# How to design teams that don’t suck  ## Episode metadata - Episode title: How to design teams that don’t suck - Show: Worklife with Adam Grant - Owner / Host: TED - Guests: [Mike Arruzzioni](https://share.snipd.com/person/379e6171-9ae4-41cc-ab4d-58dc1c455d01), [Richard Hackman](https://share.snipd.com/person/b8a49c51-0aa4-4a57-88c4-7486752b1e49), [Anita Woolley](https://share.snipd.com/person/feca1d0b-d825-4958-8c99-67ba8df6b7ee) - Episode publish date: 2024-10-08 - Episode AI description: Anita Woolley, an expert on team dynamics, and Richard Hackman, Adam Grant’s mentor and a leading authority on team effectiveness, join Mike Arruzzioni, the captain of the 'Miracle on Ice' hockey team. They explore how the right team design and shared goals can drive high performance. Insights from the miraculous 1980 Olympic victory reveal that success hinges on collaboration and clear roles. The trio also emphasizes the importance of reflection and a supportive environment for fostering team cohesion and individual growth. - Duration: 37:43 - Episode URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/episode/f66ba379-7f32-4eec-85d2-2277fe591c19) - Show URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/show/13dce443-6820-4875-9399-4ee986a1f91b) - Export date: 2026-02-11T20:07:11 ## Snips ### [Miracle on Ice](https://share.snipd.com/snip/72946ba3-48a3-4a1d-b139-80cc3ad6bdaa) 🎧 00:17 - 02:52 (02:34) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/7e1d4dc5-40c6-4084-b723-797dc55d2d61" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - The 1980 US Olympic hockey team, underdogs against the experienced Soviets, achieved a surprising victory. - This "Miracle on Ice" showcases how good team design can trump individual talent and experience. #### 💬 Quote > It was the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, and the U.S. men's hockey team was facing off against the Soviets. On paper, the winner looked obvious. > — Adam Grant Adam Grant sets the scene for the "Miracle on Ice" anecdote. #### 📚 Transcript **Adam Grant:** It was the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, and the U.S. men's hockey team was facing off against the Soviets. On paper, the winner looked obvious. The Soviet team had won gold in four straight Olympics. Just a year earlier, they'd beaten the NHL All-Star team. And just three days before the Olympics started, the Soviets had destroyed the U.S. team 10-3. Yeah, **Mike Arruzzioni:** they were the best. You know, they could beat you at the top end of their lineup or they could beat you at the back end of their lineup. John **Adam Grant:** Harrington was on the U.S. team. They knew the odds were stacked against them. At **Mike Arruzzioni:** that time, it wasn't like, hey, we think we can win this thing. It was like we're hoping to get to the medal round, and I think we rallied around that feeling that we were underdogs. That **Adam Grant:** might have given them an extra boost, because as the games began, the U.S. team started winning and upsetting higher-ranked teams. And I think as games went on, each game **Mike Arruzzioni:** went on, we were getting better as a group. We were getting more confident as a group. All **Adam Grant:** of a sudden, they found themselves in the medal round, facing down the Soviet team. To have a shot at gold, they had to beat the best team in the world. Team captain Mike Arruzzioni remembers the anticipation in the locker room. It was quiet. This is the biggest game we'd ever played, and it's quiet. Nobody in the world thought we could win. The Soviets scored early on. The **Adam Grant:** U.S. matched it. And the game continued neck and neck. And **Mike Arruzzioni:** I remember as that game went on, you're still almost thinking like, hey, at any time, these guys can fill up the back of the net. So it was like playing every second. We had to be at the top of our game or things might go wrong. **Adam Grant:** Then came the deciding moment in the last period. The game was tied 3-3. John passed to a teammate, who passed to Mike, who took a shot and... **Mike Arruzzioni:** it went absolutely nuts. I it went crazy. know, just like, holy smokes, like, here we are. Like, this dream we all had about going to the Olympics and being successful and winning a gold medal, like, we were there. We were getting there, and it was possible. **Adam Grant:** Somehow, the team managed to hang on for the last 10 minutes. Then announcer Al Michaels made his famous call. **Adam Grant:** You believe in miracles? Yes! Yeah, I always kid Al Michaels. I said, Al, you know, it wasn't a miracle, but that's a really catchy phrase. The --- ### [Team Design over Dynamics](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d1269ac3-3db1-410e-acc2-42559f085b06) 🎧 03:47 - 05:50 (02:02) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/da4d39d4-35fb-4293-b6f0-3f9136153b7f" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Team design is more important than team-building activities. - Trust and cohesion emerge from high performance, not the other way around. #### 💬 Quote > A lot of people will go out and say, oh, the problem with this team is there's a lot of conflict and there's mistrust in one another. So what we will do are trust exercises to build trust. And there really is a cart horse problem here because trust really is important. I agree with that. But trust emerges from a team that is operating well. It doesn't work the other way around. > — Richard Hackman Richard Hackman on the flawed logic of team-building exercises. #### 📚 Transcript **Richard Hackman:** What I was really preoccupied **Anita Woolley:** with was, how come the groups that I am in always seem to suck so bad? **Adam Grant:** And **Anita Woolley:** that I wanted to **Adam Grant:** understand, because there was possibly a personal relevance there. Richard Hackman was the world's leading expert on teams, and even he couldn't make them work. Richard was one of my mentors. Back 2001, I had no idea what to do with my psychology major. Then I took his class on organizational psychology, and I was hooked. He dazzled us with his studies of teams in a wide range of settings, from airline cockpit crews, to symphony orchestras, to government intelligence units. Richard passed away in 2013, so I couldn't record a conversation with him. But we do have some archival audio. He once explained his struggles with teams on the People and Projects podcast. Well, **Anita Woolley:** of course, it is widely known that people who study something can't practice it. So, I mean, you know, shrinks are crazy. Marriage counselors get divorced. Shoemaker's kids have holes in their souls. And people who study groups are probably terrible at actually leading or being in groups. I find them frustrating beyond **Adam Grant:** belief. Many of Richard's peers believed that the secret to improving groups was team building exercises. They assumed that icebreakers and bonding activities fueled liking and helped groups collaborate effectively. I'm guessing you probably know a few managers who still have the same theory, and you've probably had to suffer through a lot of name games and escape rooms as a result. But Richard wasn't sold. He thought we had cause and effect backward. **Anita Woolley:** A lot of people will go out and say, oh, the problem with this team is there's a lot of conflict and there's mistrust in one another. So what we will do are trust exercises to build trust. And there really is a cart horse problem here because trust really is important. I agree with that. But trust emerges from a team that is operating well. It doesn't work the other way around. --- ### [Team Design Essentials](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4cede01a-6cad-4939-a5ff-e7363e6dc626) 🎧 06:45 - 07:08 (00:23) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/97f1bb5f-b990-4239-b4c0-7ffa36856963" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Design teams with clear "who, what, and how". - Ensure stable membership, a compelling shared goal, and distinct individual roles. #### 💬 Quote > For starters, you need a clear who, what, and how. > — Adam Grant Adam Grant summarizing key design principles. #### 📚 Transcript **Adam Grant:** Some of Richard's key design conditions aren't common practice, but they are common sense. For starters, you need a clear who, what, and how. The who is stable membership, a group of people who stay together. The what is a compelling goal that creates a sense of purpose. And the how is a unique role well-suited to each member. --- ### [Shared Experience over Individual Experience](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c03f3e13-320e-4682-a7f7-aa16d0d19266) 🎧 08:01 - 10:01 (01:59) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/76ae82c7-f206-49ec-8e11-348c91feb8ca" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Shared experience is more valuable in a team than individual experience. - Teams with shared history perform better, even with less individual expertise. #### 💬 Quote > When you're designing a team, you actually don't need the most experienced individuals. You want to design a group around shared experience. > — Adam Grant Adam Grant explains the importance of shared team experience. #### 📚 Transcript **Adam Grant:** Mike was 25. That made him one of the two most seasoned guys on the team. The U.S. didn't have the luxury of recruiting the most experienced players. The team was full of amateurs. Most were still in college, and several were as young as 19 and 20. You know, we were the youngest Olympic team, I think, at this point we'd ever put on the ice. Our first instinct is often that a great team should be full of experienced players. If you're in tech, you want to form a crew of seasoned coders. If you're in sales, you hope to assemble a group of salespeople with decades of practice under their belts. But when you're designing a team, you actually don't need the most experienced individuals. You want to design a group around shared experience, as Richard explained. **Anita Woolley:** The one that often gets overlooked is we need to learn how to work together when there