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Collective Intelligence: Why Team Performance is Set Before the Work Even Begins w/Carnegie Mellon Professor Anita Woolley PhD

• Francesca Ranieri • Season 3 • Episode 1

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Smart people don’t automatically make a smart team.

In this episode of Your Work Friends, we talk with Dr. Anita Woolley, professor at Carnegie Mellon University and one of the world’s leading researchers on collective intelligence, about what actually drives team performance—and what most leaders get wrong.

Anita breaks down why high-performing teams aren’t about talent density, charisma, or motivation, but about coordination, goal clarity, and participation—most of which is decided before the work begins. We discuss how team intelligence (team IQ) can be measured, why equal participation predicts better outcomes, and how leaders unintentionally undermine collaboration in meetings.

We also explore what collective intelligence looks like in remote and hybrid teams, including how to reduce meeting overload, improve asynchronous collaboration, and avoid proximity bias.

Then we go into the future: AI agents as teammates. Anita explains why AI doesn’t improve teams by default, the critical difference between AI as production technology vs. coordination technology, and how AI could strengthen collective memory, psychological safety, and cross-team collaboration—if leaders use it intentionally.

If you lead, manage, or work on teams in an AI-shaped workplace, this episode is essential listening.

Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered professional advice. We are not responsible for any losses, damages, or liabilities that may arise from the use of this podcast. The views expressed in this podcast may not be those of the host or the management.

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Why Smart People Don’t Equal Smart Teams

SPEAKER_00

And so you could have actually people who were very smart and put them together and the team was terrible.

SPEAKER_01

Hey, what's going on, Mel?

SPEAKER_02

Happy 2026. Happy 2026. Who knew? Right before the break, we uh sat down with Anita Woolley, and she's pretty awesome.

SPEAKER_01

She is fantastic. If you've heard of collective intelligence, then you know Anita Woolley. Yes, you do.

Defining Collective Intelligence

SPEAKER_02

Here's what we learned from Anita. Smart people don't automatically make a smart team. Surprise, surprise. In this episode, Anita, who is a Carnegie Mellon professor, broke down for us what collective intelligence really is, why team performance is mostly set before the work even begins, and what leaders can change this week to improve how teams coordinate, especially in our remote and hybrid environments. Uh, we also dig into AI agents as teammates and what that means because we keep hearing that term it's another teammate. So what happens when AI reduces collaboration, when it can actually make teams more human, connected, and effective. What did you think about this episode?

SPEAKER_01

I love this episode. You and I have been talking about teams and teaming. And when you're talking about how organizations work, obviously you can't talk about that without talking about how do you build powerful teams. There are three key takeaways that I just keep on in the back of my head with her. Number one, to your very good point, your smartest people aren't your smartest team. And she breaks down why that is. Two, leadership isn't 90% coaching, it's actually 90% stage setting. And that upfront piece is just so, so critically important. She talks about what that is. And last, that AI won't make your teams better by default. It really depends whether you use it for production or coordination and to get really, really intentional about that. I think this is the conversation we all should be having because right now, especially with AI, so much is left to the leader and the team. If you are in that situation, this episode is for you. Here's Anita.

SPEAKER_02

Anita, we're so happy to have you with us here today.

Surprises From Early Research

SPEAKER_01

This is exciting to talk to you about because Mel and I think about teams a lot and team intelligence. We're in a lot of conversations with organizations right now where teams are all humans. Sometimes teams are teams and agents. People are planning for a whole mixture of things from pulling out managers to putting them back in. It is like the variables on teaming is just fascinating. And I don't think it's been this nuts, I'm just gonna say, in my entire career, which led us to want to talk to you around collective intelligence and team intelligence. Like, how do we work best in teams? What makes great teams? And we don't think there's anyone better to talk about this than you because you've literally wrote the book on it. For folks that maybe haven't thought about it. Can you explain what collective intelligence is?

SPEAKER_00

Sure. Yeah, and that's a great, that's a great question because the term gets used in a lot of different ways. And I think it's important to clarify what we mean. So, what we mean, we're building very much from ideas of individual intelligence as capturing the ability of a person to solve a wide range of problems. In our case, we're taking that idea and generalizing it to a certain team or group of people. Some of them are more capable of solving a broader range of problems more effectively than others. So it's a level of capability that resides within the combination of the people that are working together.

