Build Great Teams

What makes a team great? Not just good and not just functional—but great? Over six years, long-time Sports Illustrated editor Don Yaeger was invited by some of the greatest companies in the world to speak about the habits of high-performing individuals. From Microsoft and Starbucks to the New England Patriots and San Antonio Spurs, what do some organizations do seemingly better than most of their opponents? Don took the challenge. He began building into his travel schedule opportunities to interview our generation’s greatest team builders from the sports and business worlds. During this process, he conducted more than 100 interviews with some of the most successful teams and organizations in the country. From those interviews, Don identified 16 habits that drive these high-performing teams. Building on the stories, examples, and first-hand accounts, each chapter in Great Teams comes with applicable examples on how to apply these characteristics in any organization. Great Teams includes: Life lessons from some of the most notable names in sports and business applied to team-making in any situation Interviews from well-known players from Peyton and Eli Manning to Kevin Durant Skills to allow culture to shape who you recruit, manage dysfunction, friction, and strong personalities Advice on how to win in critical situations, embrace change, build a mentoring culture, and see value others miss Great Teams is the ultimate intersection of the sports and business worlds and a powerful companion for thought leaders, teams, managers, and organizations that seek to perform similarly. The insight shared in this book is sure to enhance any team in its pursuit of excellence.

People are happiest and most productive if they can choose what they work on and who they work with. Self-selecting teams give people that choice. Build well-designed and efficient teams to get the most out of your organization, with step-by-step instructions on how to set up teams quickly and efficiently. You'll create a process that works for you, whether you need to form teams from scratch, improve the design of existing teams, or are on the verge of a big team re-shuffle. Discover how New Zealand's biggest e-commerce company completely restructured their business through Self-Selection. In the process, find out how to create high-performing groups by letting people self-organize into small, cross-functional teams. Step-by-step guides, easy-to-follow diagrams, practical examples, checklists, and tools will enable you to run a Self-Selection process within your organization. If you're a manager who wants to structure your organization into small teams, you'll discover why Self-Selection is the fastest and safest way to do so. You'll prepare for and organize a Self-Selection event and make sure your Self-Selection participants and fellow managers are on board and ready. If you're a team member, you'll discover what it feels like to be part of a Self-Selection process and what the consequences are for your daily work. You'll learn how to influence your colleagues and bosses to be open to the idea of Self-Selection. You'll provide your manager with a plan for how to facilitate a Self-Selection event, and with evidence that the system works. If you're feeling the pain and chaos of adding new people to your organization, or just want to ensure that your teams have the right people with the right skills, Self-Selection will help you create the effective teams you need.

In partnership with the American Library Association (ALA), Build Great Teams provides a 52-week guide to creating your dream team—and accomplishing each of your goals along the way! Teamwork matters. Most of us realize the immediate impact of being on a strong, cohesive and harmonious team. But how do you A) establish a powerhouse team; B) develop successful teamwork skills; and C) turn a troubled team around? In just one year (or 52-weeks), you can achieve your personal dream team through Catherine Hakala-Ausperk's proven program. Organized in 52 modules, designed to cover a year of weekly sessions but easily adaptable for any pace, this work covers major management topics such as success with recruiting, ensuring roles are successful, team communication, establishing an innovative team, and more!

Want happier, more successful project teams? Better-run meetings will help get you there. Project leaders are “get it done” people, so we often dislike, avoid, and/or fail to properly plan meetings. This practical guide to facilitating project meetings and building cohesive teams will enable you to make your sessions more productive! You’ll learn: How improving traditional PM meetings and Agile events can greatly improve continuous team building, making you a better project leader Overcoming challenges in managing conflict based on real-world stories from your fellow project leaders How to deal with ‘goblins’ (e.g., Billy the Bully) who often derail your meetings. Aligned with PMI’s PMBOK® Guide Seventh Edition, this book will help you deliver project success in today’s hybrid work environment.

