If you're feeling isolated from your team, having constant contact with your team members, whether in person, by email or virtually, is not always a good thing.
A recent BBC article reviewed some recent studies showing that, when everyone is talking to everyone else, the team reaches consensus too quickly, without having looked at other possibilities.
"Without the immediate updates from all teammates, each member was instead more likely to build their own theories, meaning that there was a greater diversity of ideas available before the team as a whole settled on the best solution."
Another finding was that, while continuous interaction resulted in good average performance, "it flattened the performance of the top-performing individuals." And the worst performers couldn't benefit from others' solutions, dragging down the performance of the team.
It turns out that intermittent communication produces the best results.
To read the BBC article, please click here.
I really enjoyed this insight. I found a nugget of wisdom I had not thought of before. I recently found myself in a less than ideal team and a collective of poor morale and as a result, it lowered satisfaction substantially, to the point that I haven’t even wanted to go back and do the work. I realize now it was due to the way the individuals were not working together. It wasn’t the work. How easy it is to confuse the work with the team and vice versa. Thank you very much for sharing. Appreciate it.
Thank you for your comment Valerie. That’s an important learning, that team dynamics can influence our perception of the work.