is really a liability to **Adam Grant:** newness. Research shows that teams are more likely to excel when they've spent more time training and working together. You can see it in studies of software development teams. They do faster, higher quality work after they've collaborated for months or years. The stakes of shared experience can be very high. Take flight crews. There's evidence that well-rested crews that haven't flown together before make more potentially catastrophic errors than exhausted crews that have just flown together. Even if you're tired, shared experience improves communication. And cardiac surgeons who do all their procedures with a core team at one hospital are about 10% less likely to lose a patient than surgeons who split their time between different teams at different hospitals. **Anita Woolley:** There's a general view that after a team has been together for a while, they'll start to get a little too relaxed and too accepting of each other's foibles and errors and so forth. There really isn't empirical evidence for that. What you see instead is the team continuing to get better at a decreasing rate, but continuing to get better over time. Shared --- ### [US Hockey Team's Shared History](https://share.snipd.com/snip/30e31d7b-cee1-49ea-a3c2-fb9c589602d2) 🎧 10:18 - 13:31 (03:13) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/0741106a-4788-4bc1-b55e-3c7d068fec47" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - The US hockey team's success partially stemmed from pre-existing shared experience within the team. - Many players had played together previously under Coach Herb Brooks or in other teams, creating a foundation of familiarity. #### 💬 Quote > Of the 20 guys on the final roster, nine had played for Herb at Minnesota, and four more had played together in Boston. > — Adam Grant Adam Grant on the existing bonds within the US team. #### 📚 Transcript **Adam Grant:** You can see that up close in the Miracle on Ice. Leading up to the 1980 Olympics, many members of the Soviet team had played together before. But even though the U.S. team new, one of their secret weapons was that they had a lot of history together. The U.S. Olympic coach, Herb Brooks, recruited players with shared experience. Of the 20 guys on the final roster, nine had played for Herb at Minnesota, and four more had played together in Boston. Well, I think the big thing for us to play with the Minnesota kids is they had played under Herb. So when we thought Herb was bat crazy, they would just kind of laugh at us explain this is what he does. So it was very helpful being with the Minnesota kids because they knew Herb's antics. And on the other side of the coin, it was great to have the, you know, the four Boston guys there because we knew each other. We played against each other. We grew up in the same, basically pretty much the same neighborhoods. You know, I'd known Jack O'Callaghan since he was 14 or 15 years old. So, you know, having that atmosphere for us as local **Adam Grant:** guys was helpful. They had experience together before the whole team even met for the first time. What Herb did is called a lift out, recruiting an intact team. This is effective far beyond sports. In startups, instead of just launching a company with their friends, co-founders get along better if they've worked together in the past. And on Wall Street, research shows that if you poach a star security analyst from another firm, it takes an average of five years for them to recover their outstanding performance. But if you hire their team with them, they maintain their star status from day one. Of course, you don't always have the opportunity to recruit a team with shared experience, but you can build it by having the team practice and perform together. If you're setting up a team of data scientists, have them go through training together. If you're forming a board committee, role play some decisions together. And if you're building a hockey team, form a line that stays together. Nobody could play with those three clowns. Hamilton, Schneider, and Pavlich. They were the only line, I think, that stayed together all year because they each knew each other so well and where they were going and what **Adam Grant:** they were doing. They became known as the Conehead line. John was one of them. **Mike Arruzzioni:** Yeah, well, that's a funny thing. You know, I think Mark Pavlitz said at one time, he goes, you know, we might as well be cones out here because we never get to play on the power play, you know? And maybe they could use us for cones. **Adam Grant:** Why did your line play together so well? Like, **Mike Arruzzioni:** I like, certainly I played with Mark Pavlich in college and we had played together and both were kind of rink rat guys and outdoor hockey guys who understood how to play in small spaces and move the puck. And then Mark Pavlich, his hometown was like four miles from mine and Bud Schneider's was like 20 miles from my hometown. So we're all from the same area up there and grew up playing the same way as the season wore on in