The Intelligence Trap: Revolutionise your Thinking and Make Wiser Decisions

by David Robson

From Woolley and Galinsky’s research, we can change the way we recruit new team members. In light of the too-much-talent effect, it would be tempting to argue that you should simply stop selecting people of exceptional ability – particularly if your team’s composition has already passed that magic threshold of 50?60 per cent being ‘star’ players. At this stage it’s probably best not to be too fixated on that number – the specific ratio will almost certainly depend on the personalities within a group and the amount of cooperation it requires – but the scientific research at least suggests that we need to place a greater emphasis on interpersonal skills that will enhance the team’s collective intelligence, even if that means rejecting someone who scores far higher on more standard measures of ability. That may include judging someone’s emotional perceptivity and communic-ation skills – whether they draw people out and listen, or whether they have a tendency to interrupt and dominate. If you are leading a multinational team, you might also choose someone with high cultural intelligence (which we explored in Chapter 1) since they would find it easier to navigate the different social norms.