If someone asked you, how smart you are? You could always tell them your IQ score. But what if somebody asked you how smart your group is? what will you say??.

Intelligence is a source of pride. It is, along with reasoning ability, what sets humans apart from other members of the animal kingdom. Unfortunately, it has proven difficult to measure group intelligence and this undeniable fact has changed from a nice idea into a necessity. Until now, there’s been no reliable way to measure group intelligence, but exciting new research suggests that there may be a way to assign groups a score that predicts how that group will perform on future tasks.

During the week, I was listening to Professor Anita Woolley of Carnegie Mellon University on HBR Idea Cast. I have found the concept of ‘group intelligence" interesting and took a deep dive. I stumble on to an article “ Can we make our teams smarter” .

I think we all have an easy grasp of what individual intelligence is, and the notion of measuring individual intelligence. However, when it comes to group intelligence, it poses an instant challenge in measuring.

This analogy gave birth to the concept of ‘Collective Intelligence Or Group Intelligence“ has emerged. Group intelligence could look very different in different groups, based on who’s in the group and how they’re interacting, just like different brains actually could operate in different ways.

When you are assigning high-value projects like chanderyaan or space shuttle or weapons system in the hands of a particular group, it becomes absolutely vital to know whether the group has a certain level of group intelligence, as to whether or not they’re going to work together well and manage that in an appropriate way. Reasearch indicate that ’Social skills & social intelligence of the people has emerged as a major differentiator than their individual intelligence’

There’s little correlation between a group’s collective intelligence and the IQs of it’s individual members. Many of things like group satisfaction, group cohesion, group motivation—none really correlate with collective intelligence.

In theory, 10 smartest people could make the smartest group, but it wouldn’t be just because they were the most intelligent individuals. It’s because they listen to each other and share criticism constructively with open minds. They’re not autocratic in their functioning but more collaborative in their approach.

It would be prudent to include a moderate level of cognitive diversity for effectiveness and enhancing group intelligence. Extremely homogeneous or extremely diverse groups aren’t as intelligent as they sound and must be avoided for high value/high stake assignments.