Elise Assibat, pour le webmagazine EVE

It’s hard to talk about intelligence without talking about the collective. And with good reason, for Professor Émile Servan-Schreiber, the two are linked: ‘Today there is no intelligence that is not organised on the basis of a collective,’ says the expert. Whether it’s your brain, which is a collective of 80 billion neurons working together to produce something intelligent, or GPT chat, which brings together all the knowledge produced by individuals so that it can be used by and for everyone. For all that, and because the nature of the collective is to lapse fairly quickly into conformism, mainly for the sake of acceptance by peers, it is necessary for the collective to be as diverse as possible. In terms of age, professions… and of course gender. But what are the benefits of collective intelligence coupled with gender diversity?

Gender diversity as a factor of intelligence and a performance driver

The figures are clear. According to a scientific study conducted by MIT and Carnegie Mellon University on ‘group IQ’ in 2010, the most ‘intelligent’ groups are those with a majority of women. The researchers behind the study established very specific factors: groups with a higher percentage of women have a better distribution of speaking time and a better quality of listening. ‘This last element is more than crucial, since there’s no point in everyone making the most of their speaking time if no one listens when others are speaking’, notes Emile Servan-Schreiber. This social sensitivity goes even further, since statistically and probably by social construction, women have a greater ability to discern non-verbal signals in order to deduce the emotion experienced by the person.

Brain size is not everything. What counts above all is communication: ‘The most intelligent groups are those in which there is the best bandwidth between the available brains’. In other words, collective intelligence will depend less on the intellectual quotient than on the emotional quotient of each member of the group. In other words, collective intelligence will depend less on the intellectual quotient and more on the emotional quotient of each member of the group. ‘More feminised groups are objectively better at mastering these two aspects of communication that are essential to collective intelligence’, says the expert. This observation is borne out by the rankings of companies listed on the stock exchange. ‘L’Observatoire de la féminisation des entreprises regularly tracks the best performances of CAC 40 companies, and every time they turn out to be the most gender-balanced’, adds Émile Servan-Schreiber. And with good reason, as a result of this optimised communication, organisations perform better… and are more innovative.

Diversity for creativity and innovation

‘The more diverse the profiles, the more innovative the ideas’, says Emile Servan-Schreiber. This is because the cognitive diversity inherent in each person’s individuality and experience means that there are many different approaches to the same situation, not least because contrasting opinions encourage challenge and reflection. As Émile Servan-Schreiber describes, ‘As the discussions progress, the grey areas and biases will cancel each other out, while the truths expressed by each person will complement each other like a jigsaw puzzle’. This diversity not only makes it possible to cover all the issues and risks at stake, but also to form a broader reflection enriched by the visions of others who complement, contradict or question the shared ideas. Alexandre Gallard, facilitator of collective intelligence workshops, attests to this: ‘If we only have the same profiles around the table, we’ll be going round in circles and not asking the right questions, because the participants are likely to have the same approach and agree too quickly. To open up new avenues and innovate, we need to think differently together. In short, the more difficult the problem is to solve, the more it requires a plurality of perceptions to respond. And the more innovative the solution will be, because it will be driven by the fusion of divergent ideas.

But it’s not natural to share different opinions, let alone agree on them. Fanny Boulesteix, coach and co-founder of the Tafoga women’s leadership programme, explains: ‘Humans are social animals who want to fit in, to feel part of a group. But it’s precisely the fact of disagreeing that allows us to challenge our collective intelligence’. And for Émile Servan-Schreiber, it’s because this methodology is ‘artificial intelligence’ that it needs to be organised to be effective.

Diversity: a collective intelligence that needs to be organised

So, while diversity of approach may be an essential ingredient in producing intelligence, it is not enough. Collective intelligence exists if, and only if, the conditions that give rise to it are respected. This means observing certain rules: ‘those that encourage people to express their diversity as independently as possible’, says Émile Servan-Schreiber, ‘and those that enable people to take everything that has been said and consider everything that has been put on the table to produce a collective result’. But that’s not all. While these rules foster independence of mind and the ability to create objective arbitration, they must also foster inclusion. ‘Because diversity of opinion without individuals feeling free to share their views, or without them being listened to, is pointless,’ points out Fanny Boulesteix. So, in order to apply all these rules as effectively as possible, while at the same time bringing diversity to life in an inclusive way, collective intelligence will also benefit from being exercised within a framework of psychological safety, if possible guaranteed by a third party; a facilitator, coach, etc.

The role of the third party in enforcing the rules of the game

When companies call on me, they want to get their employees thinking so that they can identify the best possible solutions to the issues that concern them directly,’ explains Alexandre Gallard, collective intelligence facilitator at Utopies. My job is to create the framework so that these people can do just that. A great deal of preparation goes into imagining the thinking processes, tools and exercises that will enable the participants to produce the deliverables we are trying to achieve. But the role of the facilitator is also useful during the facilitation to avoid demeaning behaviour. ‘I make sure that the floor is well distributed and that everyone listens to each other, in particular to limit any risk of exclusion or intimidation’, says the collective intelligence workshop facilitator.

For her part, Fanny Boulesteix uses coaching as a tool for developing assertiveness. ‘If a woman has a completely different point of view, but finds herself in a minority, she may tend not to dare share it, to censor herself.