SPEAKER_01

Why this research for you? I'm just really curious about what made you I know you said you're interested in you love sports and that kind of stuff, but what is this for you?

SPEAKER_00

At the time that I was starting this work, way, way back along, it's been wow, almost 20 years, when we thought about smart teams, it really was as a function of the individuals. And a lot of organizations actually still operate very much in that way. If you hire really good people and put them together, then they'll automatically be a great team. But intuitively, in sports and in other areas, people know that's not always true. And so this idea that there's this separate kind of ability that is in the combination of people, what they might call chemistry or gelling or whatever it is, what is that? And for a long time, to the degree we understood it, people thought it was just about how you feel, getting people all motivated, rah, go out, do some team building, and that's it. And it's been important to articulate really what the pieces are that you have to put together to make a team collectively intelligent, which is not only about the abilities of the individuals.

SPEAKER_01

When you think about your early research, especially when you started looking at what does make a team perform, what is the one thing where you're like, oh, this is not what we thought it was?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So we thought that individual ability would play a bigger role than it seems true. It does play a role. I'm not here to say you don't need to learn anything. I work at a university, right? Uh so that would be a career suicide, but also not true. It's necessary, but not sufficient. And the fact that it was not as big of a piece of the puzzle was one piece that was surprising to us. And so you could have actually people who were very smart and put them together and the team was terrible. And just seeing that empirically was surprising. And also just the fact that not all leadership is good. There are some behaviors that leaders engage in that undermine collective intelligence, which we I could go on and on about what some of those are. But sometimes people think it's all about the leader, but it's really about what the leader is doing to create the foundations for collective intelligence.

SPEAKER_01

What does make teams intelligent?

SPEAKER_00

So that is a question we've been trying to answer for 20 years, and others before that. We're building on a lot of stuff that's been in the making for some time. There are different components that need to come together. It's not a simple answer. But there certainly are things about the people in the team, their abilities, as well as the mix of the people, the abilities they bring that affect the collaboration. There are things about goals. Are the goals aligned? Are they clear? Are we all working toward the same purpose? And then also how we're combining and coordinating our input. When I teach about this, we kind of have this three pronged checklists that I teach my students about people, goals, coordination. And so that's my shorthand for the key components.

SPEAKER_01

One of the things I thought was really interesting too is that you can actually measure this. Just like we measure like IQ of individuals, you can actually measure team IQ or group IQ. You have a diagnostic for this, yes?

Measuring Team IQ

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. And that's again where we started with a lot of this, it was very steeped in the psychology of individual intelligence, which is all about measurement. There's all kinds of innovation and statistics that originated with trying to measure individual intelligence. So we started by making batteries of tasks that teams would work on together to capture various components of their ability to coordinate. And so we've used that in a lot of our studies. More recently, we've moved to finding ways to capture this more passively through digital indicators since everybody now is working in a digital environment like we are right here, and looking at what are the things we can capture about interaction that would provide a good index of collective intelligence. Yes. So we've done a lot of work and continue to on the measurement of it.

SPEAKER_02

Some of the things that we read in the research that you had out there was around gender balance and the perceptiveness and how these two things really impact that collective IQ of a team. Can you walk us through that a little bit?

Gender Balance And Social Perceptiveness

SPEAKER_00

Sure. And I would say the gender balance piece, believe it or not, was an another thing that was surprising when we first did this work. Despite my neighbor who started to nickname me the rabid feminist, what he would have what he would have claimed. He's delightful, by the way. He is. We didn't actually start out thinking that was going to be a major component of what we would find, but it showed up in study after study that we conducted. But as we dug into it, yes, it is about gender balance to a certain degree, but it's really also about this other component you mentioned, which is social perceptiveness. So there's this ability that all of us have to different degrees to pick up on subtle cues and draw inferences about what others are thinking or feeling. And to use that to actually anticipate how they might react to something you're gonna say, something that might happen. Researchers for some decades now have looked at different elements of this and looked at how it predicts functioning and leadership positions, for example, or the fact that people who are on the autism spectrum tend to struggle with this. And so helping them to more explicitly learn how to read cues as a way of enhancing their ability to function. So we found that in our studies, teams whose members had a higher level of ability in this area on average were more collectively intelligent. And women tend to have more of this ability than men. And so that explains a good part, not always in every situation, but a good part of the reason why having more women leads to higher collective intelligence. And the reason why women have more of this ability is a multifaceted explanation. There's definitely some biology involved. Basically, testosterone messes this up. If you stimulate testosterone by making somebody aggressive or angry, it depresses their ability to pick up on these cues. There's also an environmental piece as well, a social learning piece where people who are in a lower power position, for example, tend to also develop more of this awareness. And so just given history, that women would have multiple reasons why they would be stronger in this capability.

