Team Players: How Social Skills Improve Group Performance / Ben Weidmann, David J. Deming.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Weidmann, Ben.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Deming, David J.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w27071.

NBER working paper series no. w27071

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2020.

Summary:

Most jobs require teamwork. Are some people good team players? In this paper we design and test a new method for identifying individual contributions to group performance. We randomly assign people to multiple teams and predict team performance based on previously assessed individual skills. Some people consistently cause their group to exceed its predicted performance. We call these individuals "team players". Team players score significantly higher on a well-established measure of social intelligence, but do not differ across a variety of other dimensions, including IQ, personality, education and gender. Social skills - defined as a single latent factor that combines social intelligence scores with the team player effect - improve group performance about as much as IQ. We find suggestive evidence that team players increase effort among teammates.

Notes:

Print version record

May 2020.