the context of them, and they might learn some lessons about collaboration and teamwork, and yet applying those lessons back into the workplace and translating them back is usually forgotten in the context of those interventions or experiences.

I do think that if you were able to help the team build a dynamic where they could laugh with each other and also translate that dynamic back into their day-to-day work, it would have an effect. But just going to a comedy club might not have that effect. There's a big gap between going out and having a laugh together and actually enjoying working together.  But if you can close that gap, I think you can see some results.

Carlos: So, one other thing on this humor thing for just a second, I'm working with a team of folks in the health sciences area, and it's a team that's been together a long time. This team uses humor a lot, but they're a very stuck team. They're not dysfunctional human beings. They're just not an effective group. And they tend to use humor to deflect the hard stuff.

How might that connect to the work you're doing and what you're finding?

What makes a team get stuck?

Bobby: Oh, there's a really strong connection because humor is one important element, but there's so many elements of what makes a team effective. And one of the other things that we measured in these escape rooms is the ratio of hypotheses to tests that a team would run. So, for example, in the context of an escape room, a hypothesis would be, I think that this number might open this lock. A test would be somebody actually inputting that number into the lock and seeing if it actually works.

There's lots of different kinds of problem solving in the context of teams. You pointed out, stuck problem solving. In research, the way we talk about that is having one hypothesis, but testing it over and over again, so that ratio is very different, whereas there's also something called vagabonding.

What vagabonding is, is having lots and lots of different hypotheses, lots of different ideas, but not running very many tests. Getting virtually stuck in the ideation stage, but not really testing and learning.

Adaptive problem solving is when there's a relative balance. The ratio between hypotheses and tests is close to one. And we found that both at the team level and at the individual level, when we measured the ratio of hypotheses to testing behaviors, more effective teams and more effective individuals were closer to the ratio of one than teams that struggled. They either got stuck because they couldn't generate many hypotheses or they generated way too many hypotheses., and they didn't actually start testing them to figure out which ones would be more or less helpful in the context of this puzzle.

So, in addition to humor, we need to have more adaptive problem solving, right? Any one of these features in a team, whether it's generating a hypothesis, it's humor, there are pros and cons to them, and teams can get stuck in any of these places.

And so, going back to Aristotle and the golden mean here, finding the right balance of what those behaviors are, and that larger portfolio of behaviors is really helpful for teams.

Psychological Safety and disconfirming data vs healthy behaviors

Carlos: I know you're familiar with Amy Edmondson's work. Creating the environment where we are generating and testing hypotheses, and having some fun while we do it, means our work together is energizing and fun. Is that what's required to generate psychological safety or are there other things you'd have to bring into the mix so people will feel safe putting these hypotheses forward, testing them and maybe failing?

Bobby: Psychological safety is this idea that I feel okay to voice ideas, provide feedback that is perceived as risky. So, I could say no to someone's idea or I can say, you know what? I don't think that's working. It's not, sometimes people assume psychological safety is just getting along or having fun together.

But without that, what we call disconfirming data without the risk, it's not really psychological safety, right? There has to be a modicum of risk there that makes those behaviors difficult. And Amy's research and the research of so many scholars these days who are studying this particular phenomenon shows that psychological safety is really important for lots of different things. Problem solving, knowledge, sharing, learning. Lots of interesting stuff on creativity and innovation employee engagement, right? The list goes on and on, which is why lots of organizations and lots of teams are really interested in psychological safety.

But your question wasn't about “what is psychological safety?” Your question is about, “what can we do?”

Psychological safety has to do with “I am personally not being evaluated.” It's more about the idea and the content of my speech and less about me as a person. So, I don't feel a threat when I say, "Hey, Carlos, I don't think this is working", or "maybe we need to generate other hypotheses".

Laughter is one potential way of getting at psychological safety, but there's lots of ways of getting it, psychological safety, being inclusive, being trusting, having integrity. All of those things are mechanisms by which we can draw others out and say, "your ideas matter. And I want to hear from you how to make things better."

People who spoke with certainty struggled in the escape room

Another preliminary finding from the escape room study that we're conducting is that we found that people who spoke with certainty, struggled in the escape room.  An example of that would be, "I know that this number opens this lock," versus folks who spoke with a little bit more uncertainty, or hedged their communication by saying things like, "I wonder if this number opens this lock or maybe this number opens his lock". That little bit of a hedge or that little bit of uncertainty invited others to participate.