SPEAKER_02

It's so interesting to me, especially the nurture part of it. So say if you're on a team, it's clear you can measure it. What if you find, okay, as a team, collectively, we're low on social sensitivity in this makeup? Is that something that you can nurture together as a team, for example, if you have that gap?

SPEAKER_00

I have had student teams, for example. I often give my the students in my courses the various measures to self-diagnose and think about how their team is operating and what it has going for it versus what gaps they might have. And I have had student teams that had a significant gaps gap try to establish certain norms to help compensate for the fact that maybe people aren't gonna pick up on everything right away. Things about making a point to ask people what they think, or people taking responsibility for being explicit. If you've just offended me, I have to tell you this. I can't just expect that you're gonna pick up on it. And checking in more often, which every team actually can benefit from. I think those that need more of this explicit sort of confirmation can especially benefit. There's no team that has a perfect composition. I'm talking about some of the ideals based on our evidence, but every team benefits from understanding like what they have as their resources, what gaps they have, and what they can do to mitigate those gaps.

Building Cognitive Diversity On Purpose

SPEAKER_02

It's the awareness, right? About perfection. It's just the awareness of where we have opportunity to work on this together. One of the things that we were reading in the research was around that cognitive diversity. You're getting into, let's say, a special project. How do you know what to look for to build like a powerhouse team that might help solve hard problems together?

SPEAKER_00

You won't have the perfect team. And depending on your situation, you may have more or less flexibility about who's on your team. But just on a conceptual level, if we think about diversity in any organism, more diverse organisms are more robust, right? Because if you have all the cells are the same and there's a virus that can take out one of the cells, it's going to take out all the cells if the cells are the same, right? So you want diversity in order to be buffered against various things that could happen. And in a team, having diversity also gives space for everybody to make a contribution and have a role. And so it just helps coordination, right? So that it helps people figure out how they can make a contribution and to feel like they are, which is an important part of keeping everybody's effort and commitment engaged. When you're thinking about putting together a group to work together a team for a project, thinking about how you can bring together those complementary skill sets. If you, as the leader, say are choosing these people, you're choosing them for a reason, try to choose them with a particular role in mind, make it clear to the team what those things are, brag on everybody about what their talents are and how they could be useful to the team, but also acknowledging it's still not going to be perfect. And what other gaps do we have that we need to supplement in some way? And how can we build on what everybody knows?

SPEAKER_01

When you think about having like cognitive diversity or a balance of women, or really even being aware of the composition of the team. So much of the decision of who's in that composition is on a manager or a leader when they're hiring the team, when they're setting the guidelines for the team. How important is the leader in this in making this happen?

SPEAKER_00

An idea that I actually inherited from my advisor, Richard Hackman, is the 60-30-10 rule. Because in his era, leadership research was a newer field, and there were some folks who thought the whole thing was the leader, and some folks, I guess, who didn't. And what he would point out is leaders are important, but actually the most important thing they do is all the stage setting that they do, even before the team convenes. So we were just talking about choosing who's in the team. That's actually a really influential piece. Also clarifying and helping the team clarify what they're trying to do, because we know that goal setting is so important and getting goals aligned is so important. And then also setting it up so that they can coordinate effectively, like whether it's getting the resources, getting the amount of time you need from them. We know people are always torn in more and more different directions these days and in organizations. And so leaders who can negotiate to get the resources so that maybe people can be a little more focused, at least some of the time, or be able to get their work done, have the resources they need for that. And so that's all the leader, even though it might not be somebody standing up and making a speech and everybody hugging or something, but it's a lot of stuff that happens that maybe you don't notice unless they didn't do it. So the leader is important for all of that. However, though that could be done by more than one person. So sometimes we have debates about shared leadership. And so that ends up being relevant. People could divide up. And leaders can do things that actually detract from the team. And so when we were talking about unequal participation, some leaders enact their role by doing all of the talking. And that would clearly detract from the rest of the team. Because if they brought these people together, because they have certain skills, they can contribute, miss out on that if you are then not letting them contribute. So things that would undermine the ability of the team to actually combine what they know would be a drawback. But no, leaders are definitely important, just maybe in a slightly different way than some people might assume.

