Effective leadership is the key to unlocking your team’s true potential. In “Good Team, Bad Team: Lead Your People to Go After Big Challenges, Not Each Other,” Sarah Thurber and Blair Miller provide invaluable insights and strategies to help you navigate the complexities of team dynamics and drive your team towards success.
Continue reading to discover how you can transform your leadership approach and create a high-performing team that tackles challenges head-on.
Table of Contents
Genres
Communication Skills, Management, Leadership, Corporate Culture, Career, Success, Business, Personal Development, Psychology, Organizational Behavior, Teamwork, Motivation, Self-Help
“Good Team, Bad Team” is a comprehensive guide for leaders seeking to create and maintain high-performing teams. The authors, Sarah Thurber and Blair Miller, draw upon their extensive experience in team dynamics to provide practical strategies and insights. The book explores the fundamental differences between good and bad teams, emphasizing the crucial role of leadership in shaping team behavior and performance.
Thurber and Miller delve into the various challenges leaders face, such as managing conflict, fostering collaboration, and aligning team goals with organizational objectives. They provide a framework for understanding team dynamics and offer actionable steps to address common pitfalls. The authors stress the importance of effective communication, trust-building, and creating a positive team culture.
Throughout the book, readers are presented with real-world examples and case studies that illustrate the principles discussed. The authors also include practical exercises and assessments to help leaders apply the concepts to their own teams. “Good Team, Bad Team” serves as a valuable resource for leaders at all levels, providing them with the tools and knowledge necessary to cultivate a team that thrives in the face of challenges.
Review
“Good Team, Bad Team” is a must-read for any leader looking to enhance their team’s performance and create a positive work environment. Thurber and Miller’s expertise shines through as they provide clear, actionable advice backed by research and real-world experience. The book’s strength lies in its practical approach, offering readers a step-by-step guide to transforming their teams.
The authors’ insights into team dynamics are invaluable, helping leaders understand the underlying factors that contribute to a team’s success or failure. They emphasize the importance of self-awareness and emotional intelligence in leadership, encouraging readers to reflect on their own behaviors and their impact on the team.
One of the book’s standout features is its emphasis on creating a culture of psychological safety, where team members feel comfortable speaking up, taking risks, and learning from failures. Thurber and Miller provide concrete strategies for fostering this type of environment, which is essential for innovation and growth.
While the book is comprehensive, it does not delve deeply into specific industries or sectors. However, the principles and strategies presented are universal and can be applied to teams in any field.
Overall, “Good Team, Bad Team” is an essential resource for leaders seeking to create high-performing teams. Its practical advice, real-world examples, and actionable strategies make it a valuable addition to any leader’s bookshelf.
Introduction: Uncover secrets to forging high-performing, cohesive teams
Good Team, Bad Team (2024) provides a powerful guide to transforming team dynamics and performance. Discover how to leverage thinking preferences, foster trust, and build a shared purpose to unlock your team’s full potential. Get ready to elevate collaboration and achieve remarkable results.
Have you ever been part of a team that just couldn’t seem to click? Where misunderstandings were rife, tensions were high, and progress felt like an uphill battle? Or, conversely, have you had the pleasure of working with a group that hummed like a well-oiled machine, where diverse perspectives aligned toward a common goal and incredible results seemed almost effortless? What sets these two experiences apart?
In this summary, we’ll dive into the key factors that distinguish high-performing teams from those that struggle. You’ll gain insights into how to harness the power of thinking preferences, clarify your team’s purpose, build trust, and master the art of problem-solving. Armed with these tools, you’ll be equipped to transform a group of individuals into a true team, one that can navigate even the toughest challenges with resilience and grace. Whether you’re a seasoned leader or just starting out, these lessons will help you unlock the full potential of your team and achieve goals you never thought possible.
Cognitive diversity unlocks team potential
Have you ever found yourself mystified by the way a colleague approaches a problem? You might think their strategy is slow, or scattered, or just plain wrong. But here’s the thing: chances are, they’re thinking the exact same thing about you.
It turns out that we all have measurable differences in the way we like to solve problems. These are called thinking preferences. Once you understand them, you gain a powerful lens that can help you interpret behaviors that once seemed baffling.
According to research by Gerard Puccio at SUNY Buffalo, there are four main thinking preferences that people tend toward when tackling a challenge: clarifying, ideating, developing, and implementing.
People who prefer to clarify like to really analyze and understand a problem before proceeding. They ask lots of questions and gather data. In contrast, those who prefer to ideate want to explore possibilities and generate ideas right away. People with a preference to develop like to compare options and craft detailed solutions. And those who prefer to implement want to spring into action and get things done.
