Recent research by MIT and DARPA has looked at the neuroscience between team members and shown some interesting processes are at work. It began with studies into musicians performing together :
“Our findings show that interpersonally coordinated actions are preceded and accompanied by between-brain oscillatory couplings. Presumably, these couplings reflect similarities in the temporal properties of the individuals' percepts and actions. Whether between-brain oscillatory couplings play a causal role in initiating and maintaining interpersonal action coordination needs to be clarified by further research."
The idea is that neurodynamically a team gets into a rhythm – evident in the brainwaves of those involved :
"Decreases in NS_E entropy were associated with periods of poorer team performance as indicated by delays/omissions in the regular determination of the position; parallel communication data suggested that these were also periods of increased stress.
Experienced teams performed better than teams, had higher overall levels of NS_E entropy and appeared more cognitively flexible as indicated by the use of a larger repertoire of available NS_E patterns."
An MIT spin-off has developed wearable technology which allows this to be taken into the workplace :
http://hd.media.mit.edu/badges/
http://www.sociometricsolutions.com/
http://www.advancedbrainmonitoring.com/
Some promising findings - they can predict successful outcomes with some degree of accuracy. It opens up a new area for research into how people work together and handle complexity.