SPEAKER_01

Love that idea of how important stage setting is. Was it 60, 20, 10?

SPEAKER_00

Uh 60, 30, 10. And that was based on actually Richard Hackman and Ruth Wagman did some research where they actually evaluated this in teams and found that about 60% of the team's ultimate performance can be predicted by having these conditions in place at the beginning. And then another 30% could be predicted based on the degree to which these things were reinforced. So having the right people, who's doing what, what skills, having clear aligned goals, having clear norms and routines and resources to coordinate. So those are the things that I'm talking about, having in place, reinforcing. And then the charismatic leader making speeches accounts for encouraging people and keeping them motivated. That's another 10%.

SPEAKER_01

Holy crap. So basically 90% of leadership or the 90% of impact of leaders. And that's like how well your team performs, basically.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So if you even think about it in, you can think about it in a project team, you can think about it in a sports team. Honestly, some people relate to that more. Uh the good leaders, they're preparing the team like before the match. They're kind of setting the stage and getting the right players together and getting them to coordinate well. And they might do a lot of rah getting them fired up ahead of time, but that doesn't take over for not doing the rest of it. The rest of it is actually hugely important.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, probably can conditioning. I was I played pilot sports, and that it made me immediately think of like strength and conditioning.

SPEAKER_00

Oh yeah. But even some of the things putting the right set of players together, like getting them to cooperate in the ways that they need to. Damn.

Synchrony, Turn-Taking, And Burstiness

SPEAKER_01

All right. So, real quick, I want to talk about synchrony, especially around how smart teams behave. Sure. What does this look like on a smart team on some rando Tuesday? What does that look like? What are the elements of that?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and then it's a little different if we're talking about it in a team that's face to face working synchronously versus a team that might be working in a more distributed environment. But if we're thinking about teams working face to face or at least at the same time, synchrony is what it feels like when you're quote gelling. So the way it manifests in data is things like, oh, over time our body language starts to converge. The nature of the emotion we're expressing starts to converge and follow one another. So if you're happy, I'm happy. If I'm upset, you're upset. Though if we're talking about it, actually a very sensitive channel for capturing this is vocal cues. And so team members who are really attuned to each other over time, their vocal cues will start to synchronize. So how fast they're talking, the pitch of their voice and the change in the pitch of their voice, the kind of sentiment that is conveyed. So if I'm really tuned into you and you're really sad and depressed, but I'm like chipper and happy and we're not in sync at all, right? I'm not at all picking up on you or following you. And so, like therapists will be trained to do this actually as a way to establish rapport with people. But in teams that are tuned into each other, they tend to do it pretty naturally. Including, it turns out, like you all are pros at this, like navigating conversational turntaking so that people aren't talking over each other. When it's not as nicely mapped out as you all have done for us, team members have to wait, watch, listen, figure out, okay, can I jump in? Figuring out how to watch those cues as they get to know each other.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

That was one of our favorite findings. From your research is that idea of like equal talking time. It's something people can see and feel in meetings. Walk us through that measurement. What does good look like? What does crap look like?

SPEAKER_00

In a very in very simple terms, crap is one person talking the whole time or one or two while everybody else is just sitting there. And good, though, is roughly equal amount of turn taking or speaking. And it doesn't mean that's true for every minute of the meeting or even in a longer-term team in every single meeting. But presumably you've brought together these people because everybody has something to contribute to the work you're doing. And if that's the case, you need to hear from them in order to be able to use their contributions. But it's very easy for that to get thrown off kilter. There are so many dynamics and a live discussion. Certainly, in most organizations, there are status dynamics, who's the boss. If the boss talks first, the chances that anyone's going to speak up and contradict that person are very low in most situations. Or if people are weighing in and the opinions are converging over time, you won't hear from the people who think differently in a lot of conversations. And it's important to hear from everybody to invite that diversity of points of view so that you have the benefit of it. But it's really easy for it to get lost.

