One of the most pervasive problems in teams is a so called common information effect. So what typically happens in teams is that teammate A comes in with some information. Teammate B comes in with some information, and teammate C comes in with some information. This is what we call unique information. And this is common information. The information that's shared by all the teammates. So in teams, what information do you think we discuss the most, common or unique? It turns out that in teams, we overwhelmingly discuss common information. And that's what's known as the common information effect. Common information probabilistically, is more likely to come up. You can see that three people here can bring up common information, as opposed to one for unique information. When it does come up, common information is instantly reinforced, because other people have it too. So everybody starts smiling and nodding, you feel smart and validated. Common information is more likely to be repeated in meetings too. Larson and colleagues studied medical teams. And they found that if a medical symptom is mentioned, it is twice as likely to be repeated in a team discussion if it happens to be common information compared to if it happens to be unique information. Common information is more likely to be recalled after meetings and as a result, often is perceived as being more credible than unique information. So all together, that leads to a devastating effect in teams where a common information overshadows unique information in making group decisions. And I call this effect devastating, because it defeats the entire purpose of teams. We use teams to a large extent to build on unique insights and information possessed by our team mates. So how do we counter the common information effect? So first of all, these are the strategies that do not work. Again, I'm emphasizing that these are ineffective strategies. I'm listing them here simply because sometimes we have a knee-jerk reaction to deal with the common information effect using one of these strategies, and they're not effective. Increasing the amount of discussion, separating information review and decision, increasing the size of the team, or volume of information discussed. Increasing team or individual accountability doesn't help either. Here are the strategies that do work in mitigating common information effect. Encouraging norms of debate and critical thinking versus just consensus and getting along. Tom Postmes and colleagues from the University of Amsterdam showed that in teams where there's a consistent, deliberate effort to encourage norms of debate and critical thinking. These teams are three times as likely to surface and capitalize on unique information, compared to those teams that focus on attaining consensus and getting along. Relatedly, framing a discussion as a problem to be solved rather than a decision to be made helps surface that unique information as well. This is because people are more likely to produce unique insights in search of the solution to the problem. Andrea Hollingshead from the University of Illinois shows that rank-ordering alternatives instead of choosing the best option again, helps surface unique information. This is because when we rank all our alternatives, we're much more likely to produce unique information that's relevant to one of these alternatives. When we choose the best option we tend to stay locked in and focused on one or two options we like the most. You may want to alert your teammates to different expertise possessed by their fellow teammates. It turns out that we're much more likely to be attentive to unique information, if we believe that our teammates come from different domains of expertise. So when introducing your teammates, you can say that Andres is an expert in corporate finance, Luisa spent 15 years in marketing and Angela spent her entire career in operations. Minimize status differences among teammates. Research shows that people of lower status, lower formal rank in organizations, lower formal authority are especially at risk of not producing unique information, not surfacing it in group discussions. So minimize status differences. If you're a team leader in a group meeting, you might want to leave the discussion for a period of time. Let the teammates discuss a particular issue without your being present. And then walk in and asked to be briefed on the results of that discussion. Pay attention to unique information. Alert your teammates to unique information. Very often we don't capitalize on unique information because we don't hear it in the first place. So if you feel like a unique piece of information came up that could be relevant for the discussion, it's perfectly fine to pause the group. And say, Sue, did I hear you correctly? Is this what you meant? Do you mind elaborating on this issue? And finally, the most trivial reason for why unique information does not come up into discussions, is because your teammates don't get a chance to speak. So this graph shows the distribution of conversational acts, airtime, in a typical team clustered by the size of the team. And you can see that it's far from uniform. Specifically in an average 8-person group, 3 people do over 77% of the talking. In a 6 person group, 3 people do over 86% of the talking. Now how can you possibly expect unique information to come up if many of your teammates never get a chance to speak in meetings? So this is where the role of gatekeeper, that you discussed with Scott, becomes especially important. Follow the discussion, pay attention. And it's perfectly fine to say, Reesa, we haven't yet heard from you on this issue. What are your thoughts? Think about procedural rules that would enable you to solicit input from all the teammates such as sequentially going around the table. Or better yet ask them to share their insights in advance of the meeting through emails, surveys or face to face meetings.