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The Dwight Schrute Effect by Kristin Arnold in This Dwight Schrute, the Beet-Farming Who Committed the Murder

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The Dwight Schrute Effect by Kristin Arnold in This Dwight Schrute, the Beet-Farming Who Committed the Murder PLEASE ROUTE TO ® Tips to improve the way your teams work Spring 2009 Vol. 14, No. 2 www.ExtraordinaryTeam.com The Dwight Schrute Effect By Kristin Arnold In this Dwight Schrute, the beet-farming who committed the murder. The volunteer sheriff’s deputy and paper researchers then put them into 50 issue . salesman on NBC’s “The Office” is a same-sex four-person teams. The Practical Team quirky oddball. Other than the fact teams were brought in two at a time Activities: that he hides weapons in his desk and given 20 minutes to solve the You are Superb! drawers, clings to the dubious title of mystery. The researchers rein- assistant regional manager, and can be forced any house rivalry by hanging From the Bookshelf: easily trained to ask for Altoids at the their banners on opposite walls of Thank God It’s Monday! sound of a bell, he may the testing room, re- be the key to higher quiring the partici- Quote of the Quarter team performance. pants to wear house T- What’s New at QPC, Inc. Three researchers, shirts, and dividing Katie Liljenquist of Brig- the room with a bright Millennials and the RoCs ham Young University, line of blue tape. Katherine Phillips of Just as the work ses- Northwestern University sions were about to and Margaret Neale of begin, one member of Punch It Up! Stanford University, cre- each team was taken ated a fascinating study from the room and PunchUpYourPresentations.com to explore the effects of asked to perform a an “outsider” on the task that had nothing to do with the Kristin started a new blog team dynamic. They recruited 200 actual study. The students were to accompany her latest book, student volunteers from various fra- brought back five minutes later and tentatively titled Punch Up ternity and sorority houses at North- told to rejoin a group; some were Your Presentations to be western University to solve an imagi- placed on their original team, others published in July 2010. nary murder mystery, relying on made on the rival team (an “outsider”). In In this blog, you can read -up evidence and detective interviews. both cases, the rest of the group had about different techniques to One of the suspects in the mystery was already begun working and the new- engage and interact with your indeed guilty, which meant that the comer had to be brought up to audience. You’ll also be able test did have a right answer. speed quickly. When the work was to see specific examples of Participants decided individually done, the subjects (continued on p. 2) these techniques with links to some YouTube.com videos. You can also download a Go Ahead and Smile! By Kristin Arnold “cheat sheet” of all the different techniques — handy Did you know your face has over 30 muscles capable of expressing over to use when you are trying to 250,000 different looks? You have a wide range of facial gestures to draw upon buff up your presentation and to make your message more meaningful and interesting to your listeners. make it more engaging and The key to connecting with your audience is to make sure that your message interactive! aligns with your facial expression – just a tad bit before the emotion needs to You can purchase and register. For example, if you are going to tell a humorous story, precede it with download the “mini” ebook or a smile. If you are declaring something as an absolute truth, then a more stern preorder the published book look would be appropriate – right before you deliver the truth! (Kristin is finishing it now) at For most presentations, you want a warm, positive vibe, so keep a happy look www.extraordinaryteam.com. on your face. Some people call this a smile. ☺ Smile as a warm up before your presentation. Right before you begin to speak, look out into your audience with PunchUpYourPresentations.com a big smile. This will put your audience in a positive mood. So go ahead and smile. It will put you in a good 1 mood, too! ® Spring 2009 Vol. 14, No. 2 www.ExtraordinaryTeam.com ® The Dwight Schrute Effect (continued from page 1) filled out questionnaires about how they felt the sessions had gone. The results Spring 2009 were striking. Vol. 14 No. 2 Those groups who had a “socially distinct” outsider came to the right answer more often than groups who were all familiar with one another. A newsletter designed to Because college students in the majority wanted to feel accepted by their peers, facilitate discussion and share as soon as they realized they were siding with an “outsider” they began dissecting tips and techniques to help your the problem more carefully, feeling a great need to justify their changing