If you’re putting together a team for a project, you might tend to pick people with cheerful, optimistic characters and flexible thinking. But a new management study indicates your team might also benefit from people who have the opposite emotions (情感), according to experts from some universities.
The study, co-authored by Jing Zhou, investigates (研究) the effects of "team affective (情感的) diversity" on team creativity. The paper is among the first research to show how, why and under what condition teams "affective diversity" promotes team creativity
Team members with what researchers call "negative affect" exhibit critical and continuous thinking that allows them to find problems needing solutions, as well as to search out and critically evaluate relevant information. On the other hand, team members with "positive affect" engage in broad and flexible thinking that expands their range of information and helps them see unusual and creative connections, the researchers say.
"At any given point of time, some team members may experience positive affect such as joy and inspiration, while others may experience negative affect such as frustration and worry," Zhou said. "Instead of trying to homogenize (使类同) team members' affect, teams should enthusiastically accept affective diversity.”
When a team experiences a high level of this "affective diversity", what Zhou describes as "dual-tuning (双调谐)" leads to greater creativity.
"Our study suggests that teams may be aided in using their affective diversity via involvements that focus on building the team's memory system, which can be accelerated when team members spend time together, share goals, receive information about member specializations and train on the task together," Zhou said.
【小题1】What is the new management study about?| A．Teams benefit more from negative people. |
| B．People with cheerful characters make good teams |
| C．Teams only benefit from people with flexible thinking |
| D．People with negative feelings might also benefit teams. |
| A．By addressing problems more efficiently | B．By assessing related materials seriously. |
| C．By encouraging broad and complicated thinking. | D．By investigating unusual and creative connections |
| A．By balancing team members' different emotions | B．By inspiring a high level of the affective diversity. |
| C．By praising positive affect like joy and inspiration. | D．By avoiding negative affect like sadness and worry. |
| A．Use Your Team's Emotions to Promote Creativity | B．Win Great Creativity by Searching for Its Reasons |
| C．Create an Excellent Team with Optimistic People | D．Homogenize Team Members' Affect Enthusiastically |