If there was a question. It was much easier for me to say, "you know, I tried it and no". But if my partner or a member of my team was certain, that little bit of certainty was a lot harder for me to say, "Nope, that didn't work" because it feels like I'm judging that individual or I'm going to cause a negative emotion in that individual. And that makes it harder for the team to provide that disconfirming data and makes it difficult for the team to be effective.

Carlos: I think it has implications broadly in organizations, especially those organizations where they hire people who come across as self-assured, certain about things.  “I know what I know.”  Not just in teams and leadership. If what we need to create a collaborative environment is people who are willing to be uncertain to propose ideas, and to be willing to come across as slightly unsure about it, we may need to be hiring people differently for that trait.

Bobby: I think you're exactly right. And for so long organizations have been structured, very hierarchically and hierarchy is something that works really well when there's expertise in a stable environment.  When, for example, there's a problem that I know how to solve and my expertise and my education helps me solve that problem effectively, the best way to organize is within hierarchy. So, I can call the shots.

For example, if God forbid I have a heart attack in a restaurant and there's a surgeon there who knows exactly what to do, she shouldn't be holding a conversation to come to a consensus about how to do it. I hope that she would just know what to do. That's a situation that matches her experience and her expertise.

Humility opens doors to collaboration

But so many of the problems that organizations face and that teams are tackling are ambiguous, where it's unclear which expertise is relevant or how that expertise is relevant. And it's in those situations where humility, a little bit of ambivalence, is most useful because it allows teams to share knowledge, when sometimes they're not sure which knowledge to share, or how that knowledge is going to be combined with other pieces of information to solve the problem.

A little bit of ambivalence, a little bit of humility and uncertainty can go a long way in eliciting information from others, and combining that knowledge in ways that allows you to solve these novel, ambiguous problems.

Carlos: I think in the leadership literature of the past 20 years, the notion of humility and modesty has been raised. People are saying the top down, I-know-it-all kind of leadership, what we might call command and control, is okay in some instances, but you're right, in the realm of complex problems where answers aren't clear, another kind of leadership seems necessary.

Teams relate through behaviors, even micro-behaviors

Bobby: Absolutely. It's always nice when you can confirm findings at different points in time, in a different context. But one of the things that I think is most exciting about the nature of the escape room study is that more and more we're finding that it's not just who's on the team, but it's how the team relates.

It's these behaviors about how we communicate, how we elicit and how we include that are really predictive. And for a long time, team research has focused on who are the right people on the bus. I think there's something to that, but the right people on the bus are the folks who have a set of behaviors and habits that allow for effective collaboration, communication and problem solving.

There was just a really phenomenal study in the context of romantic relationships and partnerships that showed that long-term happiness is less predicted by attributes of your partner.  Whether you're a "fit" in the way that we talk about it and more predictive by a set of behaviors, like being able to solve conflict effectively, being able to name your emotions effectively.

And I think what's exciting about the team research, the relational work that's being done these days, is when it's not just about fit and your attributes, but about behaviors that make a difference. You can do something about that. You can change those behaviors. You can practice, but what are you going to do if you have got a member of the team that doesn't have the right attributes, all you can do is try to find a way of exiting them from the team.

Habits and how to change them

Carlos: That does suggest there has to be a certain elasticity, right? In other words, it's these habits of collaboration you and I talked about in a previous conversation. If someone is not adept at developing new habits, you may have a problem, their new habits being new behaviors.

There could be underlying talent issues, but to your point, if you can specify the behavior and then behave your way to a different way of being, not my language, I borrowed that from some other smart person I'm sure, right? But it is possible to behave your way to a different way of showing up with the team.

Bobby:  Absolutely. In some ways it's more effective than trying to convince somebody and argue them into a new way of acting, but just creating a low threshold for trying things or being in an environment that's different, allows people the flexibility of trying a new repertoire, trying some new things. And then, if you're intentional about how you connect that exploratory environment or that experimental environment back with the work environment, you can build new habits and new ways of being that allow the team to perform differently.

Carlos: So, let me check on something. Just two weeks ago, I was chatting with a consultant friend of mine who appeared on the podcast and he mentioned some research that was done using escape rooms as the foundation.

And this gets back to the who's on the bus comment you made a minute ago. They looked at four different types of teams in escape rooms: stranger groups; corporate teams; family groups, and then one other, I can't remember what it was. Yeah. Are you at all familiar with that research? I'm not, I'm not tell me about it.

