Social Discomfort Can Translate into Improved Team Performance

Ann All spoke with Katie Liljenquist, assistant professor of organizational leadership at Brigham Young University's Marriott School of Management who, along with Katherine Phillips of Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management and Margaret Neale of Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, co-authored a study recently published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin in which they found that groups work better if they are infused with a "socially distinct newcomer."

All: Can you explain how you conducted your research on team performance and what you found?

Liljenquist: We were working with sororities and fraternities at Northwestern where Katherine Phillips, one of my co-authors, is, to examine the difference of having someone new to your group who is either a social insider or a social outsider. We had people working together in three-person teams. Partway into their interaction, we introduced a fourth newcomer. Either they were from the same sorority or from a different sorority.

What we found was the homogenous groups felt great about their interactions; they had a great time. They thought they worked effectively together. They were confident, overconfident. The diverse teams found their interactions were less comfortable. They didn’t think their team was effective. But these diverse groups who didn’t think they worked well together actually outperformed everyone else.

All: So going outside their comfort zone seemed to improve the group's performance, though it didn’t feel that way to its members?
Liljenquist: Right. So I think one of the key implications is that people often confuse what feels good with what works well. Managers often just have self-reports to go by. If they have a team that reports they’re having a lot of conflict and they’d rather work with other people, you can take that with a grain of salt, because we found that discomfort actually signals a beneficial process even though folks may not recognize it when they are on the inside.

All: Why do you think the addition of social outsiders seemed to help the group's performance?
Liljenquist: A lot of people who promote diversity argue it helps because you have this new blood and you get new insights. Often that’s the case, but they don’t necessarily bring something concrete and distinct to the group. But we found just their mere presence was enough to change the social dynamics. What really was going on was when the social outsider walked in, if you were discussing a particular issue with your in-group and then suddenly in walks an outsider who agrees with you, that can put you in an uncomfortable position. Now you have to explain to your in-group why you agree with this outsider instead of them.

Our research shows that these people who were kind of opinion allies with the outsiders were very uncomfortable. That agreement with the outsider threatened their social standing with their in-group peers. Because of that, they’re very motivated to get to the heart of the matter. They want to take a closer look at the disagreement and solve the issue.

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