This post is co-authored by Professor Joan C. Williams (Equality Action Center) and Jonathan Njus (W.K. Kellogg Foundation). Drawing on extensive research and deep collaboration with the Equality Action Center and leaders across the Expanding Equity network, we’re launching a three-part blog series – How Leaders Can Build the Best Teams. This series is designed to equip HR leaders, middle managers and frontline supervisors with practical tools to level the playing field for all workers and build high-performing and highly-productive teams.
High-performing teams require more than strong hiring. They require strong management and strong leadership. The best teams depend on leaders who show up daily with fairness and consistency and who create space for everyone to do their best work. And that means everyone, no matter their identity, role, background or experience.
High-performing teams are high on collective intelligence, i.e., shared intelligence emerging from collaboration. Collaborative teams communicate more and ensure a more even distribution of speaking among team members. They also are more attuned to the emotions of others on the team, i.e., greater emotional intelligence. Moreover, these types of teams have greater social intelligence, i.e., the ability to understand, interpret and effectively navigate interpersonal interactions and relationships. Not surprisingly, smarter teams are linked to more efficient team-based problem-solving, creativity and innovation.
Diverse Teams Are Smarter Teams
Research shows that racially diverse teams process information more carefully, are more likely to re-examine facts and maintain objectivity and are more creative than homogenous teams (Phillips, Liljenquist & Neale 2009). Gender diverse teams demonstrate higher levels of collective intelligence, which is five times more important to team success than the average IQ of the team members (Woolley, Aggarwal & Malone 2015).
Collective intelligence, emotional intelligence and social intelligence reflect widespread participation, emotional awareness and active listening, which is modeled and encouraged by the team leader. The best teams don’t grow automatically; they require leadership, particularly in how leaders run their meetings and delegate their assignments.
Best Team Meeting Practices
Meetings are where team culture plays out in real time every day and where collective, emotional and social intelligence is built. To lead effectively, managers must ask themselves four critical questions:
- Who Speaks? Participation matters – when someone doesn’t speak, their knowledge and experience go untapped. Power and status impact who speaks the most within a group, and people with less power and status speak less due to fear of backlash (Williams, Korn, & Ghani, 2022; Brescoll, 2012).
- Who Listens? People with less power often do not feel licensed to speak up, and ironically, tend to face more interruptions when they do speak. And men interrupt women more than vice-versa. Interruptions derail both idea generation and problem solving (Smith-Lovin & Brody, 1989; Ridgeway & Berger, 1986). Better listening experiences, i.e., fewer interruptions, produce higher job satisfaction, psychological safety and trust amongst team members.
- Who Gets Credit? Bias influences who gets recognized and who doesn’t. Men often receive more credit in meetings and for shared work, even when women are equal participants and contributors. In one study, men got credit for economic academic articles co-authored with women, while women did not receive credit for academic articles co-authored with men (Sarsons, 2016).
- Who Dissents? Speaking up with dissenting views can be uncomfortable or risky – especially for those with lower status. When only high-status people feel safe to disagree, teams miss valuable insights and potential pitfalls.
Understanding these meeting dynamics is essential because bias can undermine team problem solving and decision-making and prevent organizations from accessing the full talent and expertise of who they’ve hired.
The 3 Ps of Effective Meetings
Great meetings are built on being punctual, prepared and present (physically and mentally). Leaders must set an example for their teams to follow around meeting best practices.
- Set the stage: Share agendas in advance and gather feedback after meetings – this is especially helpful for introverts and those who don’t feel as comfortable sharing in larger group settings.
- Invite everyone to speak: If someone hasn’t contributed, invite their input directly rather than assuming their silence means agreement or disagreement.
- Listen actively: Establish a no-interruptions rule; in virtual meetings, use the “raise hand” feature to ensure equal participation.
- Give credit openly: Acknowledge contributors by name, especially when ideas build on earlier comments that may have been overlooked.
- Welcome dissent: Normalize and reward constructive disagreement as essential to good problem-solving and decision-making.