Most of us have one or two dominant preferences. And we tend to assume everyone else thinks the same way we do. So when a colleague takes a radically different approach, we’re often quick to label it as wrong or problematic, rather than simply different.
This leads to all sorts of misunderstandings and friction. The person who prefers to clarify gets frustrated when the ideator wants to brainstorm without fully defining the problem first. The implementer gets impatient with the developer’s desire to perfect the plan before acting.
So, the next time you find yourself judging a teammate’s problem-solving style, hit pause. Consider that their thinking preference may simply be different from yours. In fact, having diverse preferences on a team is a strength, not a weakness. You need all four types of thinking to produce the best solutions.
To leverage cognitive diversity, work to understand each person’s unique perspective. What energizes them? What strengths do they bring? Assign tasks that play to those strengths. The clarifier can gather data. The ideator can brainstorm possibilities. The developer can compare options and craft a plan. And the implementer can rally the team to action.
When you recognize thinking preferences, you stop seeing others as obstacles and start seeing them as assets. And that leads to much more effective collaboration – and better results. So embrace the differences. They’re the key to unlocking your team’s true potential.
Let’s talk about a critical factor that can make or break a team: purpose. When you’re part of a team, it’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day tasks and lose sight of the bigger picture. But without a clear and shared understanding of why the team exists and what it’s trying to achieve, even the most talented individuals can flounder.
Consider the story of Etienne, a division president tasked with bringing a groundbreaking new product to market. He was leading a team of 150 experts, but they were a disjointed group, worn down by corporate reorganizations. To unite them, Etienne knew he needed to clarify the team’s purpose in a way that everyone could understand and rally behind.
So he asked each functional team to create a simple poster explaining their purpose, the key questions they were trying to answer, and an animal mascot representing their team. The results were revelatory. Suddenly, the highly technical work of chemists, data scientists, and legal experts was distilled into clear, relatable statements. The whole team could see how their individual roles fit into the larger mission.
This clarity unleashed a wave of collaboration and innovation. People started proactively sharing ideas across functions. They created breakthroughs that resulted in a record-breaking number of patents. Together, they submitted work to the FDA that set a new gold standard, paving the way for the product’s success. All because they were aligned around a common purpose.
So what can you do to harness the power of purpose for your own team? Start by answering the fundamental question Why do we exist? What are we trying to achieve together? Engage the whole team in articulating this, so everyone feels a sense of ownership.
One powerful tool is to create a team charter. This document captures essential information like the team’s purpose, goals, roles, and communication plan. Importantly, it’s created collaboratively, not handed down from above. The very act of building it together drives alignment and commitment.
But here’s the thing: clarifying purpose isn’t a one-and-done activity. It’s like bowling with bumpers – they keep you on track, but as soon as they disappear, it’s easy to drift into the gutter. So once you’ve established your team’s purpose, keep reinforcing it. Refer back to it frequently, especially when onboarding new members or making tough decisions.
Imagine if, in every meeting, you started by revisiting the team’s purpose. It may feel repetitive at first, but that repetition is precisely what embeds the purpose in everyone’s minds and actions. It becomes the North Star guiding the team’s efforts.
When you take the time to clarify and continually champion your team’s purpose, you give everyone’s work meaning. People can see how their individual contributions ladder up to something larger. They’re not just going through the motions – they’re driving toward a shared goal.
And that’s when the magic happens. That’s when a group of individuals becomes a true team, unlocking their collective potential. So if you want to lead a great team, start with purpose. It’s the foundation on which everything else is built.
Foster trust, the catalyst for high performance
Now that we’ve explored the power of thinking preferences and the importance of a clear purpose, let’s turn our attention to another critical factor in team success: trust. When you’re leading a team, fostering trust is one of your most important jobs. But as you may have experienced, it’s not always easy.
Consider the cautionary tale of Shyla, who led a team of biomedical engineers. When her company hit a rough patch, Shyla started communicating less openly, sharing information only on a need-to-know basis. Her team quickly caught on and lost trust in her leadership. Top performers started looking for other jobs. Shyla learned the hard way that trust follows the laws of physics: whatever you give your team, they give you back in equal measure.
So what can you do to build trust? Research by Paul J. Zak shows that trust produces physical changes in the brain. Zak found that in high-trust companies, people reported 74 percent less stress, 106 percent more energy, and 50 percent higher productivity than in low-trust environments. To foster trust, start by sharing information broadly and building relationships intentionally. Recognize excellence. Give people discretion. Show vulnerability. These behaviors stimulate oxytocin production in the brain, generating feelings of trust.