Bobby: It sounds fascinating.

Carlos: I'll try to find the source of it for you, but he said, "Carlos, what do you think the best performing team was?" He said, "I guess I would have thought the best performing team would be that corporate team because the boss is there and the team is there, and they're used to working together."

And I said, "Huh, that's interesting, Sam, I wouldn't have guessed that." He said, "Okay, Carlos, what would you guess?"  "I would have guessed the stranger group." What drew me to that, what caused me to believe that was that stranger groups don't have bad habits of interaction that could get in the way.

Bobby: Yeah. Great point.

Carlos: And he said the best performing team was a group of ten-year-olds. who didn't know each other.

Bobby: That is such a common finding in the context of all kinds of social science research. There are some really cool things that kids can do, and they're just not stuck in the way that adults can be.

Carlos: I thought, what a great laboratory the escape room is. And just to go back to something you said early about this, it's not to say that if I take my team out instead of for a comedy night, but to the local escape room, and these things have become very popular and ubiquitous, doing an escape room isn't going to help my team be a better team.

That doesn't necessarily translate unless we do some follow-up work. And we look at lessons learned and apply them to what we're doing back at the plant or the office. That's just a reminder. I wanted to put out there.

 Back to the behaviors for a second. So, we talked about habits of collaboration. You mentioned to me a term I hadn't heard before when we talked last month. Micro-behaviors I think was the term you used?

Bobby: Yeah,

Carlos: It sounds maybe a bit academic, but from what I recall, it's actually pretty pragmatic.

Bobby: Well, when I work with organizations and teams, lots of folks are interested in things like psychological safety and empowerment and resolving conflict, all the things that are really important.

The Power of summary judgements

If we go to the research, the research is really compelling. There are hundreds of studies that show that these things matter. So, let's just take psychological safety. This is a really important construct and the way that I think the best way of measuring it was generated by Amy Edmondson. She's got a seven items scale, and the scale asks people their perception of questions. Like it's safe to take a risk on this team. Members of this team are able to bring up problems and tough issues. People on this team sometimes reject others for being different. And that of course is reverse, coded, things like that.

So, we get people's perceptions and they generate these kinds of summary judgements about each other and the team. But where do those summary judgments come from? Those summary judgments come from these micro-behaviors or micro interactions. “Oh, I raised an idea on the team and somebody told me it was a stupid idea” or “Nobody gave me feedback saying, Oh, thanks for coming up with that idea.”

And so in these interactions, people are forming these judgements over time that of course you can change over time, but it's in these small instances when somebody comes to you with bad news, how do you handle that? When somebody comes to you with a problem that they can't solve. How do you handle that?

It's those micro moments, that psychological safety, that empowerment. All of those things are created from a series of small interactions. When I work with executives, and when I work with my MBA students, we try to focus on those small interactions. We try to say, “what are the kinds of things that you can do if you care deeply about psychological safety?” “how do you react in a situation when somebody tells you an idea that you just know is wrong and stupid?”

Negative information is very sticky

Because when you love the idea, it's really easy to bolster the person and build the relationship. It's when the idea is ridiculous that micro behaviors have deep effect.

Carlos: I have to laugh. That's right. That's a challenge we all face on a regular basis, whether it's with work colleagues or family,

Bobby: It's that moment when the idea isn't great, and how you respond to that: that response is a lot stickier than the five other times where you were super-supportive.  We just know it's kind of a basic fact of human psychology: negative information is stickier than positive information.

I'm sure you've had guests and you yourself, given you your considerable expertise, know that in general, it's like a five-to-one ratio of positive to even constructively critical interactions in relationships and in teams. 

There's an evolutionary advantage to remembering negative information. Those moments are defining moments. And typically, when we're tired or stressed or exhausted in our own ways, we're not our best selves. We don't necessarily engage in the behaviors that increase psychological safety., when we need to the most, because that's when they're the stickiest.

Practice and skill-building around micro-behaviors is crucial

You and I have talked before.  I'm the co-director at Darden of something that we call the Experiential Leadership Development Lab with my co-conspirator Jim Dieter. And we deeply believe in this idea of practice and building skills around these micro behaviors, because it's from these small interactions that these larger summary judgments about, "are you were a good leader? Are you a leader that fosters psychological safety? Are you a leader that fosters team efficacy?" Those summary judgements come from those small moments. And we need to give people the opportunity to practice and to see in rich detail, what those behaviors look like.

