Use your team's emotions to boost creativity

Date:
August 17, 2021
Source:
Rice University
Summary:
If you're putting together a team for a project, you might be
inclined to pick people with cheerful, optimistic dispositions
and flexible thinking.

But a new management study indicates your team might also benefit
from people who are exactly the opposite.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
If you're putting together a team for a project, you might be inclined
to pick people with cheerful, optimistic dispositions and flexible
thinking. But a new management study indicates your team might also
benefit from people who are exactly the opposite, according to experts
at Rice University, the University of Western Australia, Bond University
and the University of Queensland.


==========================================================================
The study, co-authored by Jing Zhou, the Mary Gibbs Jones Professor
of Management and Psychology at Rice's Jones Graduate School of
Business, investigates the effects of "team affective diversity" on
team creativity. The paper published in the Journal of Organizational
Behavior is among the first research to reveal how, why and under what condition teams' "affective diversity" promotes team creativity.

Team members with what researchers call "negative affect" exhibit critical
and persistent thinking that allows them to identify problems needing solutions, as well as to search out and critically evaluate relevant information. On the other hand, team members with "positive affect" engage
in broad and flexible thinking that expands their range of information
and helps them see unusual and creative connections, the researchers say.

"At any given point in time, some team members may experience positive
affect such as joy and inspiration, whereas others may experience
negative affect such as frustration and worry," Zhou said. "Instead
of trying to homogenize team members' affect, teams should embrace
affective heterogeneity." When a team experiences a high level of this "affective heterogeneity," what Zhou describes as "dual-tuning" leads
to greater creativity.

The researchers tested their hypotheses among 59 teams working on
a semesterlong project in an undergraduate management course at a
university in Hong Kong. Each team developed a business plan, which
involved designing a new product and differentiating it from potential competitors in the market.

Zhou stresses that a team's "affective heterogeneity" can serve as a
resource for team creativity. This unique type of diversity facilitates
team creativity, provided the teams have a strong so-called "transactive
memory system." "Our study suggests that teams may be aided in using
their affect heterogeneity via interventions that focus on building the
team's transactive memory system, which can be accelerated when team
members spend time together, share goals, receive information about
member specializations and train on the task together," Zhou said.

Zhou co-authored the paper with March To of the University of Western Australia, Cynthia Fisher of Bond University and Neal Ashkanasy of the University of Queensland.

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Rice_University. Original written
by Jeff Falk. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. March L. To, Cynthia D. Fisher, Neal M. Ashkanasy, Jing
Zhou. Feeling
differently, creating together: Affect heterogeneity and creativity
in project teams. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 2021; DOI:
10.1002/ job.2535 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/08/210817193007.htm

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