Contents
- The “dream team” that never takes off
- Does this sound like your team?
- Why our brain makes teamwork harder
- A team’s intelligence is more than the sum of its talents
- What turns talent into collective performance
- What team coaching actually does
- 4 habits to connect the brains in your team
- When should you bring in a team coach?
- Unique and united
A team’s performance isn’t only about the talent of its members. It’s about what happens between them.
A few weeks ago, I had lunch with my friend Taha Mansour, a mentalist.
We share the same passion for the extraordinary abilities of the brain. He brings them to life on stage in his shows. I experiment with them on my own brain before sharing what I learn in my keynotes.
Very quickly, the conversation took off, and I had a strange feeling: as if I were surfing on his brain. His knowledge filled my blind spots, while my questions sparked new connections in his mind.
After a while, we were no longer really two minds exchanging ideas. Our intelligences were amplifying each other.
Thinking back on that lunch, I realized I had experienced, in miniature, what every team should be able to experience.
And yet, it happens so rarely.
The “dream team” that never takes off
You have probably seen this scenario before.
A company brings its best people together on a strategic project: recognized experts, brilliant personalities, impressive track records. On paper, it’s the ideal team.
In reality, meetings drag on and decisions stall. Everyone defends their own point of view, and the project gets bogged down without anyone really understanding why.
The question isn’t only who is on the team. It’s understanding what happens between these people once they start working together.
Does this sound like your team?
A few signs are hard to miss:
- in meetings, it’s always the same people who speak up;
- disagreements are more about “the right way to do things” than about substance;
- everyone excels in their own role, but cross-functional projects get stuck;
- new ideas are becoming rarer and rarer;
- you leave meetings with less energy than you had going in.
If several of these situations sound familiar, rest assured: it isn’t a skills problem.
What’s at stake is the quality of the connections between team members.
Why our brain makes teamwork harder
Human beings are deeply social. But that alone isn’t enough to build a team that works.
Over the course of our lives, our brain develops its own ways of functioning. Some people need structure, others need freedom. Some decide quickly, others need time to analyze.
By repeating these tendencies, we end up identifying with them. And a subtle shift takes place: we start to believe that our way of doing things is the only valid one, or even the best.
Without realizing it, we judge others as “less effective.” We try to convince them to work the way we do.
Add to that a second, deeper source of friction: we don’t all share the same values.
This isn’t a matter of goodwill or bad will. It’s a biological reality, and that is precisely why team cohesion can’t be decreed.
It has to be built.
Another phenomenon is often underestimated: our emotional states spread from one brain to another. A tense person can put an entire meeting on edge, while a calm person helps the group regain clarity.
This is known as co-regulation, and it plays a key role in a team’s energy.
A team’s intelligence is more than the sum of its talents
What if we could measure the intelligence of a group, the way we measure an individual’s?
That is the question researchers from MIT and Carnegie Mellon set out to answer in a study published in 2010 in the journal Science. They gave small groups a series of very different tasks: solving problems, making decisions, being creative.
They found that some groups performed well regardless of the task. As if there were a form of intelligence specific to the group, which they called collective intelligence.
The most surprising part was what predicted it. The average intelligence of the members was only weakly related to it. Neither was the intelligence of the smartest member.
Two things, on the other hand, made the difference:
- the social sensitivity of the members, meaning their ability to perceive what others are feeling;
- how evenly people took turns speaking: groups where everyone contributed did better than those dominated by one or two people.
A team of talented people where only two or three speak up can turn out to be less intelligent than a more modest team where everyone has a voice.
This is also the central idea of The Extended Mind, the book by Annie Murphy Paul that Taha recommended to me at the end of our lunch. We don’t think only with our own brain, but also with the brains around us.
What turns talent into collective performance
If talent isn’t enough, what tips a team in the right direction?
A study published in 2025 offers an interesting perspective. Researchers studied 72 work teams, 256 employees in total. They looked at the coaching behaviors of team leaders: listening, asking questions, helping the team think things through rather than handing it all the answers.
Their finding is more nuanced than you might expect. These coaching behaviors were not directly linked to team performance.