Carlos: So, this is super down to earth. Practice. We get better if we practice. And of course, that means we have to have a specific thing to practice in this case, a behavior. And let's use the example of someone who's coming to you with a really untenable idea. It's just a terrible suggestion. They're a valued team member. They matter to you, their contribution to the team matters.

And somehow you coach them, or you ask them to come up with a more effective response than what they'd been doing, which is, "what are you kidding me? That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard." So, here's an alternative Mr. Executive person, you might try this instead, or perhaps propose some ideas that might be alternatives.

How much practice is required to change a behavior?

I take that and I began practicing it. How much practice is required, in your experience, to take on board something new like that? There's a lot of popular literature. It was probably 5 or 10 years ago when, was it Malcolm Gladwell who was talking about this? Or one of the other more popular businessy authors, about 10,000 repetitions or something like that?  10,000 hours?  That's what it was. what's your reality? What are you noticing and what are you seeing in terms of how much practice it takes?

Bobby: What a great question. The practice question depends on how specific the behavior, and how different the context of application is from the context of practice.

For example, 10,000 hours is really important for things that are complicated. When we look at, for example, surgeons who are practicing suturing, whether they're practicing on an orange, or something like that, the number drops significantly. We're starting to conduct research in our own lab around practice and around how effective that practice is.

And. While we believe we're the first to do this in the context of business schools. We're not the first to do this at large. This has been happening in medical schools and nursing schools for a very long time. Medical schools have simulation centers, nursing schools have simulation centers, and we've been diving into that research to really understand this.

I think you can make a difference with three to five times of practice, but the problem with this kind of behavioral improvement is that it takes inoculations or further sessions. So, with three to five times of practicing in the lab or in the simulation center, you can see improved effects for somewhere between three weeks to six months, depending on the skill.  And again, how similar the skill is to a practice context.

There's just a variety of different studies that kind of triangulate on that timeframe. And I know that's a pretty wide timeframe, but you've got to come back and practice it again. You know, if you get another inoculation and another sets of practice, then you can extend that effect.

So, there's a, half-life. It's not dissimilar to going to the gym. You go to the gym for a couple of weeks, you start to see some improvement. You stop going to the gym, the improvement stops the skills that you've built dissipate. But if you keep going those skills start to increase

Carlos: That's a very useful analogy.  The gym one. I would not have thought that, honestly. I would have thought if I learned how to say, “Hey, I really appreciate the way you're stretching our thinking around this topic with that idea,” when my initial thought would have been, “What a stupid idea.” I've learned to say now, something else, something around welcoming that idea, welcoming the best aspects of even a bad idea, a possibility.

I would've thought if I get the three to five practice things, I do it with some people over three to six months and I'm finding wow, great results, that it would just stick based on the positive reinforcement, I guess of people saying, wow, that Carlos is getting to be a better leader, but what you're saying is no, that's not true.

Positive and negative micro-behaviors: what to stop and what to adopt

Bobby: I think the context matters a lot. I do think that positive reinforcement matters. I think if this person has taken this to heart and these skills become a part of how they see themselves as a leader, it's something that motivates them, the likelihood of it sticking around longer is higher.  But I think a lot of the research assumes an environment that is less friendly to continually practicing those skills.

And so, in those environments, there is a half-life that is considerable if other people are saying, “Hey, Bobby, you've made such a difference. I really appreciate the way that you're reacting to my ideas, those are reinforcing factors in the situation that can increase the half-life of these behaviors.”

Carlos: What I love about this is the relative simplicity of it, really. I don't think it's hard to identify the micro—behaviors that may be getting in the way. So, raising an eyebrow or sighing heavily at somebody's idea, noticing what doesn't work. So, we have the micro-behaviors we have to unlearn, and we have micro behaviors we want to take on board. Pretty straightforward and something, any team leader could start thinking about and getting feedback on. I would guess. I mean, we can't all go to your lab, right? What about unlearning bad micro-behaviors or what about unlearning the less productive or counterproductive ones?  The unlearning part. What's the challenge with the unlearning?

Bobby: Yeah. So everything that I've seen in the context of  stopping a bad habit or unlearning behaviors that are counterproductive is that an effective strategy is replacing it with a more effective behavior or at least removing the cue that sends you down the path that is not productive.

