A team knows only what its members tell one another.
In a team, knowledge is distributed. Each person sees one part of the picture, knows a figure, has made an observation. For the team, this knowledge counts only once someone says it out loud. What one person knows and keeps to themselves is missing when the decision is made.
The team principle in detail
Four steps through the principle: understand, check, connect, apply. Open any topic to read more.
The explanationThe difficult part: left to themselves, groups talk mainly about what everyone already knows.
- The difficult part: left to themselves, groups talk mainly about what everyone already knows.
- That feels like agreement.
- Meanwhile, the knowledge that only individuals hold goes unsaid, and the best solution is missed.
- So what matters is not how much a team talks, but what gets raised and whether it is worked through.
Read closelyWhat the principle says – and what it doesn’t
Where knowledge is unevenly distributed and the task needs all of it together, exchange decides the outcome. “Tell” means any explicit exchange – spoken, written or signaled.
- It does not say
- More talk helps. How often a team communicates is only weakly related to performance; how well it communicates is related much more strongly.
- Strictly speaking
- The “only” is a deliberate overstatement. Well-attuned teams coordinate routine work even without words, because they share a picture of the work.
- Something has only been said once it reaches the other person. That takes plain language, fixed terms and agreed channels.
The signs3 signs that the principle is at work · 3 that it is missing
- In meetings, people deliberately ask for what only one person knows.
- Speaking time is shared.
- Important matters have fixed terms and clear channels.
- Meetings confirm what everyone already knew.
- After a mistake, it turns out someone knew all along.
- A few talk; the rest stay silent.
The research6 sources: 3 meta-analyses, 2 primary studies, 1 practice report · 1985–2018 · with research limitations
- low
- moderate
- high
High – for the direction: teams that share their distributed knowledge perform and decide better; the “only” in the core statement is not supported.
- 1985Garold Stasser & William Titus
Origin of the hidden-profile paradigm: groups mainly discuss what everyone already knows. Individual knowledge goes unsaid, and the best solution is missed.
- 2010Anita Williams Woolley et al.
699 people in 192 groups: a “collective intelligence” factor depends little on the intelligence of individual members, but does depend on social sensitivity and evenly distributed speaking time.
- 2012Alex “Sandy” Pentland, Harvard Business Review
Sensor badges in 21 organizations, about 2,500 people: patterns of communication are said to be the most important predictor of team success. Not peer-reviewed; the author’s own figures.
- Research does not support the “only”: well-attuned teams also coordinate implicitly through a shared picture of the work.
- What matters is not how much is said, but what.
- Alex Pentland’s figures come from a practitioner article that was not peer-reviewed.
Read more: what the research shows
Researchers study this as information sharing in teams. Jessica R. Mesmer-Magnus and Leslie A. DeChurch summarized 72 studies: teams that share their knowledge perform better on average and are more cohesive. At the same time, teams share less precisely when knowledge is unevenly distributed. Garold Stasser and William Titus were the first to demonstrate this pattern. It is called the “hidden profile”: the right solution emerges only when everyone pools their individual knowledge, yet groups mainly discuss the information they already share. Shannon L. Marlow and colleagues found that the quality of communication is much more strongly related to performance than its frequency. Anita Williams Woolley and colleagues observed that groups with evenly distributed speaking time solve tasks better.
The originJohn C. Maxwell · “The Law of Communication”
- 2001OriginJohn C. Maxwell
The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork
- The Law of CommunicationInteraction among members fuels the team’s action
- todaySharpened
What is sharpened here is that what counts is whether individual knowledge gets voiced, not how much people talk.
The related team principles11 Attunement · 13 Safety · 15 Dissent · 19 Scoreboard
The principle complements “Attunement” and presupposes “Safety”: people who are afraid don’t speak up. “Dissent” and “Scoreboard” are close relatives.
“Size” stands in tension with it, because every additional member multiplies the channels.
The action steps5 steps: Before decisions, go around the room and ask
- Before decisions, go around the room and ask: What do you know that the others might not? That brings individual knowledge to the table.
- Balance the speaking time. Draw in the quiet ones explicitly and rein in those who talk a lot.
- Use plain language and fixed terms for critical situations. Agree on what a word means before it is needed.
- Work through information together instead of just mentioning it: What does it mean for our decision?
- Don’t measure communication by volume. An extra meeting helps only if something new is said in it.
The questions for your team3 questions for your team conversation: What does one of us know that the others would need for their work and don’t know yet?
- What does one of us know that the others would need for their work and don’t know yet?
- Who barely gets a word in at our meetings – and what do we miss as a result?
- Which terms do we understand differently, even though we use them every day?
Take time for one question at your next team meeting. Talk about it openly and note down what you take away from it.
The picture to rememberEach dot holds a fragment. Lines of exchange connect them, and the fragments come together into a complete circle.
- Each dot holds a fragment.
- Lines of exchange connect them, and the fragments come together into a complete circle.
What the Team Principle of Communication looks like in practice
An Order Without a Location
On October 25, 1854, the British commander-in-chief Lord Raglan wants to keep captured guns from being carried off – but the cavalry commander in the valley cannot see them, and the written order names no location. When asked, Captain Louis Nolan merely sweeps his arm toward the valley, and some 670 horsemen charge a target that was never intended.
“Priority” Is Not “Emergency”
On January 25, 1990, Avianca Flight 52, with 158 people on board, circles in holding patterns for 77 minutes until the Boeing 707 runs out of fuel near New York and crashes. The first officer asks for “priority” – the word “emergency” is never spoken to air traffic control.
The Shared Coffee Break
For six weeks, Alex Pentland of MIT had the employees of a bank’s call center wear sensors that measure who talks to whom and for how long – not what is said. When the call center scheduled its teams’ coffee breaks at the same time, the weaker teams handled their calls more than 20 percent faster, according to Pentland.
