After listening to Adam Grant's chapter "Mining for Gold: Unearthing Collective Intelligence in Teams" in his book Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things, I felt incredibly energized: the chapter is a blueprint for generating group and team success.

Regardless of if you work for a small business as I do, or a firm with 500+ employees, you likely recognize how crucial effective teamwork is to the success of a business, not to mention your individual success. This chapter from Grant's book defines what makes a great team, and what is necessary for cultivating one. Discovering that great teams aren't necessarily comprised of a body of experts or that expertise is not the secret ingredient for success was both surprising and exciting.

More on that below.

Briefly, here is some context: Grant's Chapter is centered around the monumental, and ultimately successful, effort to rescue 33 miners trapped 2300 feet under the Earth's surface in the 2010 of the San Jose Gold Mine Collapse in Chile. The success was highly dependent on some of the following approaches to teamwork and leadership.

Real teamwork begins when everyone "recognizes that they need one another."

Grant illustrates that great teams understand "interdependence."

Teams need to work towards "collective outcomes" and those outcomes must be crystal clear. Simultaneously, teams that achieve interdependency understand each member's role, and fill knowledge gaps by "exchanging ideas, coaching one another, and learning together." Grant writes that "collective intelligence rises as teams recognize one another's strengths, develops strategies for leveraging them, and motivate one another to align their efforts in pursuit of a shared goal." This "cohesion" is a crucial ingredient for team success.

And one way a team achieves this cohesion is through effective leadership.

Leaders selected for great prosocial skills, rather than technical aptitude, often get more out of their teams.

A leader who listens is extremely effective.

They're also better at uniting a group of people around a common cause. Now, that isn't to say no technical aptitude is necessary for any particular job. In the instance of a mining rescue operation, a bank manager would be of little value as a leader, even if he had exceptional prosocial skills. However, Grant reveals that leaders with great prosocial skills get more out of their teams simply by being less dismissive; they look for input from all voices rather than "reasons to say no." They recognize that each member of the team plays an important role, and thus eliminate hierarchy that doesn't serve the group. In as much, they also take a step back from command; they don't "bark orders," but instead encourage the best path towards problem resolution to rise to the occasion organically. This democratic approach often brings a wide array of ideas to the table, some of which can be transformative for a company or any given project.

"Brain-writing," rather than brainstorming, is where real idea generation happens.

Grant demonstrates that brainstorming in a meeting or forum setting often excludes a wide group of people, whereas brain-writing gets everyone involved.

Brainstorming sessions often leave shyer people and their ideas on the outside. Much of this, according to Grant, is caused by the fear of looking stupid in front of others. However, if a team submits its ideas on paper first and anonymously, every idea is heard when the group reconvenes. The best idea still wins, but there is no risk of embarrassment and all ideas are heard.

Utilizing some of these ideas can help your team achieve its maximum potential.

And what's more exciting than that?