A recent New York Times article reviews research on effective teamwork, concluding that two main factors distinguish effective teams from failures: effective communication, and social trust. Effective communication means everyone being able to get their ideas out, and heard, but not necessarily agreeing. A pre-requisite is the building of social trust, or the feeling that other team members are cooperating rather than competing, and not trying to shoot down other members or their ideas. Rate your last department meeting on these two scales? The article is at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/18/opinion/sunday/why-some-teams-are-smarter-than-others.html?_r=0
