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If you read nothing else on building better teams, read these 10 articles. Weve combed through hundreds of articles in the Harvard Business Review archive and selected the most important ones to help you assemble and steer teams that get results.

Leading experts such as Jon Katzenbach, Teresa Amabile, and Tamara Erickson provide the insights and advice you need to:

Boost team performance through mutual accountability

Motivate large, diverse groups to tackle complex projects

Increase your teams emotional intelligence Prevent decision deadlock Extract results from a bunch of touchy superstars Argue constructively with top-management

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OnTeamsIf you read nothing else on building better teams, read these definitive articles from Harvard Business Review.

Most teams underperform. Yours can beat the odds.

HBR Guide Serieslooking for smart answers to your most pressing work challenges? try these and other titles in the practical HBR Guide series:

HBR Guide to Better Business Writing

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Classic ideas, enduring advice, the best thinkersall in one place

HBRs 10 Must Reads series is the definitive collection of ideas and best practices for aspiring and experienced leaders alike. these books offer essential reading selected from the pages of Harvard Business Review on topics critical to the success of every manager.

each book is packed with advice and inspiration from leading experts such as Clayton Christensen, Peter Drucker, rosabeth Moss Kanter, John Kotter, Michael Porter, Daniel Goleman, theodore levitt, and rita Gunther McGrath.

FEATURING the Discipline of

teams By Jon R. Katzenbach and

Douglas K. Smith

Titles in this bestselling series include: HBrs 10 Must reads: the essentials HBrs 10 Must reads on Change Management HBrs 10 Must reads on Communication HBrs 10 Must reads on leadership HBrs 10 Must reads on Making Smart Decisions HBrs 10 Must reads on Managing People HBrs 10 Must reads on Managing Yourself HBrs 10 Must reads on Strategy

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HBRs 10 Must Reads series is the definitive collection of ideasand best practices for aspiring and experienced leaders alike.These books offer essential reading selected from the pages ofHarvard Business Review on topics critical to the success ofevery manager.

Titles include:

HBRs 10 Must Reads on Change ManagementHBRs 10 Must Reads on CollaborationHBRs 10 Must Reads on CommunicationHBRs 10 Must Reads on InnovationHBRs 10 Must Reads on LeadershipHBRs 10 Must Reads on Making Smart DecisionsHBRs 10 Must Reads on Managing PeopleHBRs 10 Must Reads on Managing YourselfHBRs 10 Must Reads on Strategic MarketingHBRs 10 Must Reads on StrategyHBRs 10 Must Reads on TeamsHBRs 10 Must Reads: The Essentials

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HBRS10MUSTREADSs

OnTeams

HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW PRESSBoston, Massachusetts

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Copyright 2013 Harvard Business School Publishing CorporationAll rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into aretrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic,mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Requests for permission should be directed to [email protected], or mailed to Permissions, Harvard BusinessSchool Publishing, 60 Harvard Way, Boston, Massachusetts 02163.

The web addresses referenced in this book were live and correct at the time of books publication but may be subject to change.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

HBRs 10 must reads on teams.pages cm. (HBRs 10 must reads series)

Includes index.ISBN 978-1-4221-8987-0 (alk. paper)

1. Teams in the workplace. I. Harvard Business Review Press. II. Title:HBRs ten must reads on teams. III. Title: 10 must reads on teams. IV. Title:Ten must reads on teams.

HD66.H394 2013658.4'022dc23 2012046240

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Find more digital content or join the discussion on www.hbr.org.


mailto:[email protected]

The New Science of Building Great Teams 1by Alex Sandy Pentland

Why Teams Dont Work: An Interview with J. Richard Hackman 21

by Diane Coutu

The Discipline of Teams 35by Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith

Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams 55by Lynda Gratton and Tamara J. Erickson

The Power of Small Wins 75by Teresa M. Amabile and Steven J. Kramer

Building the Emotional Intelligence of Groups 95by Vanessa Urch Druskat and Steven B. Wolff

Managing Multicultural Teams 117by Jeanne Brett, Kristin Behfar, and Mary C. Kern

When Teams Cant Decide 135by Bob Frisch

Virtuoso Teams 149by Bill Fischer and Andy Boynton

How Management Teams Can Have a Good Fight 165by Kathleen M. Eisenhardt, Jean L. Kahwajy, and L.J. Bourgeois III

About the Contributors 183 Index 185

v

Contents

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I1

The New Science of Building GreatTeamsThe chemistry of high-performing groups is no longer a mystery. by Alex Sandy Pentland

IF YOU WERE looking for teams to rig for success, a call center would bea good place to start. The skills required for call center work are easyto identify and hire for. The tasks involved are clear-cut and easy tomonitor. Just about every aspect of team performance is easy tomeasure: number of issues resolved, customer satisfaction, averagehandling time (AHT, the golden standard of call center efficiency).And the list goes on.

Why, then, did the manager at a major banks call center have suchtrouble figuring out why some of his teams got excellent results,while other, seemingly similar, teams struggled? Indeed, none of themetrics that poured in hinted at the reason for the performance gaps.This mystery reinforced his assumption that team building was anart, not a science.

The truth is quite the opposite. At MITs Human Dynamics Labora-tory, we have identified the elusive group dynamics that characterizehigh-performing teamsthose blessed with the energy, creativity, andshared commitment to far surpass other teams. These dynamics areobservable, quantifiable, and measurable. And, perhaps most impor-tant, teams can be taught how to strengthen them.

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PENTLAND

2

Why Do Patterns of CommunicationMatter So Much?

It seems almost absurd that how we communicate could be so much moreimportant to success than what we communicate.

Yet if we look at our evolutionary history, we can see that language is a relativelyrecent development and was most likely layered upon older signals thatcommunicated dominance, interest, and emotions among humans. Todaythese ancient patterns of communication still shape how we make decisionsand coordinate work among ourselves.

Consider how early man may have approached problem solving. One canimagine humans sitting around a campfire (as a team) making suggestions,relating observations, and indicating interest or approval with head nods,gestures, or vocal signals. If some people failed to contribute or to signaltheir level of interest or approval, then the group members had less informa-tion and weaker judgment, and so were more likely to go hungry.

Looking for the It Factor

When we set out to document the behavior of teams that click, wenoticed we could sense a buzz in a team even if we didnt understandwhat the members were talking about. That suggested that the key tohigh performance lay not in the content of a teams discussions but inthe manner in which it was communicating. Yet little of the researchon team building had focused on communication. Suspecting itmight be crucial, we decided to examine it more deeply.

For our studies, we looked across a diverse set of industries tofind workplaces that had similar teams with varying performance.Ultimately, our research included innovation teams, post-op wardsin hospitals, customer-facing teams in banks, backroom operationsteams, and call center teams, among others.

