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Team Players: How Social Skills Improve Team Performance
Author(s) -
Weidmann Ben,
Deming David J.
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
econometrica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 16.7
H-Index - 199
eISSN - 1468-0262
pISSN - 0012-9682
DOI - 10.3982/ecta18461
Subject(s) - teamwork , team effectiveness , psychology , team composition , applied psychology , variety (cybernetics) , test (biology) , social skills , social psychology , knowledge management , computer science , developmental psychology , artificial intelligence , management , paleontology , economics , biology
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 team production. We randomly assign people to multiple teams and predict team performance based on previously assessed individual skills. Some people consistently cause their team 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 team performance about as much as IQ. We find suggestive evidence that team players increase effort among teammates.