The most revealing moment at the self-organizing symposium about self-organizing came thanks to a series of interruptions. In the midst of a lengthy, impromptu round table (I guess everything was fairly impromptu) where the vast majority of attendees voiced opinions on what they liked and dislike about the proceedings — and where a heavy emphasis was placed on ensuring every voice was heard — there were a few voices intent on shutting down the proceeding, oblivious to the fact they were shutting down other voices. These bad listeners, which came in a variety of personalities, shared the trait of lacking self-awareness. 

There was the older gentleman, perhaps after a glass of wine or three, who shouted for each female voice to sing — just as she was about to reveal a vulnerable position in regards to her connection to the larger group. There was the middle-aged woman who didn’t understand why we were wasting time listening to these voices when we could hear a prepared lecture. There was the young man with glasses, who instinctively grinned each time he intervened to plead for ending this session for something more productive, where his smile insinuated a self-assurance that he’s smarter than everyone in the room. Anytime one of these people would interject, the rest of the group would sigh or roll eyes. Clearly, these three and a few more of the like couldn’t read the room.

Reading the room is a soft skill. At this moment, at this symposium, the inability of some to read the room revealed the essential quality for effective collaboration. Every group requires players that align through mechanisms like personality, communication, shared experiences, trust, empathy, and more. But before I go deeper into those traits of self-organizing group dynamics, I want to define effective collaboration.

If we judge effective collaboration as a group of people producing joy or a desired outcome efficiently and enjoyably, and we agree that effective collaboration is meant to produce something akin to pleasure (call this the production of play) or product (the production of work) is the point of collaboration, then how we collaborate is the penultimate quality to study of collaboration — and how we collaborate is largely impacted by who is collaborating.

Years ago, I started OrgVitals as a project to map collaboration inside an organization to study who collaborates with whom, and find where in such a map is there effective collaboration. We combined network analysis (asking each individual: name the 3-10 people you collaborate with the most) with peer review data about each person’s collaboration chemistry, organizational influence, institutional knowledge, and volume of communication. Through that analysis, the map revealed Transfer Helpers — the people who served as the oil in the machine when it comes to large groups effectively collaborating. We found that Transfer Helpers are the soft leaders in an organization because not only do they know a lot, but they are great listeners. Everyone goes to them with their questions. They unblock obstacles. They are empathetic. They set the tone for the entire culture, along with the core leadership.

We realized we didn’t need to ask all those survey questions about chemistry, influence, and the like. The map made it really clear to predict who the Transfer Helpers were without any additional data. These are the people who sit outside the core nucleus of leadership yet maintain a ton of connections with a large span to those connections across the organization — because so many people name transfer helpers as a person they collaborate with often.

The opposite to a Transfer Helper is someone who creates a lot of friction to collaboration. These people are distractions. They don’t listen well (and often ask the same question). They lack respect because they agitate the others in their flow of efficient collaboration.

In 2017, researchers studied 25-foot radiuses around high-performers at a large technology firm and found that these workers boosted performance in coworkers by 15 percent. Literally, being close to a great collaborator helps everyone perform. From that same study, as reported by KellogInsight:

“Of course, the flipside is that bad eggs impact their neighbors, too. Negative spillover from so-called toxic workers is even more pronounced—sometimes having twice the magnitude of impact on profits as positive spillover. Yet, while this toxic spillover happens very quickly, it also dissipates almost immediately once that worker is either fired or relegated to the far physical reaches of the company.”

There are numerous examples of effective collaboration of self-organized groups and two of my favorites are musicians playing jazz and friends enjoying a humorous conversation.

Jazz musicians are able to improvise with one another by relying on a combination of their musical skills, training, and experience, as well as their ability to communicate and listen to one another.

At the core of jazz improvisation is the concept of "playing off" one another, where musicians take turns soloing and responding to each other's musical ideas. This requires a deep understanding of the underlying musical structure and harmony of the piece being played, as well as the ability to quickly react and adapt to what other musicians are playing.

To achieve this level of musical communication, jazz musicians often spend many hours rehearsing together, developing a shared musical vocabulary and understanding of each other's playing styles. They may also use nonverbal cues, such as eye contact or gestures, to signal musical ideas and transitions.

In addition to these interpersonal dynamics, jazz musicians also draw on their individual musical training and experience to create unique improvisations. They may incorporate elements of different musical genres, experiment with different rhythmic and melodic patterns, and use their knowledge of music theory to create new and unexpected harmonic progressions.

Ultimately, the magic of jazz improvisation lies in the combination of these individual and collective elements, as musicians work together to create spontaneous and beautiful musical performances that are greater than the sum of their parts.

You don’t have to play jazz or even listen to it to appreciate the magic of a self-organized group producing joy. Just think back to the last time you hung out with a group of old friends.

Jazz musicians improvising music and a group of old friends having a wonderful, humorous conversation have several things in common, like communication, creativity, trust, and shared experiences.

Both groups rely on clear communication and active listening to respond to each other in the moment. In both cases, there is a sense of give-and-take, with each participant contributing their own ideas and responding to the ideas of others.

Both jazz musicians improving music and old friends improvising conversation rely on creativity to keep the conversation or music fresh and interesting. Jazz musicians and friends alike draw on their individual experiences, perspectives, and personalities to bring something unique and unexpected to the conversation or performance.

Both groups require a certain level of trust and familiarity with one another. Jazz musicians must trust that their bandmates will be able to respond to their improvisations, while friends must trust that they can be themselves and share their ideas without fear of judgment.

Finally, both groups are sharing a collective experience that is unique to the moment. Whether it's a jazz performance or a conversation between friends, there is a sense of being in the moment and fully present with one another.

In both cases, there is a sense of spontaneity and joy that comes from being fully present with one another and creating something new and exciting together. Yet we’re missing an important point that enables both self-organizing groups to be successful in their production: they have self-selected the right members to their group.

Imagine a jazz group performing with a drummer that couldn’t hold a beat. Imagine the group of friends laughing over beers until a newcomer interjects an inappropriate quip. This person ruins the flow.

We’re concerning ourselves with the wrong things when we think and talk about self-organizing. We mistakenly look at a bird murmuration in consideration of what effective collaboration looks like. Birds offer nowhere near the complexity as us humans. Our evolution did not require arial swarms. Starlings swarm to survive. Jazz musicians play music because they desire to play music. The difference is self-selection. Starlings have to show up. The jazz musician does not.

The next mistake we make when we study self-organizing collaboration is forgetting people offer different levels of engagement, and even at the individual level, that engagement ebbs and flows. Engagement shifts. Engagement can be incentivized. Engagement can be a choice. This is all to say engagement is the fuel of the play and production of collaboration and the fuel can run empty or be refilled.

The third and last observation I have about what we forget to study when it comes to understanding self-organizing collaboration is about the learned behaviors of the group (and the impact personality has on behavior). Contagion is a word associated with viral outbreaks. We can use this word to also accurately describe how behaviors can reinforce values and spread across a group. Contagion can represent the spread of positive or negative behaviors. After the contagion of a behavior spreads, this behavior now represents a learned behavior, or habit, of the group.

All of this to say, self-organizing collaboration for effective production requires much more than agency and creativity, yet it does not require any hierarchy of organizational delegation nor inherent power structure. Effective collaboration simply needs what jazz needs: the altruistic play between individuals that have the experience and trust to anticipate the moves of one another.