We equipped all the members of those teams with electronic badges that collected data on their individual communication behaviortone of voice, body language, whom they talked to and howmuch, and more. With remarkable consistency, the data confirmedthat communication indeed plays a critical role in building successfulteams. In fact, weve found patterns of communication to be the most

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THE NEW SCIENCE OF BUILDING GREAT TEAMS

3

Idea in BriefWhy do some teams consistentlydeliver high performance whileother, seemingly identical teamsstruggle? Led by Sandy Pentland,researchers at MITs HumanDynamics Laboratory set out tosolve that puzzle. Hoping to decodethe It factor that made groupsclick, they equipped teams from abroad variety of projects and indus-tries (comprising 2,500 individualsin total) with wearable electronicsensors that collected data on theirsocial behavior for weeks at a time.

With remarkable consistency, thedata showed that the mostimportant predictor of a teamssuccess was its communicationpatterns. Those patterns were as significant as all other factorsintelligence, personality,talentcombined. In fact, the

researchers could foretell whichteams would outperform simply by looking at the data on theircommunication, without evenmeeting their members.

In this article Pentland shares thesecrets of his findings and showshow anyone can engineer a greatteam. He has identified three keycommunication dynamics thataffect performance: energy,engagement, and exploration.Drawing from the data, he hasprecisely quantified the ideal teampatterns for each. Even moresignificant, he has seen that whenteams map their owncommunication behavior over timeand then make adjustments thatmove it closer to the ideal, theycan dramatically improve theirperformance.

important predictor of a teams success. Not only that, but they are as significant as all the other factorsindividual intelligence, person-ality, skill, and the substance of discussionscombined.

Patterns of communication, for example, explained why per-formance varied so widely among the seemingly identical teams inthat banks call center. Several teams there wore our badges for sixweeks. When my fellow researchers (my colleagues at SociometricSolutionsTaemie Kim, Daniel Olguin, and Ben Waber) and I ana-lyzed the data collected, we found that the best predictors of pro-ductivity were a teams energy and engagement outside formalmeetings. Together those two factors explained one-third of thevariations in dollar productivity among groups.

Drawing on that insight, we advised the centers manager to revisethe employees coffee break schedule so that everyone on a team

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PENTLAND

4

took a break at the same time. That would allow people more time tosocialize with their teammates, away from their workstations.Though the suggestion flew in the face of standard efficiency prac-tices, the manager was baffled and desperate, so he tried it. And itworked: AHT fell by more than 20% among lower-performing teamsand decreased by 8% overall at the call center. Now the manager ischanging the break schedule at all 10 of the banks call centers (whichemploy a total of 25,000 people) and is forecasting $15 million a yearin productivity increases. He has also seen employee satisfaction atcall centers rise, sometimes by more than 10%.

Any company, no matter how large, has the potential to achievethis same kind of transformation. Firms now can obtain the toolsand data they need to accurately dissect and engineer high per-formance. Building great teams has become a science. Heres how itworks.

Overcoming the Limits of Observation

When we sense esprit de corps, that perception doesnt come out ofthe blue; its the result of our innate ability to process the hundreds ofcomplex communication cues that we constantly send and receive.

But until recently we had never been able to objectively recordsuch cues as data that we could then mine to understand why teamsclick. Mere observation simply couldnt capture every nuance ofhuman behavior across an entire team. What we had, then, was onlya strong sense of the thingsgood leadership and followership, pal-pable shared commitment, a terrific brainstorming sessionthatmade a team greater than the sum of its parts.

Recent advances in wireless and sensor technology, though, havehelped us overcome those limitations, allowing us to measure thatineffable It factor. The badges developed at my lab at MIT are intheir seventh version. They generate more than 100 data points aminute and work unobtrusively enough that were confident werecapturing natural behavior. (Weve documented a period of adjust-ment to the badges: Early on, people appear to be aware of them andact unnaturally, but the effect dissipates, usually within an hour.)

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5

Weve deployed them in 21 organizations over the past seven years,measuring the communication patterns of about 2,500 people,sometimes for six weeks at a time.

With the data weve collected, weve mapped the communica-tion behaviors of large numbers of people as they go about theirlives, at an unprecedented level of detail. The badges producesociometrics, or measures of how people interactsuch as whattone of voice they use; whether they face one another; how muchthey gesture; how much they talk, listen, and interrupt; and eventheir levels of extroversion and empathy. By comparing data gath-ered from all the individuals on a team with performance data, wecan identify the communication patterns that make for successfulteamwork.

Those patterns vary little, regardless of the type of team and itsgoalbe it a call center team striving for efficiency, an innovation teamat a pharmaceutical company looking for new product ideas, or a sen-ior management team hoping to improve its leadership. Productiveteams have certain data signatures, and theyre so consistent that wecan predict a teams success simply by looking at the datawithoutever meeting its members.

Weve been able to foretell, for example, which teams will win abusiness plan contest, solely on the basis of data collected fromteam members wearing badges at a cocktail reception. (See DefendYour Research: We Can Measure the Power of Charisma, HBR Janu-aryFebruary 2010.) Weve predicted the financial results thatteams making investments would achieve, just on the basis of datacollected during their negotiations. We can see in the data whenteam members will report that theyve had a productive or cre-ative day.

The data also reveal, at a higher level, that successful teams shareseveral defining characteristics:

1. Everyone on the team talks and listens in roughly equalmeasure, keeping contributions short and sweet.

2. Members face one another, and their conversations andgestures are energetic.

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PENTLAND

6

3. Members connect directly with one anothernot just with theteam leader.

4. Members carry on back-channel or side conversations withinthe team.

5. Members periodically break, go exploring outside the team,and bring information back.

The data also establish another surprising fact: Individual reason-ing and talent contribute far less to team success than one mightexpect. The best way to build a great team is not to select individualsfor their smarts or accomplishments but to learn how they communi-cate and to shape and guide the team so that it follows successfulcommunication patterns.

The Key Elements of Communication

In our research we identified three aspects of communication thataffect team performance. The first is energy, which we measure by thenumber and the nature of exchanges among team members. A singleexchange is defined as a comment and some acknowledgmentforexample, a yes or a nod of the head. Normal conversations are oftenmade up of many of these exchanges, and in a team setting more thanone exchange may be going on at a time.

The most valuable form of communication is face-to-face. Thenext most valuable is by phone or videoconference, but with acaveat: Those technologies become less effective as more people par-ticipate in the call or conference. The least valuable forms of commu-nication are e-mail and texting. (We collect data on those kinds ofcommunication without using the badges. Still, the number of face-to-face exchanges alone provides a good rough measure of energy.)The number of exchanges engaged in, weighted for their value bytype of communication, gives each team member an energy score,which is averaged with other members results to create a team score.

