Team Production
In the Sharing the Marbles article, one thing that was especially interesting was that the children in the experiment were more likely to share if they had to collaborate to get the marbles. This tells me that people are more likely to perform altruistically if they collaborated, and are aware of the collaboration taking place. In terms of maximizing team production, recognizing whether all team members have equally contributed to the project is a lot more difficult than the sharing the marbles example. A good way to maybe achieve that is to have individual team members debrief on what he/she did during that week and share with the rest of the group, and hopefully the rest of the team can see the contribution everyone has done. In other words, if a member of a team did not recognize other members' contribution to the outcome, they are less likely to share.
An example I could think of is a group project I did for a programming class last semester. Our project was producing an interactive map of available Airbnb listings and their nightly prices and their correlation with the corresponding neighborhoods' crime rates. The project was very programming intensive, and comparing to other members of my team, I had a lot less experience in the subject than they did. Despite my shortcoming, I not only attended every single group meeting, but also encouraged my teammates to meet more so we could stay on track. On top of that, I designed the prototype of the application so that the could program with more ease. I also offered to do the entire presentation myself, which was a big component of the project. Because of that, my teammates gladly did the coding part of the project, and we were able to finish the project and make necessary changes without having to rush last minute. I am not sure if this a good example for "gift exchange" for team production, but through volunteering to do a large portion of the project in order to help my teammates' with their tasks as much as possible, they recognized my contribution and thought the divide of the tasks was fair.
In The Power of Altruism article, the main takeaway was altruism and empathy are sometimes more influential than its selfish counterpart, economic gains. The most important reason of any team structure is to provide synergy, which requires working together and helping each other. If every team member had individual and selfish goals, it is a lot less likely that this team would be productive. Taking my previous example, if I plainly told my teammates that I refused to do any of the programming part because I was bad at it instead of helping the best I could, I am sure the outcome would be very different.
An example I could think of is a group project I did for a programming class last semester. Our project was producing an interactive map of available Airbnb listings and their nightly prices and their correlation with the corresponding neighborhoods' crime rates. The project was very programming intensive, and comparing to other members of my team, I had a lot less experience in the subject than they did. Despite my shortcoming, I not only attended every single group meeting, but also encouraged my teammates to meet more so we could stay on track. On top of that, I designed the prototype of the application so that the could program with more ease. I also offered to do the entire presentation myself, which was a big component of the project. Because of that, my teammates gladly did the coding part of the project, and we were able to finish the project and make necessary changes without having to rush last minute. I am not sure if this a good example for "gift exchange" for team production, but through volunteering to do a large portion of the project in order to help my teammates' with their tasks as much as possible, they recognized my contribution and thought the divide of the tasks was fair.
In The Power of Altruism article, the main takeaway was altruism and empathy are sometimes more influential than its selfish counterpart, economic gains. The most important reason of any team structure is to provide synergy, which requires working together and helping each other. If every team member had individual and selfish goals, it is a lot less likely that this team would be productive. Taking my previous example, if I plainly told my teammates that I refused to do any of the programming part because I was bad at it instead of helping the best I could, I am sure the outcome would be very different.
What counts as gift giving in a team situation when the team members have different talents? Likewise, what counts as fairness in such a setting? There is the famous story of King Solomon who had to determine how to allocate a baby when two different women claimed to be the mother. His initial proposal was to divide the baby in half, so each women would get part of that baby. When the true mother heard this solution, she gave up her share so the baby would survive. This selfless act identified her as the true mother.
ReplyDeleteThe rest of us are not King Solomon, but perhaps we try to emulate his wisdom. If something seems to work for everyone, that may not be the best possible solution, but it is pretty good. The time input for people might not equalize, but is that really necessary for fairness?
The King Solomon story is a great example for determining what fairness is. Instead of strictly dividing time and/or tasks between all team members, maybe it is best to just identify each team members' strengths and weaknesses, and maximize the team's synergy.
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