Best Work Assignment Practices
Creating consistent and fair experiences that drive high-performing teams continues after meetings. Leaders must distribute assignments, both career-enhancing opportunities and less glamorous tasks, fairly and equitably. Here are some examples:
Career-Enhancing Work
High-profile projects matter because they build skills, increase visibility and drive promotions. When certain groups get less access to these opportunities, it harms employee engagement, productivity, morale and retention, while limiting organizational talent development.
Career-Inhibiting Work
“Office housework,” e.g., tasks like notetaking, scheduling or coordinating across teams often fall disproportionately to women, and they rarely lead to career advancement (Williams & Dempsey, 2014). This includes:
- Administrative work: Taking notes, scheduling, grabbing documents.
- Literal housework: Planning parties, washing cups, cleaning up after a meeting.
- Emotion work: Playing peacemaker and comforting coworkers.
- Undervalued, behind-the-scenes work: Creating PowerPoints for someone else to present or supporting summer interns.
In short, office housework is helping behavior that makes you a good team player but doesn’t count in performance evaluations and doesn’t lead to promotional opportunities. Women of all backgrounds tend to do more office housework than men and are often viewed as having a taste or talent for it. And women are often praised for office housework but not promoted for it. As one law firm partner noted: “She receives a lot of kudos, but no one’s going to pay her $800/hour for doing project management – so she’s never going to make partner.”
Key Reminders for Effective Assignments
Ensuring assignments are given equitably and consistently to each member of a team is one way to counteract bias and ensure fairness.
- Find out who’s doing the office housework, and who’s getting access to valued opportunities.
- Don’t ask for volunteers: Women feel pressure to volunteer to be seen as good team players; men feel pressure not to volunteer in order to be seen as leaders.
- Establish a rotation: Establish a clear rotation for recurring tasks so no one person or group becomes too overburdened.
- Use support staff: Delegate notetaking and logistics to administrative support rather than defaulting to the same individuals on the team.
- Hold everyone equally accountable to doing a good job (even on less-high-profile work): Don’t excuse poor performance on routine tasks for some people and not for other people; for example, if men who tend to do less of the office housework do it poorly, there must be consequences – not just reassigning it to someone else.
- Don’t ding women as “not team players” for pushing back on office housework: Gender stereotypes place higher expectations on women to be team players, but leave men more room to be ambitious go-getters.
- Track assignments: Monitor who gets what work (career-enhancing work vs. office housework) and who doesn’t and look for patterns over time.
Conclusion: Building Teams That Thrive
Effective leadership creates environments where every team member can contribute their best work, and that includes who participates in meetings and who’s tapped for assignments. When leaders implement fair meeting practices and equitable work distribution, they unlock collective, emotional and social intelligence, drive better problem-solving and decision-making and build cultures where a wide variety of perspectives and ideas can flourish. The practices outlined here represent evidence-based approaches for leaders to interrupt bias and ensure that every employee can contribute fully and equally to the goals of the team and the mission of the organization.
This is part of our series on How Leaders Can Build the Best Teams. The previous blog explored fair and consistent hiring practices to build strong foundations for equitable teams.
Next up: Part Three will dive into performance management and feedback practices that support growth and advancement for all team members.
Ready to build the best teams?
The Expanding Equity Core Program is a free, online resource and cohort of professionals designed to help leaders create and implement the policies and practices that build fair and inclusive workplaces.
Join an upcoming info session to learn more.
Also consider joining Equality Action Center’s (EAC) Bias Interrupters Workshop being held this fall and next winter.
- Bias Interrupters are evidence-based metrics-driven tools for creating a consistent employee experience in HR systems and in informal workplace interactions. EAC will be working with companies in improving one or both of the following business systems:
- Performance Evaluations: Companies will learn effective strategies to change their evaluation process and forms to ensure all employees receive fair, evidence-based, and action-oriented feedback; and
- Access to Opportunities: Companies will learn strategies for managers to ensure everyone on their teams has access to career-enhancing work – and nobody is saddled with a disproportionate burden of office housework.
- The series will consist of three working sessions and EAC will hold office hours for companies who seek individualized help.
- If you are interested in learning more about this opportunity, please contact Rachel Korn at EAC ([email protected]).