SPEAKER_01

I'm looking for those like really great indicators people can tell, like just the tells to is it burstiness?

SPEAKER_00

Burstiness, yeah. Burstiness. We're challenging you with all of our terms. Yeah. So burstiness is something we especially think about in teams that are in a distributed environment that are not working synchronously. Because burstiness is when we over time start to converge in when we get together, not necessarily synchronously, but when we communicate. So, for example, when we first observed this, me and Chris Riedel, we observed it in software development teams that were distributed around the world. So they were in different time zones and they were working in this challenge that lasted about 10 days or so. And over the 10 days, the more collectively intelligent teams they would figure out when each other was going to be online or when they might be working. And it's all okay. So over time, people start adjusting how they're working so that they can converge around the same periods. And the reason why we say burstiness is because if you map these communication events over time, they happen in bursts instead of in other teams where, oh, I'm just following my own routine. I'm gonna just send you stuff whenever I have an idea or thinking about it. And then you'll get back to me at some point a couple days later, maybe. So it's more random, not coordinated in terms of how we're communicating and interacting. The more collectively intelligent teams, more naturally organized into these more bursty patterns.

SPEAKER_01

Definitely something you can see over like teams or even on text or in WhatsApp. It's so funny. Even when Mel and I are talking, we're like go, go, go, go, go, go, go, and then silent and then that sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah. That's going to translate really well to audio, by the way.

SPEAKER_00

I will watch the video for that part.

Remote And Hybrid: Fewer, Better Meetings

SPEAKER_02

We know this past year there's a lot around RTO and teams can only work well together if they're in person. We know that's not true 100%. Yeah. Of course, there's nuance to that. So we'd love to talk about like the remote hybrid approach to things.

SPEAKER_00

No, I'm not. I'm just I keep wanting to fight the fight for people. Same.

SPEAKER_02

If I'm leading a fully remote team, global team, what are two or three tiny tweaks I can make this week to support collective intelligence via Zoom, Slack, what have you? What can I do to support that as a leader?

SPEAKER_00

I would start by doing an audit of your synchronous meetings. Everywhere you look, people are reporting how the meetings are increasing and that increases people's work days. I was looking at a statistic in a Microsoft, a recent Microsoft report where over 60% of meetings are spur of the moment. So people aren't even really planning them. So that also further throws off whatever you thought you were gonna do this afternoon. As a leader, you're the main person who's who can do something about that, right? Because most people don't feel like they can say, hey, look, I'm not gonna I don't want to meet with you. So look at that because it's really disruptive and it does extend the workday and then it's often not time well spent. With that, and associated with that, there might need to be some new tools and routines for asynchronous communication. It might be that you take the update meeting and you make it asynchronous. What are the tools you need? What are the norms you need? Because you still need people to be accountable to review something, but putting that in place. And then the third thing would be to think about relatedness because that's the thing that people are afraid will fall off the table if everybody is distributed, but it doesn't have to. I've been in groups that have made very creative use of things like Slack or whatever chat platform. There might be one channel that is devoted to a standing check-in meeting at different points where people share silly stories or post silly pictures, just knowing who your people are and what would be valuable to them and invite them to share some of the stuff that they would normally share if they were together in the coffee room or whatever.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I love that. I'm part of an internal cat chat channel myself.

SPEAKER_00

I don't have cats, but I can watch cat videos all day. Fun, fun. It's very funny.

SPEAKER_02

Where are leaders getting remote work wrong right now? What are they overlooking on the human side, do you think?

Digital-First Habits And Hybrid Traps

SPEAKER_00

I don't want to keep pounding on the drum of meetings, but I would say that people and a lot of people were thrown into it with the pandemic. And the less mature, if you will, organizations just tried to take everything they were doing in person and just put it on their web conference platform. And so I'd say there are still some that are doing that, or still some that really want it to be in person. Like they have a distributed environment, but are still trying to get people to come in or some people to come in. That's one way that they're getting it wrong. Instead of embracing digital first approach where you can work the same way no matter where you're working. So everybody's equal access to the information and to be able to communicate. And relatedly, if you have a hybrid environment, that's even the most challenging because leaders still don't always realize how much who is right in front of them influences what they focus on and the ways that can create these status differences among employees. And so just really being aware of that because remote work is here to stay. I think the organizations that do it well in the end are gonna win, they're gonna have better people. And those kinds of old habits of focusing on who's right in front of your face really undermine the ability of those arrangements to work well.