that Olympic year and stuck together. So we got to understand each other's games a little bit better and certainly gain confidence in our ability to play the game for Herb. --- ### [Leverage "Lift Outs"](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0a175dd3-e2fa-49d9-8afd-44bf99f332e9) 🎧 11:20 - 11:55 (00:35) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/6048dafc-84d7-452b-8a70-3411d2a0551a" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - When building new teams, leverage "lift outs", recruiting intact, pre-existing teams. - This preserves valuable shared experience and accelerates team performance. #### 💬 Quote > What Herb did is called a lift out, recruiting an intact team. > — Adam Grant Adam Grant describes the strategy of bringing in established teams. #### 📚 Transcript **Adam Grant:** guys was helpful. They had experience together before the whole team even met for the first time. What Herb did is called a lift out, recruiting an intact team. This is effective far beyond sports. In startups, instead of just launching a company with their friends, co-founders get along better if they've worked together in the past. And on Wall Street, research shows that if you poach a star security analyst from another firm, it takes an average of five years for them to recover their outstanding performance. But if you hire their team with them, they maintain their star status from day one. --- ### [Mission over Social Cohesion](https://share.snipd.com/snip/69fe20ce-203a-421d-93e2-b48a10e316bf) 🎧 14:07 - 14:32 (00:24) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/b310ae49-6c6f-44fe-8c66-0dc98e5735f7" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Mission cohesion, a shared commitment to the goal, outweighs social cohesion. - Shared responsibility for the mission is critical, not simply how well team members get along. #### 💬 Quote > Extensive evidence reveals that the bond between people is less important than their bond around a mission. > — Adam Grant Adam Grant explains why focusing on shared responsibility trumps team bonding. #### 📚 Transcript **Adam Grant:** Another design condition that many people miss is shared responsibility. Extensive evidence reveals that the bond between people is less important than their bond around a mission. In other words, mission cohesion matters more than social cohesion. And what creates that cohesion around a mission is shared responsibility. This is one of the reasons why team bonding activities are often ineffective. --- ### ["Herbys" and Shared Adversity](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d78cb89d-bc6d-4587-bd64-9e3b10144ba0) 🎧 16:10 - 18:24 (02:13) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/f2bd9cfb-2325-4995-814c-f0dff2a742cb" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Coach Brooks used "Herbys," grueling skating drills, to foster shared responsibility and resilience. - This created a shared challenge, emphasizing team unity over individual comfort. #### 💬 Quote > Herb wasn't happy with their performance, so he gave them a challenge to face together, a tough skating drill that became known as the Herbys. > — Adam Grant Adam Grant on Herb Brooks's method of building team unity through shared hardship. #### 📚 Transcript **Adam Grant:** One key moment happened after an exhibition game. So we played Norway in Norway. The game ended, it actually ended in a 3-3 tie. And we started to skate off the ice, and then all of sudden Herb's out there, and he blew the whistle, and he brought us down to one end of the rink, and we started to proceed to do the Herbys. Herb wasn't happy with their performance, so **Adam Grant:** he gave them a challenge to face together, a tough skating drill that became known as the Herbys. It **Mike Arruzzioni:** was goal line to the near blue line and back to the goal line and then to the red line and back to the blue line then to the blue line and back to the goal line and then all the way down to the end boards and all the way back. Then we'd stretch. Then he blew the whistle and we did him again for 15 minutes and then stretched. Then he blew the whistle and we did him again. It was tiring and it was tough. But I think that was a drill that was always somewhere **Mike Arruzzioni:** between doing conditioning and doing punishment. So he kept everybody out there. And then I remember the arena guy, the arena ice guy was up in the corner screaming in Norwegian. I think he wanted to go home. He turned the lights out. And then I remember the drill ending because guys were smashing their stick against the boards. We were pretty pissed off. And then Herb said, if I hear another goddamn stick smash against the boards, you'll skate till you die. Well, nobody said a word and we finished the drills. We went back in the locker room and we had to play Norway the next day. And Herb said, if you play this way again tomorrow, you're going to skate again. They didn't play that way again. The **Adam Grant:** next night, the U.S. crushed Norway 9 to nothing. So **Mike Arruzzioni:** maybe Herbie made his point. I **Adam Grant:** wonder if some of that was, let me put these guys under adversity together and see if that brings them together. Yeah, **Mike Arruzzioni:** I think it does. And I think he wanted to show everybody he was going to treat everybody the same, that there weren't going to be any favorites on the team, that we were all in this together and that everybody played for everybody else, that they understood that we wouldn't be successful if we didn't try to play together. And I also knew that he expected us and wanted us to be the best conditioned team. But he also wanted us to be the mentally toughest team, too. --- ### [Reinforcing Shared Responsibility](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0ab604fb-8f83-46e8-9ff7-cfc9bb602425) 🎧 18:47 - 19:46 (00:59) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/3b7af83d-c372-49dc-9eaa-f1f1d5a60f00" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Build a shared identity by focusing on central, distinctive, and enduring team aspects. - Facilitate creating a team name, vision, and values, and bring in end-users to emphasize the mission's importance. #### 💬 Quote > A second approach is to flesh out a common identity. This means focusing on what's central, distinctive, and enduring to the team. > — Adam Grant Adam Grant on creating a common team identity. #### 📚 Transcript **Adam Grant:** methods were a little intense, but there's something to be said for creating collective challenges as one way to design for shared responsibility. A second approach is to flesh out a common identity. This means focusing on what's central, distinctive, and enduring to the team. For example, you can invite members to create a team name, a vision, and a set of shared values. Evidence from nonprofit professional theaters suggest that which identity the team chooses is less important than whether they're aligned together or rounded. A third option is to reinforce the importance of the goal and of each person's unique contribution. I found in my research that it's not enough to just talk about how the work will make a difference. It's more effective to bring in a customer, a client, or an end user to speak firsthand about why the work matters. That underscores the meaning of the task and reminds the team that others are depending on them to succeed. --- ### [Create a Team Charter](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8320dd90-e780-460b-8ddc-4c1315e3171f) 🎧 22:06 - 24:44 (02:38) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/fef6eca7-c6d2-427b-8316-0425b74d9806" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Start teams by outlining a team charter. - This document clarifies goals, roles, and routines, ensuring everyone is on the same page from the beginning. #### 💬 Quote > Anita guides them to create a team charter together. This is basically a team manual, a document that maps out goals, roles, and routines. > — Adam Grant Adam Grant emphasizes the importance of a team charter. #### 📚 Transcript **Adam Grant:** In college, I did my senior thesis on team effectiveness. The first time I went to meet with Richard Hackman about it, he was sitting at his desk his feet on the table. No shoes, just socks. So **Anita Woolley:** he liked to take off his shoes. So he would be frequently, you know, viewed walking with his shoes off. He had a sweet tooth. So to get him to read my paper, I would clip a candy bar to it with a note saying, don't eat this until you're reading my paper, you know, to get his feedback. Yeah. **Adam Grant:** Sounded like you were describing a dog more than a human. No shoes, must use treats to **Anita Woolley:** motivate. That's Exactly. Well, you know, there's some of those things in all of us probably. Anita **Adam Grant:** Woolley is an organizational behavior professor at Carnegie Mellon. She was one of Richard's protégés, and she's now one of the world's foremost authorities on teams. When Anita started working with Richard, they were fascinated by team beginnings. The quality of the launch of the group, that is what happens when the members first come together. Anita and Richard collaborated on a study to see if a simple intervention at launch would help teams work better together. They pre-screened thousands of people and formed teams. Some teams were staffed with multiple experts. Others were given no experts at all. Then they gave all the teams a task. **Anita Woolley:** And it was a counterterrorism scenario that we came up with based on a combination of cases that we had seen in our intelligence community work. So there was a ground truth. We knew what happened. Each **Adam Grant:** team was supposed to solve the case. And surprisingly, when teams of experts were left to their own devices, they actually performed worse than teams without experts that had one little design advantage. Instead of diving right into the task, the successful teams had been randomly assigned to do a collaborative planning exercise. They talked about who would be responsible for what and how they would integrate their knowledge. Team planning