A good team?

Teamwork has become more and more important in business, whether it is within departments, between departments or between employees in different parts of the world. But what exactly makes a good team?

One success factor that is often mentioned is diversity: a team needs people with different backgrounds, attitudes and strengths. Seems reasonable.

Another oft-cited factor is the ability to hold together during hard times and, particularly, during the sort of crises that many firms have experienced over the past 18 months.

When the going gets tough, the tough get going, it is often said. Members of a successful team should support each other rather than looking for scapegoats in times of difficulty.

That all seems to make sense, too. Yet, some academic research suggests that another factor may be more important for success: the ability to celebrate individual success within a team.

I found a reference to the research — by Shelly Gable, a psychologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara — in a recent article in the newspaper USA Today.

Gable's research actually investigated what made more than 300 couples happy. But my guess is that what she discovered is also relevant to business teams.

Gable found that the way couples reacted to each other's positive news predicted the likelihood of breakup most accurately — even more accurately than whether partners are supportive after bad news.

As USA Today wrote: "The more people report that partners typically react with enthusiasm and pride to their good news — a promotion, for instance — the more satisfaction and intimacy they feel. Receiving passive or even destructive responses wipes out the boost to mood that comes from sharing, and can make people feel worse than on days when no good things happen."

In other words, there is a world of difference between responding to good news with, "That's great. You'll do very well and I'm proud of you", and responding with, "Well, wait until you hear what happened to me today."

As I said, I suspect that business teams could learn a lot from Gable's research. Individual team members need to respond positively to the success of others. How well does your team do that?