SPEAKER_02

I love the push for less meetings. That someone came out with a calculator and that estimated the cost of this meeting. And I love the concept because before booking any meeting, I would love to see how much that would cost.

SPEAKER_00

And do is it an email? It's a perfect tool. Yeah, no, absolutely. And honestly, sometimes it's the leaders who need that the most.

SPEAKER_01

All right, let's talk about everybody's favorite subject, AI. Personally, I have days where I'm like, this is gonna be awesome, and other days where I'm like, we're all gonna die. But you've been doing great research on AI. We know a genic is gonna be here before we know it, let alone AGI. We're not gonna talk about AGI just yet. Let's just talk about a genic for now. And I know that you've been doing a lot of research exploring AI agents as teammates as facilitators. That's coming. We don't meet with any futurist or economist or technician that says, no, it's not. It's coming. So as we fold AI agents in as teammates, how do we need to be thinking about this in order to keep intelligent teams?

AI As Production vs Coordination Tech

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I think it's an important question. And honestly, we're anxious to find more and more partners to explore this with because there's a lot of variation in organizational environments that is important to incorporate into thinking about this problem. But key distinction that maybe we'll embrace more and more over time is one between production technology and coordination technology. So right now we use AI a lot as production technology. So I have to make a presentation or we use them on factory assembly lines or whatever to actually produce the work. But there are opportunities to use it that would also enhance the humanness of work and the human experience of work as coordination technology. For example, we talk about collective memory and thinking about collective intelligence. And so that involves knowing who knows what, making good use of what different people know. But when you're in a distributed team, it's really hard to know who might know something about this thing you need to know about, and constantly spamming people with email to ask them gets a little old. But you could imagine an agent who is just really focused on knowing about all the ways Mel could enrich our project or Francesca could enrich our project. And so then notices that I'm starting to dig into this thing and it's like Francesca is an expert on that. I bet she could help you. I'm fostering a connection, a relatedness within the team, and letting us, and then Francesca, her she feels better because her expertise is recognized and used, and I feel better because I get help and everybody wins. So right now, there's not great ways to do that. And again, there's always this big brother aspect to having something looming and watching you, although it's already there. I just have to tell you. But still, I know it makes some people uncomfortable. But if you get past that, it's possible that an agent would know all the projects I'm working on, what the topics are, what it is I need to know, maybe things I don't even realize I need to know.

SPEAKER_02

That could be super powerful across a global organization, even trying to break down team silos.

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely. And increasingly, the teams are again far flung and don't know each other really well.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

What are we missing out on?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. But I'm also thinking, too, is work becomes potentially more project-based. Even if you're sitting in an internal organization, you're probably going to be more project-based as opposed to being on the same team doing the same thing over and over again. I can see it a world where people are having to form storm and norm all the time.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And having that is huge, especially as a minor.

SPEAKER_00

But there are some organizations like NASA has been trying to leverage some technology where collecting lessons learned at the end of a project is something a lot of organizations already know can be useful. Fewer organizations actually do it, but it's shown to be important. But then harvesting those. So I'm starting a project. And what is it that some other teams figured out that I could benefit from? And having an agent that could harvest those points for my team, even if none of us were on those projects before.

SPEAKER_01

Is there a psychological safety bent to this as well? You've been doing some of that with healthcare.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, absolutely. And in fact, we're also going beyond healthcare. My PhD student, Alan Brown, is really interested in this, looking at how agents can help enhance the basic qualities that enhance learning for individuals that also enhance psychological safety. You could think of it in a few different ways. One is one way that we all use your favorite search engine now, which is okay, I don't know this thing, and I don't want to admit I don't know this thing. So I'm going to ask my favorite search agent and then I'll know. So I don't have to admit ignorance. Okay, that's a low-level thing that happens already. But it could be that maybe there's an agent that knows more things about our work together or the context of our work, which would also be threatening for me to admit I don't understand or don't know. Or if we were working in a really contentious situation, even thinking about a way an agent could mediate a conversation, at least initially. So if I'm assuming I can't talk to my group because they really think differently about this thing than I do, maybe there can be an initial conversation that an agent has with each person and demonstrates to the group that maybe there's more diversity in viewpoints than we thought and makes it a little easier for people to speak up and state what they think.