But even in a trusting environment, teams don’t become high-performing overnight. They go through predictable stages: forming, storming, norming, and performing. In storming, conflicts arise as people jockey for influence – and some teams get stuck here. That’s where thinking preferences come in.
Research shows we implicitly prefer to work with people who share our thinking style. But a team full of similar thinkers is not ideal – cognitive diversity leads to better solutions. The trouble is, we often mistake thinking preferences for personality flaws, labeling differently minded colleagues “difficult.”
By educating your team about thinking preferences, you can help them navigate storming more smoothly. People start to see that the colleague they found frustrating is actually contributing a valuable perspective. They develop a shared language to discuss differences productively. Understanding greases the wheels of trust and collaboration.
So, if you want to speed your team’s journey to high performance, make trust your top priority. Be transparent and relationship-oriented. And help your team understand thinking preferences, so they can leverage their cognitive diversity instead of being derailed by it. With trust and self-awareness, your team can weather any storm and reach that elusive performing stage – where the magic happens.
Master the art of structured problem-solving
We’ve explored the critical roles of thinking preferences, shared purpose, and trust in building high-performing teams. But there’s one more piece of the puzzle that can take your team’s effectiveness to the next level: mastering the art of problem-solving.
In today’s work world, the challenges we face are becoming increasingly complex. Gone are the days when a simple brainstorming session could yield a clear solution. Now, we’re grappling with multi-faceted problems that require a more structured, strategic approach.
That’s where having a robust problem-solving process comes in. By equipping your team with a shared framework for tackling challenges, you can channel their diverse thinking styles and expertise toward finding truly innovative solutions.
At the heart of effective problem-solving are again the four key concepts: clarifying, ideating, developing, and implementing. Clarifying involves understanding deeply the problem at hand. Ideating is about generating a wide range of potential solutions. Developing means refining and optimizing those solutions. And implementing is about bringing the chosen solution to life.
Interestingly, if you look under the hood of various popular problem-solving methods like Design Thinking, Lean Six Sigma, or Agile, you’ll find these same four thinking skills powering the engine. They may use different terminology or emphasize certain stages more than others, but the core elements are the same.
So, how can you harness the power of this problem-solving framework for your own team?
Start by getting everyone on the same page. Introduce the four thinking skills and explain how they fit into the problem-solving process. This shared language will help team members understand each other’s contributions and smooth out collaboration.
Next, make sure you’re allocating adequate time and resources to each stage of problem-solving. It’s easy to jump straight to ideating or implementing, but skimping on clarifying or developing can lead to half-baked solutions. Encourage your team members to be thorough in their exploration.
It’s also important to match the right thinking skills to the right people. Remember those thinking preferences we discussed earlier? Someone who prefers clarifying may be your best bet for leading the problem analysis phase, while a strong implementer can drive the execution stage. Aligning tasks with natural strengths boosts both efficiency and engagement.
Finally, embrace iteration. Rarely will you land on the perfect solution on the first go. Build in time for prototyping, testing, and refining. Encourage a culture of experimentation and learning, where it’s okay to try something, gather feedback, and then pivot as needed.
By weaving this problem-solving framework into the fabric of your team’s work, you’ll be amazed at the caliber of solutions you can generate. Complex challenges that once felt insurmountable will become exciting opportunities to flex your collective creative muscles.
So the next time your team faces a thorny problem, don’t just dive in haphazardly. Take a step back, break out the problem-solving process, and watch the magic happen. With practice, this structured approach will become second nature – and you’ll be unstoppable.
Conclusion
In this summary to Good Team, Bad Team by Sarah Thurber and Blair Miller, you’ve learned that harnessing the power of cognitive diversity is pivotal to building high-performing teams. By understanding thinking preferences – the measurable differences in how people approach challenges – you can unlock a shared language that fosters mutual understanding and appreciation. A clear purpose acts as a guiding force, aligning individual efforts toward a common goal. Cultivating an environment of trust, where vulnerability is embraced and excellence is celebrated, lays the foundation for open collaboration. Mastering a structured problem-solving process, one that engages diverse thinking styles throughout, enables teams to tackle even the most complex issues with creativity and resilience. Ultimately, by recognizing and leveraging the unique strengths of each team member, you can forge a cohesive unit that not only achieves remarkable outcomes but also serves as a catalyst for personal growth and fulfillment.