How Today’s Highly Effective Leaders Develop High Performing Teams “Build Better Teams is an insightful book offering leaders a compelling and practical team building ‘code’ to optimize team performance.” —Amy Edmondson Build Better Teams, endorsed by both Amy Edmondson and Edgar Schein, provides the first ever scientifically backed team development code that can be applied to any virtual or hybrid team in any industry to boost performance. The book provides a simple, memorable, and easy to apply formula, together with practical advice for leaders expected to manage high performing teams. Teams today are more complex than ever before. Requirements for diversity training, and growing pressures from accelerating digitalisation, remote working, and mental health issues all combine to create increasing uncertainty and stress for team leaders. Build Better Teams describes this context and then provides a simple, practical code that takes the guess work out of leading and motivating a team to peak performance. Learn how to be a highly effective leader. Author George Karseras, executive team development coach with over twenty years of experience in team development, and founder of TeamUp, describes the “TeamUp Playbook”, a four-step sequence that any team leader can follow to produce high performing teams. Using real life examples from organizations and summaries from the most recent academic studies. Karseras equips leaders to use the code with practical tools, techniques and tips in a casual, easy to read format that answers questions such as: What can expect to be the impact of virtual working and digital transformations on my team? How do I use a road map that science confirms works for all teams? How do I build a greater sense of community into the organization and, eventually, the world? If you liked books like The Fearless Organization, Team of Teams, or Leaders Eat Last then you’ll love Build Better Teams.

In his classic book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni laid out a groundbreaking approach for tackling the perilous group behaviors that destroy teamwork. Here he turns his focus to the individual, revealing the three indispensable virtues of an ideal team player. In The Ideal Team Player, Lencioni tells the story of Jeff Shanley, a leader desperate to save his uncle’s company by restoring its cultural commitment to teamwork. Jeff must crack the code on the virtues that real team players possess, and then build a culture of hiring and development around those virtues. Beyond the fable, Lencioni presents a practical framework and actionable tools for identifying, hiring, and developing ideal team players. Whether you’re a leader trying to create a culture around teamwork, a staffing professional looking to hire real team players, or a team player wanting to improve yourself, this book will prove to be as useful as it is compelling.

"Great teams are comprised of ordinary people that are empowered and inspired. They are empowered to solve hard problems in ways their customers love yet work for their business. They are inspired with ideas and techniques for quickly evaluating those ideas to discover solutions that work: they are valuable, usable, feasible and viable. This book is about the idea and reality of "achieving extraordinary results from ordinary people". Empowered is the companion to Inspired. It addresses the other half of the problem of building tech products?how to get the absolute best work from your product teams. However, the book's message applies much more broadly than just to product teams. Inspired was aimed at product managers. Empowered is aimed at all levels of technology-powered organizations: founders and CEO's, leaders of product, technology and design, and the countless product managers, product designers and engineers that comprise the teams. This book will not just inspire companies to empower their employees but will teach them how. This book will help readers achieve the benefits of truly empowered teams"--

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The author of The Talent Code unlocks the secrets of highly successful groups and provides tomorrow’s leaders with the tools to build a cohesive, motivated culture. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY BLOOMBERG AND LIBRARY JOURNAL Where does great culture come from? How do you build and sustain it in your group, or strengthen a culture that needs fixing? In The Culture Code, Daniel Coyle goes inside some of the world’s most successful organizations—including the U.S. Navy’s SEAL Team Six, IDEO, and the San Antonio Spurs—and reveals what makes them tick. He demystifies the culture-building process by identifying three key skills that generate cohesion and cooperation, and explains how diverse groups learn to function with a single mind. Drawing on examples that range from Internet retailer Zappos to the comedy troupe Upright Citizens Brigade to a daring gang of jewel thieves, Coyle offers specific strategies that trigger learning, spark collaboration, build trust, and drive positive change. Coyle unearths helpful stories of failure that illustrate what not to do, troubleshoots common pitfalls, and shares advice about reforming a toxic culture. Combining leading-edge science, on-the-ground insights from world-class leaders, and practical ideas for action, The Culture Code offers a roadmap for creating an environment where innovation flourishes, problems get solved, and expectations are exceeded. Culture is not something you are—it’s something you do. The Culture Code puts the power in your hands. No matter the size of your group or your goal, this book can teach you the principles of cultural chemistry that transform individuals into teams that can accomplish amazing things together. Praise for The Culture Code “I’ve been waiting years for someone to write this book—I’ve built it up in my mind into something extraordinary. But it is even better than I imagined. Daniel Coyle has produced a truly brilliant, mesmerizing read that demystifies the magic of great groups. It blows all other books on culture right out of the water.”—Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Option B, Originals, and Give and Take “If you want to understand how successful groups work—the signals they transmit, the language they speak, the cues that foster creativity—you won’t find a more essential guide than The Culture Code.”—Charles Duhigg, New York Times bestselling author of The Power of Habit and Smarter Faster Better