SPEAKER_01

God, I love that example. There's going to be a bigger and bigger need for that type of intermediary or at least the ability to bring a more holistic perspective to decision making, which we all probably could benefit from.

Agents For Memory, Safety, And Mediation

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, absolutely. Other projects that some collaborators are working on look at how AI can help people adopt different perspectives. And psychological safety in some ways is about a perspective. Often it's a perspective that says, oh, this idea I have or this thing I'm wondering it would not be okay because you perceive that others have a certain belief or expectation, and providing more perspective that maybe suggests they're they not may not be as clear or certain about this as you think could also help.

SPEAKER_01

Over the next five years, do you think AI is going to make teams more collectively intelligent or neutral, worse? What's your take?

SPEAKER_00

I think the jury is still out. I hope it will. I hope it will. That distinction I mentioned earlier between coordination technology and production technology is a big one for determining that because in some settings, uh, right now the use of AI technology tends to diminish the need to collaborate. Instead of going to uh my team and brainstorming about some problem, I'm brainstorming with my chat GPT or something. But I think there's huge opportunity to go beyond that and actually enrich collaboration, make it easier, perhaps. But I think organizations have a real choice to make and they need to be very conscious of that.

SPEAKER_01

I can foresee a lot of leaders being like, we need to figure out how to layer an AI. We want to keep half of our humans employed that we have now.

SPEAKER_00

Hopefully more. Hopefully more.

SPEAKER_01

What's the place where most leaders need to start? Do they need to start thinking about the collective intelligence of their humans first, or do they blank slate it?

SPEAKER_00

It would really be how can we leverage technology to make our teams even more effective and more valuable for what we're trying to do. So instead of here's my headcount, I can slice it in half and replace it with robots, that's already happening. But another thing would be we could actually generate more value. We could keep our headcount the same, but generate more value from this headcount by making all the inputs more coordinated, more effective. Thinking about things from that perspective. How do we grow the pie, if you will?

SPEAKER_01

A little bit of abundance mindset as opposed to the fun scarcity we're seeing. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Indeed. It also goes back to your very good point around setting the stage. That's not only for teams, but setting the stage strategically from a business model perspective, too. So love that.

SPEAKER_02

It just requires a different mindset. I'm hearing a lot, you see it all the time, like how your AI agent is the new team member. People be looking at it that way. I've always come from you think about the human need first, like what is this technology going to do to support it? But there's a lot of talk of treating it almost like it's a person itself in a way. And like this talk of this is another teammate. And so if they're looking at it from that perspective, how does that shift how you measure collective intelligence for the group, counting that as a team member?

SPEAKER_00

In terms of just how we think about collective intelligence in that context, we would absolutely think about the team as incorporating its tools and technologies, as that being part of the collective intelligence. How they use those tools to solve problems would be an important part of the collective intelligence capability. But in terms of thinking about AI as a team member, the reason in some ways for a shift in the language is just because of changes in agency. It used to be technology as a tool when I decide how I'm going to use this calculator or whatever and accomplish this thing. And now we're thinking about even as I talk about AI facilitating the development of collective memory. It means you have this agent that's getting to know you, that's maybe you know more proactively making connections, making suggestions, et cetera. Maybe even getting into more of the socio-emotional content of a group. Oh, it seems like everybody's very tense right now. What's going on? Maybe initiating a conversation or something of that sort. Given the amount of agency that an agent would need to have in order to really proactively help a team, thinking of them as a collaborator is probably a useful mental model versus something that you have complete control over and are directing at every step.

SPEAKER_02

Say I'm a leader listening to this call. What's one thing they can test or try the next 90 days to maybe boost collective intelligence on their team?

Will AI Raise Collective Intelligence?

SPEAKER_00

Earlier, I was talking about my shorthand, the people, goals, coordination, checklist type of thing that I give to execs and executive ed or my students. Just the power of sitting down with your team and doing a diagnosis and a check-in and talking about ways you might change something you're doing to enhance one of those foundations can be surprisingly powerful. Even before we get to the technology aspect of it, sometimes I refer to it as hand washing for teams. Hand washing is this really simple thing you can do in medical settings to prevent infection. It's one of the most effective things we can do. People fail to do it pretty often, but when they do, it's really powerful. And so this is a powerful and simple thing. We're doing research to try to also integrate more technology into that, helping give signals to teams about different areas they might want to talk about, just because they don't always have the insight to know necessarily that something's going off the rails. But even just starting with a more old-fashioned conversation can actually yield a lot of dividends. Talk people.

