Teams are more successful if they embrace internal differences and explore conflicting ideas instead of glossing over them
The paradox mindset will help team members surface their latent differences, in the form of representational gaps, and acknowledge the tension while seeing the differences as a strength and an opportunity to come up with good ideas
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“The experience was magical. I had enjoyed collaborative work before, but this was something different,” said Daniel Kahneman of the beginnings of his years-long partnership with fellow psychologist Amos Tversky that culminated in a Nobel Prize in economic sciences three decades later.
What Kahneman did not dwell on in his account was how different the two men were. One was confident, optimistic, and a night owl; the other was a morning lark, reflective, and constantly looking for flaws. Yet their partnership flourished.
“Our principle was to discuss every disagreement until it had been resolved to mutual satisfaction,” recalled Kahneman, author of the best-selling book, Thinking, Fast and Slow. “Amos and I shared the wonder of together owning a goose that could lay golden eggs – a joint mind that was better than our separate minds.”
The legendary collaboration could well have been a case study of the secret of team creativity. In a new paper, we show how teams are more creative when members recognise and embrace differences, and systematically explore members’ opposing perspectives.
Our work builds on our past research on the paradox mindset. The paradox approach, in a nutshell, helps us switch from an “either/or” to “both/and” framing of competing demands. In doing so, we recognise that tensions – between autonomy and control, or creativity and discipline – are contradictory but also interrelated, even mutually reinforcing.
[This article is republished courtesy of INSEAD Knowledge, the portal to the latest business insights and views of The Business School of the World. Copyright INSEAD 2024]