Energy levels within a team are not static. For instance, in myresearch group at MIT, we sometimes have meetings at which I updatepeople on upcoming events, rule changes, and other administrative

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7


details. These meetings are invariably low energy. But when someoneannounces a new discovery in the same group, excitement and energyskyrocket as all the members start talking to one another at once.

The second important dimension of communication is engagement,which reflects the distribution of energy among team members. In asimple three-person team, engagement is a function of the averageamount of energy between A and B, A and C, and B and C. If all mem-bers of a team have relatively equal and reasonably high energy withall other members, engagement is extremely strong. Teams that haveclusters of members who engage in high-energy communication whileother members do not participate dont perform as well. When weobserved teams making investment decisions, for instance, the par-tially engaged teams made worse (less profitable) decisions than thefully engaged teams. This effect was particularly common in far-flungteams that talked mostly by telephone.

The third critical dimension, exploration, involves communicationthat members engage in outside their team. Exploration essentially isthe energy between a team and the other teams it interacts with.Higher-performing teams seek more outside connections, wevefound. Weve also seen that scoring well on exploration is most impor-tant for creative teams, such as those responsible for innovation,which need fresh perspectives.

To measure exploration, we have to deploy badges more widely inan organization. Weve done so in many settings, including the MITMedia Lab and a multinational companys marketing department,which comprised several teams dedicated to different functions.

Our data also show that exploration and engagement, while bothgood, dont easily coexist, because they require that the energy ofteam members be put to two different uses. Energy is a finite resource.The more that people devote to their own team (engagement), the lessthey have to use outside their team (exploration), and vice versa.

But they must do both. Successful teams, especially successfulcreative teams, oscillate between exploration for discovery andengagement for integration of the ideas gathered from outsidesources. At the MIT Media Lab, this pattern accounted for almost halfof the differences in creative output of research groups. And in one

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industrial research lab we studied, it distinguished teams with highcreativity from those with low creativity with almost 90% accuracy.

Beyond Conventional Wisdom

A skeptic would argue that the points about energy, engagement,and exploration are blindingly obvious. But the data from our re-search improve on conventional wisdom. They add an unprece-dented level of precision to our observations, quantify the keydynamics, and make them measurable to an extraordinary degree.

For example, we now know that 35% of the variation in a teamsperformance can be accounted for simply by the number of face-to-face exchanges among team members. We know as well that theright number of exchanges in a team is as many as dozens perworking hour, but that going beyond that ideal number decreasesperformance. We can also state with certainty that in a typical high-performance team, members are listening or speaking to the wholegroup only about half the time, and when addressing the wholegroup, each team member speaks for only his or her fair share oftime, using brief, to-the-point statements. The other half of the timemembers are engaging in one-on-one conversations, which are usu-ally quite short. It may seem illogical that all those side exchangescontribute to better performance, rather than distract a team, butthe data prove otherwise.

The data weve collected on the importance of socializing notonly build on conventional wisdom but sometimes upend it. Socialtime turns out to be deeply critical to team performance, oftenaccounting for more than 50% of positive changes in communica-tion patterns, even in a setting as efficiency-focused as a call center.

Without the data theres simply no way to understand whichdynamics drive successful teams. The managers of one young softwarecompany, for instance, thought they could promote better communi-cation among employees by hosting beer meets and other events.But the badge data showed that these events had little or no effect. Incontrast, the data revealed that making the tables in the companyslunchroom longer, so that strangers sat together, had a huge impact.

PENTLAND

8

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A similarly refined view of exploration has emerged in the data.Using fresh perspectives to improve performance is hardly a surpris-ing idea; its practically management canon. But our research showsthat most companies dont do it the right way. Many organizationsweve studied seek outside counsel repeatedly from the samesources and only at certain times (when building a business case, say,or doing a postmortem on a project). The best-performing and mostcreative teams in our study, however, sought fresh perspectives con-stantly, from all other groups in (and some outside) the organization.

How to Apply the Data

For management tasks that have long defied objective analysis, liketeam building, data can now provide a foundation on which to buildbetter individual and team performance. This happens in three steps.

Step 1: VisualizationIn raw form the data dont mean much to the teams being measured.An energy score of 0.5 may be good for an individual, for example, butdescriptions of team dynamics that rely on statistical output are notparticularly user-friendly. However, using the formulas we developedto calculate energy, engagement, and exploration, we can create mapsof how a team is doing on those dimensions, visualizations that clearlyconvey the data and are instantly accessible to anyone. The mapsstarkly highlight weaknesses that teams may not have recognized.They identify low-energy, unengaged team members who, even in thevisualization, look as if theyre being ignored. (For examples, see thesidebar Mapping Teamwork.)

When we spot such people, we dig down into their individualbadge data. Are they trying to contribute and being ignored or cutoff? Do they cut others off and not listen, thereby discouragingcolleagues from seeking their opinions? Do they communicate onlywith one other team member? Do they face other people in meetingsor tend to hide from the group physically? Do they speak loudlyenough? Perhaps the leader of a team is too dominant; it may be thatshe is doing most of the talking at meetings and needs to work on


9

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lead

ers

are

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ked

and

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rras

sed

to s

ee h

ow m

uch

they

dom

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e a

team

and

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edia

tely

try

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hang

e th

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tter

n. S

hari

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uch

a m

ap w

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am c

an m

ake

it ea

sier

for l

ess

ener

getic

indi

vidu

als

to ta

lk a

bout

thei

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se o

f the

team

s d

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ecau

se d

ata

are

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scus

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bey

ond

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cks

or c

ompl

aint

s.

Enga

gem

ent

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team

mem

bers

com

mun

icat

e w

ith

one

anot

her

This

dia

gram

sho

ws

that

the

sam

e te

ams

eng

agem

ent s

kew

s he

avily

to th

e sa

me

thre

e pe

ople

(A, B

, and

C).

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mak

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an e

ffor

t to

reac

h th

ede

cisi

on m

aker

s, b

ut th

e te

am w

ithi

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am is

whe

re th

e en

gage

men

t is.

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se th

ree

peop

le m

ay b

e hi

gher

up

the

ladd

er o

r si

mpl

y m

ore

extr

over

ted,

but

that

doe

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ter.

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pat

tern

is a

ssoc

iate

d w

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low

er p

erfo

rman

ce b

ecau

se th

e te

am is

not

get

ting

idea

s or

info

rmat

ion

from

man

y of

its

mem

bers

. Lea

ders

can

use

this

map

bot

h to

ass

ess

inv

isib

le

team

mem

bers

(How

can

they

get

them

mor

e in

volv

ed?

Are

they

the

righ

t peo

ple

for

the

proj

ect?

) and

to p

lay

the

role

of a

ch

aris

mat

ic c

onne

ctor

by

bri

ngin

g to

geth

er m

embe

rs w

ho o

ught

to b

e ta

lkin

gto

one

ano

ther

and

then

hel

ping

thos

e m

embe

rs s

hare

thei

r th

inki

ng w

ith

the

enti

re g

roup

.