Understanding, what are the cues in the environment. When this happens, I'm much more likely to be short with my colleagues or, have a shorter fuse or not be as patient or whatever the negative behavior is. So, identifying those cues, getting rid of them, but then also saying, okay, what are some other things that I might do? And then trying those, practicing those.

But I think one of the most important things around this kind of habit change, around changing bad habits or stopping negative behaviors is to come see them as negative behavior. To really be honest with yourself around what's the impact it's having, because in the moment let's be honest, sometimes it feels good to be right.

It feels good to be right and be like, “that idea was terrible.  I'm saving you by telling you that idea was bad, right?” The folks who might be hard to deal with in their own mind are doing what they believe is kind and fair and just, they don't see it as a negative behavior, but they've got to come to see it as look what impact it's having on my relationships.

Examining “How does this perceived negative behavior serve me?”

What does this do for me in terms of my ability, my standing on the team, my ability to build a network of folks buy in. When they come to see those behaviors as negative, they're more motivated to do something about it. And sometimes the hardest thing is to see that it's come to be motivated and see them as negative because we all rationalize, we all justify and we say, “Look, if it wasn't for me telling you that this idea was stupid, we wouldn't have wasted six months on this.”

And that's an exaggeration, right? There are ways of welcoming ideas of thanking the person for taking the effort and not spending six months on an idea. And that's hard for people to find the words and a lot of it around the micro-behaviors is giving them a repertoire of here's some things you can say, try this, try it on for size, massage it in a way that feels authentic to you.

The micro-behavior lab

Carlos: I wish there were a way we could give team leaders, the people I spend a lot of time working with at various levels and organizations, give them a lab. And I suppose people can create their own labs though, right? I mean, here's a thought, let me test it with you. If I identify my responses to the lower quality ideas coming our way, that's a problem for me.

And again, humility, is important to hear. What is there to say that I should not go to my team and say," I know I'm doing this. I'm getting the feedback" by whatever means. I'm going to be trying a new behavior working on it over time. I'd love for you to engage with me on that, because it'll help us be a better team that should work.

It's probably unusual, but because I don't have a lab, it's one good choice. Are there others?

Bobby:  I absolutely agree with you. Yes.  one thing I recommend that is free for teams is have the courage and bravery to videotape yourselves. Obviously, there are considerations around confidentiality, and you’ve got to be careful around those kinds of things.

But there is nothing like watching your team dynamics back and noticing things that you don't see in the moment, because in the moment we're motivated to do very specific things, move the team agenda along, solve the problem at hand. And we might miss, Oh, look at how I treated that person. Or look at my body language towards this individual.

And these days with zoom or whatever platform you're using now, this is relatively easy to do. The video quality is high. The audio quality is high. And as a team, you can learn a lot about how you interact and find a couple of opportunities to improve your performance by having the courage, to videotape yourself and watch it back.

And it takes courage because the videotape is a really strict teacher. It doesn't lie to you as much as you want it to lie. It won't lie. And so, you have to watch it back. And it's really hard to watch it back because we don't always act in ways in which we want to. And memory is selective. And so, you remember the great things you did, and you might not remember the places where you tripped up.

And this is not about perfection. It's about identifying one or two things that you want to work on,

Carlos: Right. I've been like a lot of people searching for the silver lining and the pandemic. And there you go. The very wide usage of things like zoom and Microsoft Teams means we can do that. We have an opportunity to do what great athletes do.

I don't know if people in the medical sciences do it or not, and I'm not a huge sports guy, but I do know people videotape their golf swings for example, or the swing of the bat.  And that they study these things. Why not. I love it. I grant you, there are complexities to be dealt with around it, but. hey, every once in a while, we have to stop and say, “we're getting something good out of this COVID-19 situation and this maybe one of them.”

Bobby: I absolutely agree.

Carlos: Well, I have like 29 other questions, Bobby, but I won't take up your time or ask our listeners to spend any more time with this podcast.

This has been fascinating. I would love to follow up at some point, as you continue the research to see what new discoveries you're making, what insights you're gaining. I think this is incredibly valuable.

Bobby: Thank you so much. Thanks for inviting me on the show. I really enjoyed our conversation.

Carlos:  And thank you for doing the good work you're doing.

 And for my readers, please join my newsletter for the newest Teaming with Ideas.

 Take care.