How art can make us better humans

If you news feeds are anything like mine, they're filled with articles and research about the impact technology is having on human beings, how it's advancing exponentially and developing capabilities that compete with human intelligence, how it's making us paradoxically more connected yet lonelier than ever before.

In my day job, I've been looking at this growing trend through a workforce lens, considering what it means for the skills human beings will need in the future and how we'll collaborate with each other and technology in new ways to achieve goals. Tom Malone and his team at MIT's Center for Collective Intelligence have been researching this question for years and helped to reframe the "problem to solve" in my mind:

The center looks at what makes groups smart, that despite how our culture romanticizes individual markers of intelligence like IQ and SAT scores, humanity has advanced by the efforts of intelligent teams.

What drives group intelligence?

Defining "intelligence" as "the ability to achieve goals," MIT found three factors that drive the intelligence of a group:

• Even participation, meaning there is a level playing field for each member of the group to contribute their ideas
• Social perceptiveness of individual members of the group, meaning the ability to discern what someone may be thinking or feeling based on their facial expression or some other means of observation
• Proportion of women, which means gender balance and could potentially be correlated with skills like empathy that may have historically been emphasized more in women

MIT is expanding on this research and exploring methods to make groups smarter, using insights from social psychology, computer science, group dynamics, social media, crowdsourcing and group behavior research. (Check out Tom's book Superminds for more on the research and case studies.) As part of this effort, I've been doing a fellowship with MIT to apply the research and methods to real client challenges.

The social perceptiveness element of group intelligence fascinated me, based on the work I've been doing with my firm looking at the "essential and enduring" human skills that will drive value even as technology continues to develop capabilities that compete with our brains. There seems to be a correlation between those skills, which include empathy and listening, and social perceptiveness.

It begs the question: can we learn to be more socially perceptive?

Social perceptiveness looks at things like eye movements and ability to observe facial expressions, whereas social-emotional skills look at exhibited behaviors. While the jury is still out on what might influence social perceptiveness, there's an overwhelming amount of research that suggests social-emotional skills can be learned and cultivated, even in adults.

My firm generously granted me a 6-month sabbatical to work with two organizations who have been teaching these skills to adults in unconventional ways: The Art Institute of Chicago, whose amazing Ryan Learning Center has been using art as a vehicle to teach skills like empathy and creativity for years; and The Second City, where the fundamentals of improv that have produced famous comedians like Tina Fey are taught to workforce groups to help teach skills like listening and collaboration.

The project is called "How Art Can Make You A Better Human," exploring how art can be a powerful tool for teaching "essential and enduring" human skills like empathy, creativity, problem solving and innovation, and creating smarter, more innovative groups that take risks, overcome defeat, and connect dots in new ways.

In his book "Restoring the Soul of Business," Rishad Tobaccowala says, "great art helps us see differently." It breaks us out of our tunnel vision, gets us beyond our limitations of culture, race, politics, class, and belief systems, and teaches us to suspend judgment and empathize with another human being's experience, perspective, and story.

This project is taking a broad minded definition of art, to include everything related to creative human expression, like painting, poetry, and performance. Put simply, art is just another human being, who is as much the center of their universe as you are the center of yours, looking at you through space and time, trying to give you a glimpse of their reality.

“There is only one note to self: other people are real. That’s all there is to learn. It takes forever, but you can start now.” – Frank Chimero

Each of us lives alone inside of our minds, boxed in by our limitations. We have no idea what it's like to be someone else, to exist in their world. Art is the exception. Art punches a hole in what separates us from one another and allows us to peer into each other's interior worlds, helps us to see differently, and inspires us to connect dots we had not seen before. We meet art with curiosity and openness, allowing it to challenge our assumptions and beliefs, using it to expand our knowledge base and perspectives.

Yet in the absence of art, we get caught up in our tunnel vision, our own version of reality, in the perspectives and beliefs of our own groups. We need art, every day, all the time, to help us listen, empathize, and a host of the other "essential and enduring" human skills we need to thrive in the future as individuals, and as smarter groups.

In the spirit of getting out of my own tunnel vision and challenging my assumptions, please feel free to reach out if you have ideas, suggestions or insights for this project and connect with me here to learn more as it moves forward.