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orat

ion

How

team

s co

mm

unic

ate

wit

h on

e an

othe

rTh

is m

ap s

how

s th

at m

anag

emen

t is

doin

g a

lot o

f exp

lori

ng. A

ltho

ugh

its

inte

rnal

team

ene

rgy

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lati

vely

low

, tha

t is

OK.

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rgy

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t can

not b

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gh w

hen

expl

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ecau

se w

hen

you

re e

xplo

ring

you

hav

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ss ti

me

to e

ngag

e w

ith

your

ow

n te

am. I

n a

high

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ncti

onin

g or

gani

zati

on, h

owev

er, t

here

wou

ld b

e m

ore

expl

orat

ion

amon

g al

l the

team

s, a

nd y

oud

see

an

arc

betw

een,

say

, Tea

ms

3 an

d 4,

or T

eam

s 5

and

9. A

tim

e la

pse

view

of a

ll th

e te

ams

exp

lora

tion

wou

ld s

how

whe

ther

team

s w

ere

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llati

ng b

etw

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com

mun

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wit

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(sho

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(sho

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Sour

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met

ric S

olut

ions

171902 01 001-020 r3 ss.qxd 1/9/13 11:15 AM Page 11


encouraging others to participate. Energy and engagement mapswill make such problems clear. And once we know what they are, wecan begin to fix them.

Exploration maps reveal patterns of communication across organ-izations. They can expose, for instance, whether a departments man-agement is failing to engage with all its teams. Time-lapse views ofengagement and exploration will show whether teams are effectivelyoscillating between those two activities. Its also possible to layermore detail into the visualizations. We can create maps that break outdifferent types of communication among team members, to discover,for example, if teams are falling into counterproductive patterns suchas shooting off e-mail when they need more face time. (For an exam-ple, see the sidebar Mapping Communication over Time.)

PENTLAND

12

Mapping Communication over Time

THE MAPS BELOW DEPICT the communication patterns in a German banksmarketing department in the days leading up to and immediately following amajor new product launch. The department had teams of four memberseach in customer service, sales, support, development, and management.Besides collecting data on in-person interactions with sociometric badges,we gathered e-mail data to assess the balance between high-value face-to-face communication and lower-value digital messages.

We did not provide iterative feedback in this project, but if we had, by the endof week one, we would have pointed out three negative trends the group couldhave corrected: the invisibility of customer service, overreliance on e-mail,and highly uneven communication among groups. If these issues had beenaddressed, the problems with the product might have surfaced much earlier,and the responses to them would probably have improved.

Thickness ofarcs indicatesthe amount ofcommunicationbetween groups

Bottom lines indicatecommunicationvia e-mail

Top lines indicateface-to-facecommunication

How to read these maps

171902 01 001-020 r3 ss.qxd 12/28/12 4:52 PM Page 12



13

Man

agem

ent

Dev

elop

men

tSa

les

Supp

ort

Cust

omer

serv

ice

MAN

AGEM

ENT

SUPP

ORT

Sale

sCu

stom

er

serv

ice

Mos

t com

mun

icat

ion

is v

iae-

mai

l, no

t fac

e-to

-fac

e. In

an id

eal s

ituat

ion,

the

top

arcs

wou

ld b

e th

icke

r tha

nth

e bo

ttom

one

s, a

nd th

ere

wou

ld b

e st

rong

con

nect

ions

amon

g al

l tea

ms.

Man

agem

ent i

s co

mm

unic

atin

gfa

ce-t

o-fa

ce a

litt

le b

it w

ithev

ery

team

exc

ept c

usto

mer

serv

ice,

and

mos

t gro

ups

aren

tta

lkin

g m

uch

to o

ne a

noth

er.

Cust

omer

ser

vice

is th

e le

ast

conn

ecte

d to

othe

r tea

ms.

Onl

y sa

les

and

supp

ort

inte

ract

with

eac

h ot

her

a lo

t in

pers

on

mos

t lik

ely

beca

use

they

are

pre

ppin

gfo

r the

laun

ch.

Man

agem

ent

Dev

elop

men

tSu

ppor

t

Day

2: M

anag

emen

t is

cle

arly

doi

ngm

ost

of t

he c

omm

unic

atin

g.D

ay 6

: Man

agem

ent

bye-

mai

l con

tinu

es.

(continued)

171902 01 001-020 r3 ss.qxd 12/28/12 4:52 PM Page 13


PENTLAND

14

Sale

s is

now

cle

arly

enga

ging

with

dev

elop

men

t,pr

obab

ly to

lear

n th

e fin

alde

tails

of t

he p

rodu

ctoff

erin

g an

d un

ders

tand

its

tech

nica

l asp

ects

.

The

big

jum

p in

com

-m

unic

atio

n he

rem

ight

be

a re

sult

of

sale

s h

amm

erin

gde

velo

pmen

t abo

utw

hy th

e pr

oduc

t isn

tw

orki

ng a

nd h

ow it

can

be fi

xed.

For t

he fi

rst t

ime,

e-m

ail

com

mun

icat

ion

is lo

wer

than

face

-to-

face

com

-m

unic

atio

n. In

a c

risis

peop

le n

atur

ally

sta

rtta

lkin

g m

ore

in p

erso

n.

Cust

omer

serv

ice

is s

till

not i

nvol

ved.

Day

15: A

s th

e la

unch

app

roac

hes,

com

mun

icat

ion

is s

tart

lingl

y lo

w.

Day

23:

Tw

o da

ys a

fter

laun

ch, t

eam

s ar

efin

ally

com

mun

icat

ing

in p

erso

n,as

the

y tr

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a d

isas

trou

s ca

mpa

ign.

Cust

omer

serv

ice

and

supp

ort a

relo

cked

in a

ll-da

y m

eetin

gstr

ying

to p

atch

the

prob

lem

s.

Man

agem

ent

Dev

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men

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les

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omer

serv

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Man

agem

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omer

serv

ice

171902 01 001-020 r3 ss.qxd 12/28/12 4:52 PM Page 14



15

Step 2: TrainingWith maps of the data in hand, we can help teams improve perform-ance through iterative visual feedback.

Work we did with a multicultural design team composed of bothJapanese and American members offers a good example. (Visualdata are especially effective at helping far-flung and multilingualgroups, which face special communication challenges.) The teamsmaps (see the sidebar Mapping communication improvement)showed that its communication was far too uneven. They high-lighted that the Japanese members were initially reluctant to speakup, leaving the team both low energy and unengaged.

Mapping Communication Improvement

Our data show that far-flung and mixed-language teams often struggle to gel.Distance plays a role: Electronic communication doesnt create the sameenergy and engagement that face-to-face communication does. Culturalnorms play a role too. Visual feedback on communication patterns can help.

