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Small Group Communication

P ixar Studios has become an industry leader in telling its animated stories about toys, monsters, robots, and even rats. But this time it aimed to take the audience into the emotional world of an 11-year-old girl named Riley. Among the many challenges the animation team faced was this: How do you visually illustrate the emotion of joy in Riley’s brain?¹ The team wanted joy to be a spritely, pixie-like character, but she could not look too much like Tinker Bell. After evaluating thousands of sketches, the team created the character Joy, along with four other characters depicting Riley’s emotions: Anger, Disgust, Sadness, and Fear. Consistent with its history of successful animated films, Pixar’s Inside Out opened to rave reviews and record-breaking box office revenue.

¹ Drawn from Alexander (2015).

Since Pixar released its first feature-length animated film (the original Toy Story in 1995), the company has produced a string of critically and commercially successful films, including Finding Nemo, Wall-E, Up, and Brave. As other major studios lose money on the majority of their films, Pixar cranks out blockbuster after blockbuster, averaging revenues of over $550 million per film and grossing over $7.2 billion total worldwide (Lehrer, 2010; The Walt Disney Company, n.d.). How does the company do it? Whereas most animation studios rely on freelance artists to develop movies, Pixar cultivates small groups of dedicated, talented employee teams that work together to turn story ideas into films that capture the hearts and imaginations of children and adults alike.

According to Ed Catmull (2014), Pixar cofounder and president, an outstanding team can turn even a mediocre idea into a meaningful and memorable story. Catmull suggests that getting people to work together trumps individual talent. Everyone who works on a Pixar film—illustrators, animators, producers, technicians, directors, and more—is responsible for some part of the creative effort. When all team members have a stake in the success of the film, they are more likely to support one another, provide useful feedback, and come together to help solve problems.

Even the Pixar campus layout encourages collaboration. The late Steve Jobs, a Pixar cofounder, insisted on designing spaces where people could easily meet and interact. He knew “that the real challenge of Pixar was getting people from different cultures—computer scientists and cartoonists—to work together, to really collaborate” (NPR Staff, 2012). The result is Pixar’s large central atrium, which contains employees’ mailboxes, the company’s meeting rooms, the cafeteria, the main bathrooms, and even a game area. According to Brad Bird, director of The Incredibles and Ratatouille, “The atrium initially might seem like a waste of space. . . . But Steve realized that when people run into each other, when they make eye contact, things happen” (Lehrer, 2011).

Thanks to its commitment to teamwork in everything from the idea for a movie to the layout of its buildings, Pixar consistently produces innovative films that set new standards for technical, creative, and financial success. In the case of Inside Out, the group’s collaborative effort resulted in a movie that extends Pixar’s record of entertaining stories while being successful at the box office.

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Pixar is not the only company to score great successes by using small groups (or teams, as they are often called in the workplace) to conduct its business. Most businesses rely on small groups and teams to manage key assignments and tasks, including designing smartphone apps (product development), improving customer experiences (customer relations), creating presentations about new products (sales), and organizing sponsorships of local charity events (marketing) (Kozlowski & Bell, 2003). Yet small groups aren’t limited to the workplace either; they exist in many different areas of your life. For instance, you might meet with your family to decide where to go on vacation next year, or work with a group on a class project. Maybe you’re part of a homeowners association or a town council. In all of these cases and countless more, you are communicating in small groups. To generate the most value from these experiences, you need to know how small groups operate and how to best communicate within them. In this chapter, you’ll learn: