HBR October: Post #4--Performance

Defend Your Research: If You Want to Win, Tell Your Team It’s Losing (a Little) by John Berger, p.36.

In an experiment, various groups competing with others in “another room” were given different kinds of feedback. One group was told that they were far behind, another that they were slightly behind, and a third that they were slightly ahead. Only the group that was slightly behind substantially (with statistical significance) picked up its rate of performance in the second round of competition.