Equal Time Announces Collaboration with Harvard Business School Scholar Nicole Abi-Esber

05/17/2022

New Collaboration with Harvard Business School


Equal Time is excited to announce a collaboration with Nicole Abi-Esber, an Organizational Behavior scholar at Harvard Business School.


Prior research has shown that when teams have more equal speaking time, it leads to higher "collective intelligence" and increased psychological safety. Building on this, we are launching an exciting new project in which we find evidence that giving people real-time information on their conversation dynamics leads to significantly better meeting outcomes, including increased psychological safety and creativity.


In order to empirically test whether a digital tool (Equal Time) that displays speaking time in real-time leads to better meeting outcomes, we are actively recruiting participating teams and organizations!


Teams with between 4 and 12 people that regularly engage in virtual meetings using Google Meet or Zoom are invited to participate in our research.


  • We will ask all participants to install the free Equal Time meeting plugin on Google Meet or Zoom. (Zero cost)

  • We will email participants a pre-survey. This will ask a few baseline questions about their perception of their team meetings (Est time: 2-3 minutes).

  • We will also email participants a post-survey at EOD the following business day. This will ask employees about their perceived productivity, creativity, and enjoyment of meetings that day. (Est time: 2-3 minutes).


Based on our research, we expect that the Equal Time tool will substantially improve the creativity, productivity, and psychological safety of team meetings where it is used.


Requirements

  • 1-100 Teams. (The minimum is 1 team, but we are happy to invite up to 100 teams from your company to participate) 
  • Each team should have between 4-12 members
  • Teams will need to use the Equal Time tool in their virtual and hybrid team meetings for at 2 months
  • Team members will need to participate in 2 short surveys 


Participating companies will be able to view the findings, hold a debrief meeting, receive a report, or set up a presentation with their leadership team. Additionally, companies will receive a complimentary workshop with Harvard Business School researcher Nicole Abi-Esber. She can teach a workshop on Principles of Behavioral Science at work, or on How to Increase Psychological Safety in Teams, for any interested employee to attend.


Companies may review the draft of any research paper in advance of publication, and can decide if you would like to have your company's name printed or to remain anonymous at that point in time.


Please email us if you are intrigued.


Sincerely,

Rachel Dowling (rachel@equaltime.io)

Nicole Abi-Esber (nabiesber@hbs.edu)


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