2+2 May Not Be 4

Most often it is found that supporters of teams say that Business firms or organizations should be organized around the teams because teams create positive synergy. This means, team spirits increases the individual performance and collective output of the team is greater than the sum of individual efforts. Then, 2+2 can equal 5, Right? 

But the truth is team often creates negative synergy. Which in turn reduces the overall productivity of the team i.e. 2+2 can equal 3. You might have been wondering, why it happens. The reason for negative output is social loafing (In social psychology, social loafing is the phenomenon of a person exerting less effort to achieve a goal when they work in a group than when they work alone). 

In the late 1920’s, a German psychologist, Max Ringelmann compared the results of individual & group performance on a rope-pulling task. He expected that the group’s effort will be equal to the sum of individual’s effort. But, surprisingly it did not happen. For instance if three people were asked to pull the rope then the group applied pull had to be three times the average individual pull but it was only two and a half average individual pull. Similarly, in the case of eight people it was less than four times when compared on the same scale of effort. And this output has been well supported by various other studies made so far. 

This happened because of an effect called as Ringelmann effect and it says “It is the tendency for individual members of a group to become increasingly less productive as the size of their group increases.” So, there is an inverse relation between individual performance and group size. The more productivity may be true in the sense that the productivity of a group of four may be more than the sum of productivity of one or two. 

What causes this social loafing effect or Ringelmann effect? There can be two reasons: 

1) A belief that other members are not putting their fair share of efforts, so each will try to reduce their effort to equalize with least productive individual, in most cases. 

2) The relationship between an individual’s input and group output is clouded. In that members will try to reduce their effort at the cost of group productivity as individuals think that their contributions can’t be gauged. 

Here comes the ultimate question, then how we can form a productive team where 2+2 can equal 4? We need to form a team where along with team productivity, individual’s effort should also be gauged. 

 Thank you for reading this till the end. I believe it will help you to make your team more productive and positive.