The link ran through the team’s ability to learn together: exchanging ideas, asking questions, analyzing mistakes, sharing what each person knows. And this collective learning was itself supported by a climate in which everyone felt safe enough to speak up.
One important caveat: this study observes relationships between these factors at a single point in time, without proving cause and effect. It also focuses on the behavior of managers, not on external coaching.
Still, it says something essential.
A team’s performance doesn’t depend only on its members’ skills. It depends on the conditions that allow them to share, question and learn together.
What team coaching actually does
This is exactly where team coaching comes in. Its purpose isn’t to change people, but to change the way they connect.
In practice, team coaching unfolds in several stages.
1. Building a shared vision. The brain needs a direction to mobilize its energy, and so does a team. A shared vision gives everyone a reason to cooperate beyond their own scope.
2. Recognizing differences. As long as a difference remains unnamed, our brain tends to experience it as a threat. Once it can be put into words, it becomes just another piece of information.
3. Valuing those differences. This is often the turning point. We move from “they don’t do it like me” to “they see what I don’t see.”
4. Adjusting behaviors. This means learning to speak the other person’s language, so you can meet halfway between your own way of working and theirs.
5. Building an action plan together. Awareness that doesn’t translate into action quickly fades.
To help people step out of their automatic patterns, I use deliberately playful formats: collective drawing, role-play, collective intelligence exercises, peer coaching.
The brain learns far better by experiencing than by listening.
4 habits to connect the brains in your team
You don’t need to wait for a coach to get started. Here are four simple habits you can put in place in your very next meetings.
1. Make room for a real round of speaking
Principle: when speaking time is shared more evenly, the group becomes more intelligent.
Before opening the discussion, let everyone speak, even briefly. It’s often the quietest people who notice what others have missed.
Example: “Before we discuss this, I’d like to hear from each of you for one minute.”
2. Name your different ways of working
Principle: a difference that has been named stops being a threat.
Putting words to how each person works is often enough to defuse a conflict that has been brewing for weeks.
Example: “You need visibility before you decide. I move forward by testing. How do we make both work?”
3. Ask about blind spots
Principle: collective intelligence begins where our own ends.
Before making a decision, invite the group to look for what you might be missing. It’s one of the most direct ways to activate the team’s intelligence.
Example: “What am I not seeing?”
4. Notice the energy people leave with
Principle: the energy of a meeting says a lot about the quality of the exchange.
At the end of your meetings, ask yourself whether people leave with more or less energy than they came in with. And if you lead the team, remember that your own energy sets the tone for the whole group.
Example: “In one word, what energy are you leaving this meeting with?”
Key takeaway:
A real round of speaking, named differences, blind spots, energy at the end. Four simple habits to turn a collection of talents into collective intelligence.
When should you bring in a team coach?
Some situations make support especially valuable:
- a new team that needs to learn to work together;
- a merger, a reorganization or an ongoing transformation;
- tensions that keep coming back without ever being resolved;
- a drop in engagement or initiative;
- a team that works well, and wants to reach the next level.
Sometimes it isn’t the whole team that needs to reconnect, but two key people: a leadership duo, two partners, two managers whose departments depend on each other. The same work can then be done as a pair.
For organizations going through deep change, team coaching can also be part of a broader transformation program.
Unique and united
I often think back to that lunch with Taha.
We didn’t have the same knowledge, the same way of thinking or the same profession. That is precisely what made the conversation so rich.
The best teams aren’t necessarily the ones that bring together the greatest talents. They are the ones where intelligences amplify each other, where everyone sees the value of what they bring and the richness of what others bring them.
Unique, and united.
So, in your team, which brains would benefit from being better connected?
Would you like to help your team turn individual talent into collective intelligence?
Discover team coachingSources
Woolley, A. W., Chabris, C. F., Pentland, A., Hashmi, N., & Malone, T. W. (2010). Evidence for a Collective Intelligence Factor in the Performance of Human Groups. Science, 330(6004), 686–688.
Rus, C. L., Rațiu, L., Manole, E. C., & Trif, S. (2025). Intra-team learning behaviors and psychological safety: linking team leader coaching behaviors and team performance in work teams. Team Performance Management, 31(3/4), 209–225.
Paul, A. M. (2021). The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
