Research from MIT’s Human Dynamics Laboratory shows that communication patterns are the strongest predictor of team success, with 35% of performance variation explained simply by the number of face-to-face exchanges among team members.
The math is straightforward: a team of eight people should have 28 possible communication pathways. In healthy teams, information flows across these channels. In divided teams, communication becomes territorial. Instead of 28 open pathways, you might have three separate clusters of 3–3–2, creating only nine internal pathways and requiring management intervention for cross-cluster coordination.
That isn’t just inconvenient—it is exponentially expensive.
Christine Porath’s research at Georgetown University, surveying thousands of workers, reveals the concrete costs of workplace incivility and poor communication:
- 47% deliberately decreased time spent at work
- 38% intentionally decreased work quality
- 66% reported performance decline
- 78% reported decreased organizational commitment
Perhaps most concerning, Porath and colleagues found that de-energizing relationships have a disproportionately stronger negative impact on performance compared to the positive effects of energizing relationships.
This excerpt comes from my work-in-progress book on how organizations can move from communication breakdown to genuine connection. I’m sharing these early insights as I develop them, building on the work of practitioners and researchers who paved the way. You can read the full chapter, with complete citations, on my Substack. I’d welcome your thoughts and experiences—they help strengthen this work.