SPEAKER_02

There you go. That's it. That's it. Communicate. Yeah, can you communicate about these things? Okay. Easier said than done. Truly. Something called rapid round. You can answer in one statement or a sentence, or if it's really good, you could just keep going. Sometimes it's our richest discussion with these questions. But it's just to get to know you a little bit better. In your mind, it's 2030, not too far away, believe it or not. What is work going to look like?

SPEAKER_00

I think remote work is gonna be the norm or distributed work. I hope it's gonna be easier for everybody to do. I imagine be able to get away from my desk, but still have these video calls like with you in 3D sitting on a chair in front of me, but we might not quite be there in 2030.

SPEAKER_02

I experienced something like that a few years ago at the winter village in New York. Meta had something where they had an a VR experience like that. And it was cool.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. If we can do it without the heavy headset, that would be ideal. Yes, yes. I think we're getting there.

SPEAKER_02

What's one thing about corporate culture you'd like to see die already?

SPEAKER_00

Just the focus on fit as a thinly veiled way of pushing out people who are different. Yeah. Just embracing people who are different and being a little more open.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. As a former recruiter, I always hated to hear that term when I was debriefing during the interview. I'm like, what do you mean by that? Let's dig into that. What's the difference? Is that different than just prejudice?

SPEAKER_00

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. What's the greatest opportunity most organizations are missing out on right now?

Practical 90-Day Team Diagnostic

SPEAKER_00

I would say just finding more ways to coordinate asynchronously, giving people more flexibility about their time.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

This could have been a meeting. This could have been an email.

SPEAKER_00

Not this though. Not this.

SPEAKER_02

No, not this. Some of the work. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We're moving on to a little more personal. What music are you listening to right now?

SPEAKER_00

I am learning how to play the piano. I always wanted to do that. I've been using Musora.com. Shout out to that great platform. Piano is the piano lesson part of it. And so I've been playing songs like from Adele or Lauren Daigle, the ones that are more piano oriented. So very cool. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

That's that's awesome. What are you reading? Audiobooks count, by the way.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I keep coming back to and rereading Coach K's book, Leading with the Heart. So I love sports and I just get a lot from folks like him who talk about their experience.

SPEAKER_02

Coach Kay is good. Who do you really admire?

SPEAKER_00

It's hard to pick just one person. I might cheat a little bit and say unsung heroes, like people who are doing things that are so important and probably unrecognized completely. Like teachers, people in the government right now, honestly, who are hanging in there and keeping things going. We don't know it because they're doing their job. So people, even though they don't get any gratitude, they just do it because they know it's important.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Also, professors like yourself. We need to uplift more research. I think we get a yes, I yes. I would never say don't appreciate us. I think sometimes we get more appreciation though than other, as my sons would call real teachers when I try to help them with homework. I'd be like, I'm a teacher too. They're like, no. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

I love it. What's a piece of advice that maybe someone gave you that you wish everyone had?

SPEAKER_00

Don't do or say or put in an email anything that you wouldn't want on the front page of the New York Times. Just like anytime you're sending an email, it could end up there. So just know that. Yep.

SPEAKER_02

As a former paralegal. Discovery. Lamita, how can people follow you? What's the best way to follow your research and keep going on this?

SPEAKER_00

I'm at Carnegie Mellon University, CI Lab. A2W.site is my website. So A number2W or on LinkedIn. Perfect.

SPEAKER_02

We'll include that as well for folks, and we really appreciate you being here and thanks for the work that you do.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Rapid Round And Closing

SPEAKER_02

This episode was produced, edited in all things by us, myself, Mel Platt, and Francesca Reneri. Our music is by Pink Zebra. And if you loved this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriends.com. But you can also join us over on LinkedIn, join us in the socials. And if you like this and you've benefited from this episode and you think someone else can benefit from this episode, please rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care, Fred. Bye friends. Bye friends.

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Francesca Ranieri

Co-host
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Mel Plett

Co-host