For one week we gathered data on a team composed of Japanese andAmericans that were brainstorming a new design together in Japan. Eachday the team was shown maps of its communication patterns and givensimple guidance about what makes good communication (active but equalparticipation).

(continued)

171902 01 001-020 r3 ss.qxd 12/28/12 4:52 PM Page 15


PENTLAND

16

Day 1The two Japanese team members (bottom and lower left) are not engaged,and a team within a team seems to have formed around the member at thetop right.

Day 7The team has improved remarkably. Not only are the Japanese members con-tributing more to energy and engagement (with the one at the bottom becominga high-energy, highly engaged team member) but some of the Day 1 dominators(on the lower right, for example) have distributed their energy better.

Every day for a week, we provided team members a visualization ofthat days work, with some light interpretation of what we saw. (Keepin mind that we didnt know the substance of their work, just how theywere interacting.) We also told them that the ideal visualization wouldshow members contributing equally and more overall contributions.By day seven, the maps showed, the teams energy and engagementhad improved vastly, especially for the two Japanese members, one ofwhom had become a driving force.

The notion that visual feedback helps people improve quicklyshouldnt be surprising to anyone who has ever had a golf swinganalyzed on video or watched himself deliver a speech. Now we

171902 01 001-020 r3 ss.qxd 12/28/12 4:52 PM Page 16



17

have the visual tools to likewise improve teamwork through objec-tive analysis.

Step 3: Fine-tuning performanceWe have seen that by using visualizations as a training tool, teamscan quickly improve their patterns of communication. But does thattranslate to improved performance? Yes. The third and final step inusing the badge data is to map energy and engagement against per-formance metrics. In the case of the Japanese-American team, forexample, we mapped the improved communication patterns againstthe teams self-reported daily productivity. The closer the patternscame to those of our high-performance ideal, the higher productiv-ity rose.

Weve duplicated this result several times over, running similarfeedback loops with teams aiming to be more creative and withexecutive teams looking for more cohesiveness. In every case theself-reporting on effectiveness mapped to the improved patterns ofcommunication.

Through such maps, we often make important discoveries. Oneof the best examples comes from the banks call center. For eachteam there, we mapped energy and engagement against averagehandling time (AHT), which we indicated with color. (See the side-bar Mapping Communication Against Performance.) That mapclearly showed that the most efficient work was done by high-energy, high-engagement teams. But surprisingly, it also showedthat low-energy, low-engagement teams could outperform teamsthat were unbalancedteams that had high energy and lowengagement, or low energy and high engagement. The mapsrevealed that the manager needed to keep energy and engagementin balance as he worked to strengthen them.

If a hard metric like AHT isnt available, we can map patternsagainst subjective measures. We have asked teams to rate theirdays on a scale of creativity or frustration, for example, andthen seen which patterns are associated with highly creative or frustrating days. Teams often describe this feedback as arevelation.

171902 01 001-020 r3 ss.qxd 12/28/12 4:52 PM Page 17


Successful tacticsThe obvious question at this point is, Once I recognize I need toimprove energy and engagement, how do I go about doing it? Whatare the best techniques for moving those measurements?

Simple approaches such as reorganizing office space and seatingare effective. So is setting a personal examplewhen a managerhimself actively encourages even participation and conducts moreface-to-face communication. Policy changes can improve teams,too. Eschewing Roberts Rules of Order, for example, is a great wayto promote change. In some cases, switching out team members andbringing in new blood may be the best way to improve the energyand engagement of the team, though weve found that this is oftenunnecessary. Most people, given feedback, can learn to interruptless, say, or to face other people, or to listen more actively. Leadersshould use the data to force change within their teams.

PENTLAND

18

Mapping Communication AgainstPerformance

VISUALIZATIONS CAN BE USED to compare energy and engagement withestablished performance metrics. The map below plots the energy and engage-ment levels of several teams at a bank call center against the centers metric ofefficiency, average handling time (AHT).

The expected team efficiency is based on a statistical analysis of actual teamAHT scores over six weeks. Blue indicates high efficiency; red low efficiency.High-energy, high-engagement teams are the most efficient, the map shows.But it also indicates that low-energy, low-engagement teams outperformteams that are out of balance, with high energy and low engagement, or lowenergy and high engagement. This means the call center manager can pullmore than one lever to improve performance. Points A and B are equallyefficient, for example, but reflect different combinations of energy andengagement.

The manager wanted to raise energy and engagement in lockstep. We sug-gested instituting a common coffee break for each team at the call center.This increased the number of interactions, especially informal ones, andraised the teams energy levels. And because all team members took a breakat once, interactions were evenly distributed, increasing engagement. Whenwe mapped energy and engagement against AHT afterward, the results were

171902 01 001-020 r3 ss.qxd 12/28/12 4:52 PM Page 18



19

The ideal team playerWe can also measure individuals against an ideal. In both productiv-ity-focused and creativity-focused teams, we have discovered thedata signature of what we consider the best type of team member.Some might call these individuals natural leaders. We call themcharismatic connectors. Badge data show that these people circu-late actively, engaging people in short, high-energy conversations.They are democratic with their timecommunicating with everyoneequally and making sure all team members get a chance to contribute.Theyre not necessarily extroverts, although they feel comfortableapproaching other people. They listen as much as or more than theytalk and are usually very engaged with whomever theyre listening to.We call it energized but focused listening.

The best team players also connect their teammates with oneanother and spread ideas around. And they are appropriately

High

HighLow

Energy

Enga

gem

ent

Low

Effici

ency

Averageperformance

before

Averageperformance

afterOnce a common coffeebreak was instituted,efficiency among theteams increased by 8%

Hig

h

A

B

clear: Efficiency in the center increased by 8%, on average, and by as muchas 20% for the worst-performing teams.

171902 01 001-020 r3 ss.qxd 12/28/12 4:52 PM Page 19


exploratory, seeking ideas from outside the group but not at theexpense of group engagement. In a study of executives attending anintensive one-week executive education class at MIT, we found thatthe more of these charismatic connectors a team had, the more suc-cessful it was.

Team building is indeed a science, but its young and evolving.Now that weve established patterns of communication as the singlemost important thing to measure when gauging the effectiveness ofa group, we can begin to refine the data and processes to createmore-sophisticated measurements, dig deeper into the analysis, anddevelop new tools that sharpen our view of team member types andteam types.

The sensors that enable this science are evolving as well. As theyenter their seventh generation, theyre becoming as small and un-obtrusive as traditional ID badges, while the amount and types ofdata they can collect are increasing. Weve begun to experimentwith apps that present teams and their leaders with real-time feed-back on group communications. And the applications for the sen-sors are expanding beyond the team to include an ever-broader setof situations.

