Research Hit: Communication and Expertise Essential for Team Performance

Isn’t communication a key leadership competency?

Well, in theory yes. But many companies still select on expertise not communicative ability. But this research focused on which people teams selected to be the key leadership and network individual.

A network individual?

Yes, so in many teams people take on, often more informal, leadership and network roles where they are the person who connects to other teams.

These are often critical roles and these people are also subsequently seen as leaders and become de facto leaders even if not formalised.

Right, get it, and is this what the research you are citing from did?

Yes, Jerry Goo et al. of Carnegie Mellon University conducted some experiments with groups of students. In one they could select their “leader” and in mehr istuaionts their leader was assigned to them.

And what happened with performance in the different situations?