Team Genius: The New Science of High-Performing Organizations (6 page)

But sharing isn’t only about resources. It can also be about shared experiences. In his book
Keeping Together in Time
, the historian William McNeill provides powerful evidence for how coordinated rhythmic movement and the shared feelings it evokes is a powerful binding force for human groups. McNeill shows that shared movements, from ancient village dances to modern-day military drills, create muscular bonding and endow groups with a capacity for cooperation, solidarity, and, in turn, survival.
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Those few who have
spent time in an African village know the binding power—and the solidarity bordering on a kind of delirium—of the village dance. And most of us have experienced this in our own lives, from high school marching band to military boot camp.

But even more remarkable is that we all may have been practicing these coordinating dynamics since
even before we were born
—in particular, the kind of self-organized synchronization that takes place between our brains and our bodies. Just watch a baby, or an adult rehabilitating from a stroke or a major injury, and see how the dynamic between what the brain wants and what the body actually does has to be constantly practiced until that self-synchronization is both fast and precise. A toddler learning to walk can execute the perfection of a pole vault or a triple spin on ice skates twenty years later.
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It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that this mind-body synchronization takes place not only within human beings, but also
among
them. We may not be a flock of birds seemingly turning with one mind, but the analogy still holds. Indeed, some experiments have shown that humans can exchange behavioral coordination information so quickly that the results can appear to be spontaneous—as when people tend to applaud in unison.
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This shared information can be quite limited and yet still achieve coordination, an insight that may prove very useful in this age of Skype and virtual meetings. Experiments in social neuroscience of people watching each other on a video screen show that with visual information exchange alone, humans still immediately and spontaneously coordinate their actions. Incredibly, the aftereffects of these visual social encounters persist even when the vision of the others is no longer available. In other words, we are
changed
by our social interactions.
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Perhaps not for forever—but the miracle is that, based on such little interaction, we are changed at all.
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The anthropologist Robin Dunbar, whom we’ve already met,
has proposed the concept of a “social brain,” arguing that a crucial, distinctive part of human intelligence is its intrinsically social quality, which enables effectiveness in complex social networks.
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In the words of one of his fellow researchers, “The social brain hypothesis in evolutionary anthropology contends that human brains have evolved to be as big as they are so that we can think about and manage our relationships with other people.”
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In other words, our brains are not bigger because we are smarter, but bigger in order to help us work with—to team with—our fellow humans.

OXYTOCIN, THE BONDING (AND ORGASM) HORMONE

Okay, so human beings seem wired to form teams and to work together. But what is that wiring made of? Now we’re getting down to the most basic component of human teams: oxytocin, a mammalian hormone that acts as a neuromodulator on the brain. Oxytocin is produced by the hypothalamus and is stored in the pituitary gland. Oxytocin (sometimes referred to by its trade names of Pitocin and Syntocinon) is often administered to induce labor in pregnant women. It is also regularly used in veterinary medicine to induce both labor and lactation.

This hormone has some very interesting characteristics. For one thing, its effects have a half-life of only about three minutes, and it cannot be introduced into the brain via the bloodstream (it’s blocked by the blood-brain barrier)—the latter feature making it safer for use in deliveries. Since digestion also destroys it, oxytocin is typically administered by injection or via nasal spray.

The power of oxytocin on the human body is quite stunning. For example, it appears to play a part in everything from maternal bonding to anxiety to orgasms. But its most important role, for our purposes, is as the basic neurobiological element in the human “social brain.”
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In particular, oxytocin appears to be one of the most important chemicals for mediating pair bonds and social behavior.
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It seems to increase our ability to process positive social cues (humans identify human facial gestures more quickly and more accurately after being dosed with the hormone), while also simultaneously decreasing social threat–related cues linked to social-avoidance behaviors.
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It would seem that the world of oxytocin is a very friendly place, for even as oxytocin creates positive social interaction, those positive social interactions in turn increase levels of oxytocin.
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And those increased levels can do all sorts of things, including:

•
      
Increase social interaction between adults.
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•
      
Improve the processing of positive social information.
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•
      
Enhance in-group trust.
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So far, oxytocin sounds like the fabled elixir of love. But all is not sunshine and cupcakes, because researchers have discovered one more, darker, feature of the hormone: It promotes greater defensive aggression toward out-group members.
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It may also be a major cause of human ethnocentrism. That this hormone should have such a Janus-like aspect—making us love our neighbors but also fear strangers—helps explain why group dynamics can be so complicated and multidimensional.

Most of us would agree that individual behaviors that benefit others—for example, cooperation, compassion, and mutual coordination—are critical for successful teamwork.
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Our motivation for prosocial behavior, including affiliation and closeness, appears to arise from neurophysiological processes.
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And those processes in turn are created by the release of oxytocin and another neuropeptide, called vasopressin. Antecedents of these hormones date back in animals at least 700 million years and are seen across the animal kingdom.
³⁵

Research has found that the amount of oxytocin released during “dyadic” interactions (two individuals in a sociologically significant relationship) is directly related to the reciprocity of that pair.
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(The initial research in this area was looking at the early stages of romantic attachment—as we’ve already noted, there are strong correlations between the functioning of teams and the mating process. . . . Now you know why.) The oxytocin released by these interactions promotes further trust and cooperation,
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especially toward in-group members.
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In other words, form a happy team with others and you will feel a lot better toward your group as a whole.