opinion teams to be extraordinary. or explore other answers. “Socially, that [disagreement] can be very threatening,” says Liljenquist. “These folks are then driven to say ‘Something more is going on Kristin J. Arnold, Editor here; let’s figure out what’s at the root of our disagreement.’” As a result, the MBA, CMC, CPF, CSP whole group analyzed the data more thoroughly and considered ideas they might otherwise have ignored. These teams were more likely to report afterward that Quality Process Consultants, Inc. they’d done the job inefficiently and not very collegially. Although they convicted US Office Canada Office the correct murderer, the teams didn’t realize they were working together so well. Phoenix Charlottetown 11890 E Juan Tabo Rd. 268 Campbell’s Way Interestingly enough, this phenomenon only works with the “outsider” new- Scottsdale, AZ 85255 Cape Traverse, PE C0B 1X0 480.502.2100 416.399.9223 comers. When the newcomer was from the same sorority as the old timers and Fax: 480.502.2102 Fax: 902.437.6999 had a different opinion, they would find themselves at odds with their peers and US & Canada: (800) 589-4733 become distracted from the task at hand. “As a result, these groups didn’t per- [email protected] form as well, but had confidence to spare,” Liljenquist says. “They were like, ‘We http://www.ExtraordinaryTeam.com worked great together, there was a lot of respect.’ But what they were really doing was chatting about the weekend.” Ironically, the teams that picked the wrong guy extraordinary team believed they worked well together. is a quarterly publication “From a self-reporting point of view,” says Liljenquist, “what people perceive to distributed to clients, friends, be beneficial turns out to be dead wrong. The experience in diverse groups may and partners of not always be a feel-good session, but the pains can translate into real perform- Quality Process Consultants, Inc. ance gains.” Ethos Enterprises, Inc. Gateway Leadership, Inc. “So managers should take self-reported team performances with a grain of salt.... And managers should also actively try to make teams more diverse,” says Articles are welcome and Liljenquist. The mere presence of a socially distinct newcomer, like Dwight encouraged. We would sincerely Schrute, made the groups work more effectively. like to know what you are Invite your own version of Dwight Schrute, an “outsider,” to your next team doing. meeting, someone as subtly different as a member of the accounting department meeting with the sales team or an employee in the branch office visiting the head- The Extraordinary Team quarters. If adding that stranger causes you to squirm more, try to put up with it; makes meetings more it may also prompt you to think better than you realize. engaging, interactive, and “Realize this ‘no pain, no gain’ idea,” Liljenquist said. “Things may not be as collaborative fun as they used to be, but (groups) may actually start performing a lot better. ♦ Facilitating High Stakes (This research) can help people persist in situations that they previously would Meetings have avoided.” ♦ Training Facilitators, Project Leaders, and Team Members Quote of the Quarter ♦ Keynotes and Endnotes ♦ Consulting on Team “The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say ‘I’. And that’s Implementation not because they have trained themselves not to say ‘I’. They don’t think ‘I’. They think ‘we’; they think ‘team’. They understand their job to be to make the team ♦ Coaching Individuals function. They accept responsibility and don’t sidestep it, but ‘we’ gets the Duplication and reprints are credit...This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.” okay, as long as you credit the source. Thanks! Peter Drucker, Political Economist & Author ©2009 Quality Process Consultants, Inc. Go to www.TeamQuotables.com for more team quotations. All rights reserved. 22 ® Spring 2009 Vol. 14, No. 2 www.ExtraordinaryTeam.com What’s New with Kristin & Joseph This is supposed to be springtime, but it’s already 106 degrees in Scottsdale, Arizona. This is our first spring here and they are saying it is Where Are We? “unseasonably warm.” Seems like everything is “unseasonably” off kilter Kristin and Joe are engaged at the these days...so we guess “off kilter” is the new norm. That’s reason following public events in the year: enough to be optimistic, and we’re finding many of our clients are being guardedly optimistic going into the last half of the year. So let’s go with May the flow and expect the unexpected! Tempe, AZ: National Speakers Association In June, we “shift colors” (that’s a term Kristin used in the US Coast Toronto, Canada: York University Dallas, TX: Chief Executive Network Guard to signal a ship’s movement from being at dock to being underway) from Scottsdale to Cape Traverse, Prince Edward Island (PEI) in Canada.
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