We imagine a companys entire staff wearing badges over anextended period of time, creating big data in which wed find thepatterns for everything from team building to leadership to negotia-tions to performance reviews. We imagine changing the nature of thespace we work in, and maybe even the tools we use to communicate,on the basis of the data. We believe we can vastly improve long-distance work and cross-cultural teams, which are so crucial in aglobal economy, by learning their patterns and adjusting them. Weare beginning to create what I call the Gods-eye view of the organ-ization. But spiritual as that may sound, this view is rooted in evi-dence and data. It is an amazing view, and it will change howorganizations work.

Originally published in April 2012. Reprint R1204C

PENTLAND

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171902 01 001-020 r3 ss.qxd 12/28/12 4:52 PM Page 20


O21

Why Teams Dont WorkAn Interview with J. Richard Hackman. by Diane Coutu

OVER THE PAST COUPLE of decades, a cult has grown up around teams.Even in a society as fiercely independent as America, teams are con-sidered almost sacrosanct. The belief that working in teams makesus more creative and productive is so widespread that when facedwith a challenging new task, leaders are quick to assume that teamsare the best way to get the job done.

Not so fast, says J. Richard Hackman, the Edgar Pierce Professor ofSocial and Organizational Psychology at Harvard University and aleading expert on teams. Hackman has spent a career exploringandquestioningthe wisdom of teams. To learn from his insights, HBRsenior editor Diane Coutu interviewed Hackman in his Harvard office.In the course of their discussion, he revealed just how bad peopleoften are at teamwork. Most of the time, his research shows, teammembers dont even agree on what the team is supposed to be doing.Getting agreement is the leaders job, and she must be willing to takegreat personal and professional risks to set the teams direction. And ifthe leader isnt disciplined about managing who is on the team andhow it is set up, the odds are slim that a team will do a good job.

What follows is an edited version of that conversation.

You begin your book Leading Teams with a pop quiz: When peoplework together to build a house, will the job probably (a) get done faster,(b) take longer to finish, or (c) not get done?

171902 02 021-034 r1 el.qxd 12/28/12 3:02 PM Page 21


COUTU

22

That multiple choice question actually appeared on a standard-ized fourth-grade test in Ohio, and the obvious answer, of course,is supposed to be athe work gets done faster. I love that anecdotebecause it illustrates how early were told that teamwork is good.People tend to think that teams are the democraticand the effi-cientway to get things done. I have no question that when youhave a team, the possibility exists that it will generate magic, pro-ducing something extraordinary, a collective creation of previouslyunimagined quality or beauty. But dont count on it. Research con-sistently shows that teams underperform, despite all the extraresources they have. Thats because problems with coordination andmotivation typically chip away at the benefits of collaboration. Andeven when you have a strong and cohesive team, its often in compe-tition with other teams, and that dynamic can also get in the way ofreal progress. So you have two strikes against you right from thestart, which is one reason why having a team is often worse thanhaving no team at all.

Youve said that for a team to be successful, it needs to be real. What does that mean?

At the very least, it means that teams have to be bounded. It mayseem silly to say this, but if youre going to lead a team, you ought tofirst make sure that you know whos on it. In our recent book SeniorLeadership Teams, Ruth Wageman, Debra Nunes, James Burruss, andI collected and analyzed data on more than 120 top teams around theworld. Not surprisingly, we found that almost every senior team westudied thought that it had set unambiguous boundaries. Yet whenwe asked members to describe their team, fewer than 10% agreedabout who was on it. And these were teams of senior executives!

Often the CEO is responsible for the fuzziness of team bound-aries. Fearful of seeming exclusionaryor, on the other end of thespectrum, determined to put people on the team for purely politicalreasonsthe chief executive frequently creates a dysfunctionalteam. In truth, putting together a team involves some ruthless deci-sions about membership; not everyone who wants to be on the teamshould be included, and some individuals should be forced off.

171902 02 021-034 r1 el.qxd 12/28/12 3:02 PM Page 22


WHY TEAMS DONT WORK

23

Idea in BriefContrary to conventional wisdom,teams may be your worst option fortackling a challenging task. Prob-lems with coordination, motivation,and competition can badly damageteam performance.

Even the best leaders cant make ateam deliver great results. But youcan increase the likelihood ofsuccessby setting the rightconditions. For example:

Designate a deviant.Appoint a naysayer who will

challenge the teams desire fortoo much homogeneity (whichstifles creativity).

Avoid double digits. Build teams of no more than ninepeople. Too many more, and thenumber of links between mem-bers becomes unmanageable.

Keep the team together.Established teams work moreeffectively than those whosecomposition changesconstantly.

We worked with a large financial services firm where the CFOwasnt allowed on the executive committee because he was clearly ateam destroyer. He was disinclined toward teamwork, he wasunwilling to work at finding collective solutions, and every team hewas on got into trouble. The CEO invited the CFO to stay in his rolebecause he was a truly able executive, but he was not allowed on thesenior executive team. Although there were some bruised feelings atfirst, in the end the CFO was much happier because he didnt have tobe in boring team meetings, and the team functioned much betterwithout him. The arrangement worked because the CEO communi-cated extensively with the CFO both before and after every execu-tive committee meeting. And in the CFOs absence, the committeecould become a real team.

You also say that a team needs a compelling direction. How does itget one?

There is no one right way to set a direction; the responsibility canfall to the team leader or to someone in the organization outside theteam or even to the team itself in the case of partnerships or boardsof directors. But however its done, setting a direction is emotionallydemanding because it always involves the exercise of authority, and

171902 02 021-034 r1 el.qxd 12/28/12 3:02 PM Page 23


COUTU

24

that inevitably arouses angst and ambivalencefor both the personexercising it and the people on the receiving end. Leaders who areemotionally mature are willing and able to move toward anxiety-inspiring situations as they establish a clear, challenging team direc-tion. But in doing so, a leader sometimes encounters resistance sointense that it can place his or her job at risk.

That point was dramatically brought home to me a few years agoby a participant in an executive seminar I was teaching. Id beentalking about how leaders who set direction successfully areunafraid to assume personal responsibility for the mission of theteam. I mentioned John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., andI got carried away and said that people who read the New Testamentknew that Jesus did not convene little team meetings to decide the

Additional ideas for getting thebest performance from your team.

Be Ruthless About Membership

Putting together a team involvessome hard decisions about whowill contribute best to accomplish-ing the teams goals. Not everyonewho wants to be on a team shouldbe included, and some individualsshould be forced off.

Example: In a large financialservices firm, the CFO, abrilliant individual contributor,wasnt allowed on the executivecommittee because he wasclearly disinclined towardteamwork and unwilling towork at finding collectivesolutions. The team functionedmuch better without him. Thearrangement worked because

the CEO communicatedextensively with the CFO beforeand after every executive-committee meeting.