Literally better. One of the effects of oxytocin on the human body is to dampen many of its physiological responses to stress.
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So, being part of a team actually can make us less stressed—and ultimately, happier. And this is not some secondary effect, or a minor feature, but one that goes right to the heart of being a fully actualized human being: psychologists have found that a child suffering early separation from his or her parents can experience altered oxytocin receptor sensitivity as an adult.
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So we are talking some powerful, life-changing forces in this singular chemical.

Just how powerful remains a matter of speculation. The psychologists Rick O’Gorman and Kennon Sheldon and the evolutionary biologist David Wilson have proposed that natural selection itself may have favored people with prosocial genetic traits. How so? Because individuals with altruistic traits and a willingness to adopt social roles are rewarded with group inclusion—and thus have a greater chance of breeding. Meanwhile, those with traits harmful to a group, including the disposition for free-riding and selfishness, are punished or alienated.
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The stress-reducers of the world are always more popular than the stress-inducers.

In fact, this talent for joining and reducing overall stress may prove to be far more important than we ever thought. Marilynn Brewer, a psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, has argued that sociobiologists neglect the role of selection in small
groups—which she believes is the
most
important aspect of human evolution—and focus too much instead on individuals. For Brewer, it is small cooperative groups that have been the primary survival strategy for humans.

Here is her argument: In order to survive, humans needed to cluster into groups—and those groups needed to meet certain structural requirements: coordination of individual effort, communication, and optimal group size. These structural requirements for group survival in turn imposed selective pressures on individuals who wanted to become part of these small cooperative groups in order to survive and breed. And those individuals with the cognitive and motivational capacities agreeable to cooperative group life survived precisely because they were included.

Meanwhile, those individuals whose cognitive and motivational capacities were disruptive to group organization were selectively avoided, rejected, or eliminated, either by the group or by having to go solo in a dangerous world. Run this filtering process through hundreds of generations, and those social motives—such as cooperation and group loyalty—become dominant and thus characteristic of the human species.
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THE STRANGE POWER OF MIRROR NEURONS

The discovery of mirror neurons, among the most important findings of the last decade in neuroscience, helps us understand many heretofore paradoxical social phenomena, including the evolution of language, emotional empathy, and personal social identity.
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Mirror neurons are nerve cells in the brain whose purpose appears to be creating a copy of an observed action—either by the owner of that brain, or, even more astonishingly,
the action of others
. In particular, when a person observes an action, neurons that represent that action are activated in the observer’s premotor cortex—creating
a “motor copy” of the observed action.
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And thus visual information is transformed into knowledge.
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To better understand the power of mirror neurons, consider the way many of us jump out of our seats at the crack of a baseball bat or pump our fists when a long putt drops—even though we’re watching other people perform on TV. Why do we experience such visceral reactions? It’s because our mirror neurons fire when we see a familiar action, allowing us to understand the action, its goal, and even the emotions associated with it. By extension, this means that our motor systems trigger when watching a sport that we have physically experienced. And if we’re watching strenuous action, mirror neurons even cause a small, but measurable, uptick in our heart rate. In this sense, the spectating brain is also the participating brain. And more important, when our favorite team wins, we win.

A 2008 study by Salvatore Aglioti, a professor at the Sapienza University of Rome, suggests that there’s a sliding scale of mirror neuron response among spectators based on their real-life sports experience. This is why we usually take the greatest pleasure in watching sports that we’ve actually played. Additionally, our mirror neurons show a preference for certain players who touch the ball more often than others, such as quarterbacks in football and pitchers in baseball. Why? Even if we’ve never played football or baseball competitively, most of us have experienced the action of throwing a ball.

Of course, the evolutionary purpose of our mirror neuron system is not to make us more enthusiastic sports spectators—that’s just a fun side effect. Instead, this system is important for social cognition, understanding the mental states of others, empathy, and learning by watching others.

The discovery of mirror neurons in the late 1980s is a classic example of a lucky accident. Italian neuroscientists found that when a monkey raised its arm, a particular cell in the creature’s brain was
fired. That wasn’t the big surprise, that came one day when a lab assistant raised his arm and triggered a similar reaction in the monkey’s same brain cell. The researchers discovered that neurons that mimic or mirror what others do are part of the brain’s circuitry.
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The discovery of mirror neurons could be a game changer, with the potential to offer breakthroughs in everything from how teams are created to the nature of leadership.

It is because of mirror neurons that people are able to emulate, within seconds, the emotions and actions of others. Mirror neurons also allow us to navigate our social world and create an instant sense of shared experience. And they are particularly important to leadership, because followers don’t just act out the orders of leaders, they actually tend to mirror the feelings and actions of those leaders.
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For example, it is now believed that positive behaviors such as empathy actually create a chemical connection—a form of “mood contagion”—between the brains of a leader and his or her followers. In other words, leaders’ empathy and attunement to others’ moods actually affect their own and their followers’ brain chemistry. And what that means is that the leader-follower dynamic that has been the subject of endless speculation over the last few thousand years may, in the end, be even stranger and more mystical than we ever imagined: a biochemical process in which individual minds fuse into a single system.

This model goes a long way toward explaining the superhuman bond (“chain lightning,” as the Steely Dan song calls it) that great leaders—for good or evil—create between themselves and their followers.