What Animals Can Teach Us About Effective Teams

Since the earliest humans started forming groups to become more effective hunters, the human species has had a keen aptitude for forming teams to complete tasks too difficult for one individual. Many species of animals similarly have an innate predisposition for teaming up and do so in very effective ways. In fact, animal behavioral psychology can provide us with findings that can help us as humans develop more effective teams.

I’ll start with the pesky fire ant. The same fire ants that bit you up and down your legs on the elementary school playground can teach us fascinating concepts of unselfish team behavior. Animal psychology in many ways is much less complicated than that of humans. Most simple species fundamentally care about three things: food/water, safety, and sex. I substituted safety in for the more common shelter because I think it covers a bit more ground. Although the tiny fire ant may be a simple creature, the network of a fire ant colony introduces quite a few complications to the simple Bug’s Life. The skill that I want to focus on specifically is an ant colony’s disaster preparedness strategy.

A true testament to the strength of a team is the productivity and effectiveness of a team in a critical situation. In our lives, these critical situations can be anything from how your family handles a financial crisis to how your team at work handles losing the company’s biggest client. Although these situations are incredibly stressful, they are rarely ever life and death. For ants, any change to the environment around them can almost immediately propose a life or death situation for the small creature. Rain, fires, a 5-year old child’s foot are only a few of the long list of natural predators that the fire ant faces. Not all of these threats can be mitigated, but for one of Earth’s oldest species, ants sure know how to find a way to live.

Ants live because they fundamentally understand the priorities of their colony and team. The ultimate priority is survival. The picture above is a group of ants that had their home flooded by excessive rain. During flooding, fire ants are known to form clumps such as this one to increase their chance of survival. By creating a raft, the ant colony is able to save a considerable number of their colony. The strategy works because each ant plays their part in ensuring the survival of the colony, especially those at the bottom of the clump that are doomed to martyrdom. Although I would assume that every ant is naturally fighting for their life by attempting to crawl their way to the top, they innately understanding that clumping together is a more effective survival strategy than trying to weather the crisis alone.

For humans, I am not advocating that we should clump together and use each other as human life rafts during a flood. I can’t even begin to picture what that would look like. However, there is a valuable lesson here. In critical times, we can oftentimes silo ourselves into self-protection and neither ask for help from others nor give it when asked. Humans are complicated and more often than not choose self-preservation over the priorities of the team. I argue that this is a fundamentally flawed strategy and will only result in the whole team individually drowning. Instead, humans must be deliberate during tough times and communicate their thoughts and emotions to the other team members to create mutual understanding. This mutual understanding is the starting point for future strategizing during a critical situation.

This Summer I have been interning in San Francisco as a Product Management Intern on the Growth team for a fast-paced education technology startup that helps collegiate students find internships and their first job. I am one of eight other interns, and I have had the pleasure of working with a variety of different individuals throughout the company. A few weeks ago I got some very astute feedback from another intern that got me thinking. She stated that I can sometimes take up too much space in meetings. She wasn’t trying to call me fat although I could definitely afford to shed a few pounds (SF food is simply too good, and I have not yet mastered the art of cooking). She was actually talking more about my tendency to talk a lot during meetings. It makes sense. I’m an extravert, and I personally prefer to talk through concepts and ideas because I feel like it not only helps me better understand the topics that are being discussed, but I do my best thinking when I am talking through ideas with someone else.

The problem with this is that I was thinking about what was best for me not the team. And I know for a fact that not everything that came out of my mouth was so thoughtful and important that it needed to be shared. From her perspective, the space that I was taking up made her less comfortable with sharing her thoughts, something I never would want to happen but happened through natural means. She is much more introverted during meetings and chooses to only talk when she has thought through an entire concept and feels comfortable sharing. Just like humans, animals can also be extraverted and introverted.

An influential advocate for the power of introverts, Susan Cain, author of Quiet, gave a talk at Google regarding her book. She discussed a study by an evolutionary biologist named David Sloan Wilson who wanted to learn more about the behavior psychology of animals. He set up an experiment where he introduced a large trap right in the middle of a previously undisturbed school of pumpkinseed fish. Immediately, there was a group of fish that swam over to the trap to explore the new addition to their home while another group stayed back and hugged the edges of the pond. Surely enough, the extraverted fish were all trapped while the introverted fish continued to stay away and evaluate the situation. This thoughtful approach to thinking and foreign concepts is the introvert’s evolutionary advantage.

David, however, didn’t stop there. He went back to the habitat after a few days and introduced a new addition to the pumpkinseed fishes’ habitat: a large net. This time, he was able to simply scoop up the previously elusive introverted pumpkinseed fish, and he took both groups of fish back to his lab. After introducing the fish to the foreign habitat located in his lab, again there was a clear division. The extraverts immediately started exploring and eating the new food that was available to them while the introverts tended to remain still and refuse to learn more about their new home. Extraverts had an evolutionary advantage here when they were introduced to a new environment because they were comfortable with unfamiliarity.

So what does this mean for humans and our teams? Well, I like to believe that if those fish could talk, Suzy the Introvert would definitely be yelling at Fred the Extravert to not go wandering off to the foreign object in the first experiment. And Angela the Extravert would be nudging Billy the Introvert to come join her as she explores their new home in the second experiment. Understanding your team facilitates more empathetic engagements. Humans are aware, but at the end of the day, we will most likely choose to act in a way that we are most comfortable with. The best leaders in the world recognize the individual strengths of their team and utilize these strengths to create a harmonious and effective work environment. As for me, I took my fellow intern’s feedback to heart. I still ask questions and communicate my thoughts during my meetings, but my eyes are constantly touring the room to see if someone is waiting for a chance to speak. The smallest gestures of self-awareness can sometimes have the largest impact.

In the evolutionary race, humans are much farther ahead of fire ants and pumpkinseed fish. However, we can’t forget the steps that it took to get us here (Yes, evolution is real. I don’t care what your Sunday school tells you.). Studying animals is our glimpse into understanding simpler communities to help us make better judgements for our community, one of much more complexity. Good teams have individuals that understand the team’s priorities and work diligently to play their part in helping the team reach their goals. The Best teams have individuals who demonstrate self-awareness about their role on the team and do what’s asked of them while simultaneously making the rest of the team better as well.

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