led to a successful launch. And **Anita Woolley:** it was just a matter of setting the groundwork and the norms and giving them a kind of script to follow for how to work together. And I think it's played out a lot actually in other teams I've been part of, you know, and I have make all the student teams do that. Students regularly will say, wow, this was one of the best teams I've ever been on. I don't know what you did, all the magic and composing. And like, it's actually, it's not, it's not really magic. It's kind of pretty basic, but it's pretty powerful. --- ### [Conduct "Pre-Mortems"](https://share.snipd.com/snip/debebfab-02f2-431d-8767-06799f777cff) 🎧 25:34 - 25:57 (00:22) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/16962bb0-cfdd-4116-bcde-fb04067a693a" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Conduct "pre-mortems" before starting team projects. - This practice anticipates potential failures and encourages proactive solutions and better routines. #### 💬 Quote > Before the work begins, you do a pre-mortem. Imagine that your team has crashed and burned and discussed the most likely causes. > — Adam Grant Adam Grant advocating for preemptive problem-solving in teams. #### 📚 Transcript **Adam Grant:** all know the value of post-mortems when things don't go right. But my favorite part of a team charter conversation turns that idea upside down. Before the work begins, you do a pre-mortem. Imagine that your team has crashed and burned and discussed the most likely causes. There's evidence that a pre can help to prevent overconfidence and promote better routines. --- ### [Monitor Team Health](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5b924a82-8350-462f-9c02-0977c13ddff7) 🎧 26:43 - 27:08 (00:25) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/36517111-5921-412a-8c3b-7f655662b9cf" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Monitor team performance, learning, well-being, and viability, not just outcomes. - Assess individual growth, enjoyment, and future collaboration potential. #### 💬 Quote > If you want to know how your team is doing, it's not enough to consider performance. A manager or coach should also monitor learning and well-being. > — Richard Hackman Richard Hackman highlighting broader metrics for team success. #### 📚 Transcript **Adam Grant:** your team is off and running, it still needs help to thrive. Sometimes it's clear when a team is struggling, but not always. Richard Hackman found that if you want to know how your team is doing, it's not enough to consider performance. A manager or coach should also monitor learning and well-being. Are people growing together and enjoying the experience, or are they hitting each other's guts and feeling like they're stagnating? --- ### [Atlassian Team Communication](https://share.snipd.com/snip/735c6d7f-9c0e-4b36-a472-e24e3db16a68) 🎧 29:04 - 33:20 (04:15) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/8ae03f7b-4e51-4cdc-b7cd-72770eb8c75e" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - An Atlassian marketing team improved by discussing preferred communication channels and documenting decisions. - This addressed coordination and communication challenges by establishing clear team norms. #### 💬 Quote > The Atlassian team came to a compromise. [...] any decision needs to be document decisions and share with impacted. > — Adam Grant Adam Grant discussing how the Atlassian team found solutions for communication issues. #### 📚 Transcript **Richard Hackman:** Can we just go around and introduce ourselves? Sure. My name's Alex. My **Anita Woolley:** name's Emily. Kaylee. My **Adam Grant:** name's Javier. I'm **Anita Woolley:** Judy, and based out of the Bay Area. This **Adam Grant:** is a marketing team at Atlassian, the company behind software like Jira and Confluence. Their specialty is collaboration. They make tools for teams. So it's not surprising that they have an international reputation for their excellence in running their own self-managed teams. This team has gathered for a coaching session, led by the company's resident work futurist, Dom Price. Awesome. Just to wrap things up, I'm not in this team, but I'm your facilitator for today, Dom Price. I'm joining you from sunny Sydney. The team just started working together a few weeks before this call. On a recent offsite, they did what Atlassian calls a team health monitor. The health monitor is our diagnostic that teams do to get a feel for how they're working. This is similar to the kind of team monitoring that Richard Hackman suggested. The Atlassian team found they were struggling with coordination and communication. Most crucially, they hadn't decided where and how to make decisions. They wound up retracing each other's steps and relitigating choices that were already made. To make this more difficult, they were scattered across different time zones. And because **Richard Hackman:** they're so spread out around the world, they were just missing those conversations. They all arrived with the assumption of going, I assume we'll just work the way my old