Set a Compelling Direction

Make sure your team membersknowand agree onwhat theyresupposed to be doing together.Unless you articulate a cleardirection, different members willlikely pursue different agendas.

Embrace Your Own Quirkiness

Theres no one right style forleading a team, so dont try to apesomeone elses leadershipapproach. You bring your ownstrengths and weaknesses to theeffort. Exploit what youre great at,and get help in the areas whereyoure not as competent.

Idea in Practice

171902 02 021-034 r1 el.qxd 12/28/12 3:02 PM Page 24


WHY TEAMS DONT WORK

25

goals of the ministry. One of the executives in the class interruptedme and said, Are you aware that youve just talked about two assas-sinations and a crucifixion?

What are some common fallacies about teams?People generally think that teams that work together harmo-

niously are better and more productive than teams that dont. But ina study we conducted on symphonies, we actually found thatgrumpy orchestras played together slightly better than orchestras inwhich all the musicians were really quite happy.

Thats because the cause-and-effect is the reverse of what mostpeople believe: When were productive and weve done somethinggood together (and are recognized for it), we feel satisfied, not the

Focus Your Coaching on GroupProcesses

For your team to reap the benefitsof any coaching you provide, youllneed to focus that coaching onenhancing group processes, not onguiding and correcting individualbehavior. Also, timing is everything.Youll need to know how to:

Run a launch meeting, so members become oriented toand engaged with their tasks.

Help the team conduct midpointreviews on whats functioningwelland what isnt. This willenable the team to fine-tune itsperformance strategy.

Take a few minutes when thework is finished to reflect onwhat went welland poorlyand to identify ways team

members can make the best useof their knowledge and experi-ence the next time around.

Protect Your Deviant

The deviant you designate will saythings that nobody else is willingto articulatesuch as Wait aminute, why are we even doingthis at all? or Weve got to stopand maybe change direction.

These observations can open upcreative discussionbut they alsoraise others anxiety levels. Peoplemay feel compelled to crack downon the deviant and try to get him tostop asking difficult questionsmaybe even knock him off the team.

Dont let that happen: If you loseyour deviant, your team canbecome mediocre.

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other way around. In other words, the mood of the orchestra mem-bers after a performance says more about how well they did than themood beforehand.

Another fallacy is that bigger teams are better than small onesbecause they have more resources to draw upon. A colleague and I once did some research showing that as a team gets bigger, the num-ber of links that need to be managed among members goes up at anaccelerating, almost exponential rate. Its managing the links betweenmembers that gets teams into trouble. My rule of thumb is no doubledigits. In my courses, I never allow teams of more than six students.Big teams usually wind up just wasting everybodys time. Thats whyhaving a huge senior leadership teamsay, one that includes all theCEOs direct reportsmay be worse than having no team at all.

Perhaps the most common misperception about teams, though,is that at some point team members become so comfortable andfamiliar with one another that they start accepting one anothersfoibles, and as a result performance falls off. Except for one specialtype of team, I have not been able to find a shred of evidence to sup-port that premise. There is a study that shows that R&D teams doneed an influx of new talent to maintain creativity and freshnessbut only at the rate of one person every three to four years. The prob-lem almost always is not that a team gets stale but, rather, that itdoesnt have the chance to settle in.

So newness is a liability?Absolutely. The research confirming that is incontrovertible. Con-

sider crews flying commercial airplanes. The National Transporta-tion Safety Board found that 73% of the incidents in its databaseoccurred on a crews first day of flying together, before people hadthe chance to learn through experience how best to operate as ateamand 44% of those took place on a crews very first flight. Also,a NASA study found that fatigued crews who had a history of work-ing together made about half as many errors as crews composed ofrested pilots who had not flown together before.

So why dont airlines stick to the same crews?

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Because it isnt efficient from a financial perspective. Financially,you get the most from your capital equipment and labor by treatingeach airplane and each pilot as an individual unit and then using analgorithm to maximize their utilization. That means that pilots oftenhave to dash up and down the concourses just as passengers do, andsometimes youll have a pilot who will fly two or three differentaircraft with two or three different crews in the course of a singledaywhich is not so wise if you look at the research. I once asked anoperations researcher of an airline to estimate how long it wouldtake, if he and I were assigned to work together on a trip, before wecould expect to work together again. He calculated that it would be5.6 years. Clearly, this is not good from a passenger point of view.

The counterexample, by the way, is the Strategic Air Command,or SAC, which would have delivered nuclear bombs had that becomenecessary during the Cold War years. SAC teams performed betterthan any other flight crews that we studied. They trained together asa crew, and they became superb at working together because theyhad to. When youre working together in real time and there can beno mistakes, then you keep your teams together for years and yearsrather than constantly change their composition.

If teams need to stay together to achieve the best performance, howdo you prevent them from becoming complacent?

This is where what I call a deviant comes in. Every team needs adeviant, someone who can help the team by challenging the ten-dency to want too much homogeneity, which can stifle creativityand learning. Deviants are the ones who stand back and say, Well,wait a minute, why are we even doing this at all? What if we lookedat the thing backwards or turned it inside out? Thats when peoplesay, Oh, no, no, no, thats ridiculous, and so the discussion aboutwhats ridiculous comes up. Unlike the CFO I mentioned before, whoderailed the team by shutting down discussions, the deviant opensup more ideas, and that gets you a lot more originality. In ourresearch, weve looked carefully at both teams that producedsomething original and those that were merely average, wherenothing really sparkled. It turned out that the teams with deviants

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outperformed teams without them. In many cases, deviant thinkingis a source of great innovation.

I would add, though, that often the deviant veers from the normat great personal cost. Deviants are the individuals who are willingto say the thing that nobody else is willing to articulate. The deviantraises peoples level of anxiety, which is a brave thing to do. Whenthe boat is floating with the current, it really is extraordinarily coura-geous for somebody to stand up and say, Weve got to pause andprobably change direction. Nobody on the team wants to hear that,which is precisely why many team leaders crack down on deviantsand try to get them to stop asking difficult questions, maybe evenknock them off the team. And yet its when you lose the deviant thatthe team can become mediocre.

What makes a team effective, and how can a teams leader make itperform better?

A good team will satisfy its internal or external clients, becomestronger as a unit as time passes, and foster the learning and growthof its individual members. But even the best leader on the planetcant make a team do well. All anyone can do is increase the likeli-hood that a team will be great by putting into place five conditions.(See the sidebar How to Build a Team.) And the leader still will haveno guarantees that she will create a magical team. Teams create theirown realities and control their own destinies to a greater extent, andfar sooner in their existence, than most team leaders realize.

In 1990 I edited a collection of essays by colleagues who had stud-ied teams performing diverse tasks in 27 organizationseverythingfrom a childrens theater company to a mental-health-treatmentteam to a beer-sales-and-delivery team. In those studies, we foundthat the things that happen the first time a group meets stronglyaffect how the group operates throughout its entire life. Indeed, thefirst few minutes of the start of any social system are the mostimportant because they establish not only where the group is goingbut also what the relationship will be between the team leader andthe group, and what basic norms of conduct will be expected andenforced.

