"Interestingly I have no common sense whatsoever" is a great line.

If Eric put this in his "Diabolical Plans for World Domination" stash does that mean he's recruiting?

The best predictor of team success is if they like one another:

Via The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work:

…a study of over 350 employees in 60 business units at a financial services company found that the greatest predictor of a team’s achievement was how the members felt about one another.

How well do they need to get along? Remember the 5 to 1 ratio.

From The Ape in the Corner Office: How to Make Friends, Win Fights and Work Smarter by Understanding Human Nature:

It turned out that the fifteen high-performance teams averaged 5.6 positive interactions for every negative one. The nineteen low-performance teams racked up a positive/negative ratio of just .363. That is, they had about three negative interactions for every positive one…

Is your team fist bumping, high-fiving and hugging? “The teams that touched the most cooperated the most, and won the most.”

Read more: http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2013/07/great-team/

Effective team performance requires clear goals:

Via Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration:

One study of more than five hundred professionals and managers in thirty companies found that unclear objectives became the biggest barrier to effective team performance.

After goals, define roles:

Via Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing

Clarifying who is going to do what— identifying distinct roles— is one of the most proven ways to increase the quality of teamwork. The egalitarian notion that team members should be equal in status and interchangeable in their roles is erroneous. Teams work best when participants know their roles, but not every role needs to be equal. Dr. Eduardo Salas, at the University of Central Florida, is one of the most widely cited scholars studying team efficiency. He has devoted his life to understanding the vast sea of team-building and team-training processes— analyzing teams used in the military, law enforcement, NASA, and numerous corporate settings. The only strategies that consistently deliver results are those that focus on role clarification: who’s going to do what when the pressure gets intense.

Read more: http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2013/07/great-team/