team worked. And you're like, yeah, no, that unfortunately you've now glued together seven different ways of working and it doesn't work. And so it was like, okay, time out. Let's have an agreement. **Adam Grant:** Specifically, they needed agreements on where to have different types of conversations. **Mike Arruzzioni:** Like, I don't think we have any of those standards in place. So we're all over the place right now. Me, especially I'm, I'm number one guilty. I'm, I'm terrible at Slack. So, uh, short conversations, really long conversations, like full text posts, like decisions, like all **Adam Grant:** of that happens on Slack. Some team members liked casual spur of the moment calls. I **Mike Arruzzioni:** will choose to Slack huddle over write anything, but I am, I, is a method to the madness. If I don't think it needs to be documented, and if I don't think there's certain steps to getting to whatever the discussion is, I will always choose to slack huddle. I feel a little bit closer to the person, and then it's a little bit less formal than Zoom. I tell people it's like speaking on a walkie-talkie and you're just going back and forth **Adam Grant:** and just getting ideas flowing or just catching up. Other team members wanted more official communication because without it, they ended up redoing a bunch of work. Sometimes **Anita Woolley:** I get nervous with huddles or like these Zoom chats. It's because there's no way for me to document or reference back. You know what I We might have aligned on something and then what I have to do anyways, if it's a bigger thing is recap what we just said. And so that's just an extra step. Yeah. **Richard Hackman:** So Judy, make that a standard for me. Let's give Javi a rule that says, Javi, you can do your Slack huddles because they work for you. And we want you to be the best version of you, Javi. We you to have those chats. **Mike Arruzzioni:** Thank you, Dom. **Richard Hackman:** But I can't have those decisions sat in secret, sat in a brain bubble somewhere. So the Atlassian team came to a compromise. So we're going to give everyone the rule, not the law, we can't make laws, everyone the rule that if we're in a slack huddle and we make an impromptu decision, that's a good thing, but not if no one else knows about it. So any decision needs to be document decisions and share with impacted, yeah? Because none of us want a team with an upset program manager who doesn't know the decision that we've made. They'll make our life help. These **Adam Grant:** kinds of conversations could happen individually. But when they happen as a team, there's an opportunity to bring out the best in everyone's working styles. If you do it individually, what tends to happen is the leader **Richard Hackman:** decides the communication channel in the meetings and you're like, okay, if you say that's how we're doing it, I think it's terrible, but we'll do it and I'll pretend it's fine, right? It's very top down. What you would have noticed in that exercise is sometimes I got Javier to lead, sometimes I got Alex to lead, sometimes I got Emily to lead. You know It's a team activity. The team turns up to these meetings. The team is in these channels communicating. So we're always solving for the team Think of the multiverse where this Atlassian --- ### [Team Coaching](https://share.snipd.com/snip/11f75f57-613a-4c38-b747-6cac525fa25e) 🎧 33:59 - 35:08 (01:08) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/fcb3ed23-a1af-4003-bd34-3be797d181a6" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Coach teams collectively, focusing on collaboration, instead of solely addressing individual issues. - This approach can resolve systemic issues impacting individual behavior and team dynamics. #### 💬 Quote > But what's more useful is coaching people together as a team and looking at problems with collaboration. > — Adam Grant Adam Grant on why addressing team dynamics is crucial. #### 📚 Transcript **Adam Grant:** Empirically, team coaching tends to be most effective at inflection points. And these tend to happen at certain predictable times. In particular, the midpoint. That's when teams become more open to changing up their strategy and process. They **Anita Woolley:** also have enough information about the work to have insights about maybe what changes would be useful. But you really have to force that process too. So when I do it with teams that I work with, I have the members individually do an evaluation of things, and then I give them an aggregated report that sort of compares them to, you know, some norm and says, okay, you know, are we using members' skills very well? Do you feel like your skills are utilized? Or where are we falling short? Do we all agree on what we're still trying to do? Do we still think that's the right direction? And how about the ways we're working together? Are they effective? The **Adam Grant:** key to better teams isn't magic. It's also not a miracle. Sometimes it just takes a little prompt to reflect and evolve. 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