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How to Build a Team

IN HIS BOOK LEADING TEAMS, J. Richard Hackman sets out five basic condi-tions that leaders of companies and other organizations must fulfill in orderto create and maintain effective teams:

1. Teams must be real. People have to know who is on the team and whois not. Its the leaders job to make that clear.

2. Teams need a compelling direction. Members need to know, andagree on, what theyre supposed to be doing together. Unless a leaderarticulates a clear direction, there is a real risk that different memberswill pursue different agendas.

3. Teams need enabling structures. Teams that have poorly designedtasks, the wrong number or mix of members, or fuzzy and unenforcednorms of conduct invariably get into trouble.

4. Teams need a supportive organization. The organizational contextincluding the reward system, the human resource system, and theinformation systemmust facilitate teamwork.

5. Teams need expert coaching. Most executive coaches focus on indi-vidual performance, which does not significantly improve teamwork.Teams need coaching as a group in team processesespecially at thebeginning, midpoint, and end of a team project.

I once asked Christopher Hogwood, the distinguished conductorfor many years of the Handel and Haydn Society in Boston, howimportant the first rehearsal was when he served as an orchestrasguest conductor. What do you mean, the first rehearsal? he asked.All I have is the first few minutes. He went on to explain thattheres nothing he pays greater attention to than the way he startsthe first rehearsal. Thats because he knows that the orchestra mem-bers will make a very quick assessment about whether or not theyregoing to make great music together, or whether he is just going to getin their way.

I do think there is one thing leaders such as Hogwood and otherscan do to improve the chances that a team will become somethingspecial, and that is to embrace their own quirkiness. You shouldnttry to lead like Jeff Bezos, because you are not Jeff Bezos. Eachleader brings to the task his or her own strengths and weaknesses.

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Off and Running: Barack Obama Jump-Starts His Team

by Michael Beschloss

IF THE LAUNCH OF a team is as critical as Professor J. Richard Hackman says,then Barack Obama has done pretty well. He appointed his administrationstop officials much faster than most presidents do. Given the monumentalcrises that faced him the moment he was elected, he had to move quickly.The downside of speed was that some of his choices didnt work outnotablyBill Richardson and Tom Daschle. Obama has certainly brought onto his teampeople of strong temperaments and contrasting views, starting with HillaryClinton at the State Department and Jim Jones at the National Security Coun-cil. This suggests that we have a president who is unusually sure of his ownability to absorb differing opinions. Appointing people like Clinton also showshis eagerness to harness the talent of his former opponents. Compare thatwith the record of George W. Bush; his people told many job seekers who hadsupported John McCain in the 2000 Republican primaries, Sorry, youbacked the wrong horse!

Of course, Obama is taking a risk by hiring so many strong and contentiouspersonalities. He will inevitably have to spend a lot of time and energy serv-ing as referee. This is what happened with Franklin Roosevelt, who alsobrought strong-minded figures into his government. One difference withObama, however, is that FDR temperamentally loved the infighting. He likedto pit people against one another, believing that competition evoked the bestperformance from everyone. At times FDR actually enjoyed making his under-lings suffer. I dont think Obama does.

Most presidents prefer a happy ship, and in some cases their definition of loy-alty includes not rocking the boat on major administration programs. RichardNixon fired his interior secretary, Walter Hickel, for opposing his Vietnam Warpolicies. There was a dissenter (what Hackman calls a deviant) on LyndonJohnsons teamUndersecretary of State George Ball, who strongly opposedthe Vietnam War. Johnson would cite Ball when people complained that hesurrounded himself with yes-men, but in fact Ball had little influence whenLBJ met with top officials on Vietnam. Everyone in the group knew thatJohnson didnt take Balls antiwar arguments very seriously. If you really want

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dissenting views, better to use the Roosevelt-Obama model, where they cancome from almost any member of the teamand not just from one desig-nated rabble-rouser.

The reappointment of Bushs defense secretary, Robert Gates, also revealsObamas self-confidence. Hes clearly willing to concede that there are thingshe doesnt know, so he appointed someone with more than three decades ofnational security experience. This decision has the historical echo of JohnKennedys near-reappointment in 1961 of Dwight Eisenhowers defense secre-tary, who coincidentally was named Thomas Gates. Like Obama, Kennedywas a young president with little national security background and thought itmight reassure people to have the previous defense secretary stay on at thePentagon. Like Obama, JFK also suspected that a number of things might gowrong with national security during his first year as president. He felt thatAmericans might be less likely to blame the Democratic president if a Repub-lican secretary of defense was there at his side. In the end Kennedy did nothave the stomach for the risk of keeping a Republican appointee at thePentagon. Obama did.

Obamas first months in office prove the importance of having a presidentwho can convey his view of the country and the world and why he thinks hisplans will work. One of Hillary Clintons biggest criticisms a year ago was thatObama gave great speeches but that it didnt have all that much to do withbeing a strong president. Obama argued that it did, and he was right. LikeRoosevelts addresses in 1933 and Reagans in 1981, his public utterancesespecially his speech to Congress in Februaryhave done a lot to gainacceptance for his programs from skeptical Americans. However jaded theymay be about government, Americanseven those who didnt vote for himare still inclined to turn to their president to explain foreign and domesticcrises. Imagine how much more anxious they might feel now if Obama did notdo this so effectively. Unfortunately for us all, its likely that hell have to callmore on that skill as the crisis mounts in the months ahead.

Michael Beschloss has written nine books about presidential leadership, mostrecently Presidential Courage (Simon & Schuster, 2007).

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Exploit the daylights out of the stuff youre great at, and get help inthe areas where youre not so good. Dont try to ape any leadershipmodel or team, because theres no one right style for leading a team.There are many different ways to create the conditions for effective-ness, sustain them, and help teams take full advantage of them. Thebest team leaders are like jazz players, improvising constantly asthey go along.

How good are companies at providing a supportive context for teams?Perversely, the organizations with the best human resource

departments often do things that are completely at odds withgood team behavior. Thats because HR departments tend to putin place systems that are really good at guiding, directing, and cor-recting individual behavior. Take a personnel system that hasbeen honed by industrial psychologists to identify the skills of aparticular job and test individual employees on those skills. Insuch a system, the HR department will set up training to developthe right people in the right way. The problem is this is allabout the individual. This single-minded focus on the individualemployee is one of the main reasons that teams dont do as well asthey might in organizations with strong HR departments. Just lookat our research on senior executive teams. We found that coachingindividual team members did not do all that much to help execu-tive teams perform better.

For the team to reap the benefits of coaching,

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