HBR's 10 Must Reads on Teams

1. Build diverse teams for complex challenges

Multicultural teams often generate frustrating management dilemmas.

Diversity fuels innovation. Complex challenges require teams with diverse skills, perspectives, and backgrounds. While multicultural and cross-functional teams can create friction, they also have the potential to generate breakthrough solutions by combining different areas of expertise and ways of thinking.

Manage cultural differences. Key challenges in diverse teams include:

• Communication styles (direct vs. indirect)
• Language barriers and accents
• Attitudes toward hierarchy and authority
• Decision-making norms

To overcome these obstacles, leaders should:

• Openly acknowledge cultural gaps
• Establish clear team norms and processes
• Provide cultural awareness training
• Encourage perspective-taking and empathy
• Use structural interventions like subgroups when needed

2. Foster constructive conflict through fact-based discussions

Facts let people move quickly to the central issues surrounding a strategic choice.

Data grounds debates in reality. High-performing teams focus discussions on objective, up-to-date information rather than opinions or personalities. This approach depersonalizes conflicts and keeps the focus on critical issues.

Create a fact-based culture. Strategies for promoting fact-based discussions:

• Measure key metrics obsessively (internal operations and external environment)
• Share data widely and frequently among team members
• Invest in strong financial and analytical capabilities
• Encourage data-driven decision making at all levels
• Challenge assumptions and "gut feelings" with evidence

By grounding debates in facts, teams can engage in constructive conflict without degenerating into interpersonal battles or political maneuvering.

3. Develop multiple alternatives to enrich decision-making

To promote debate, managers will even introduce options they do not support.

Avoid false dichotomies. Considering only one or two options often leads to polarization and conflict. Instead, high-performing teams deliberately develop multiple alternatives - often four or five - to enrich discussions and decision-making.

Benefits of multiple alternatives:

• Diffuses conflict by allowing nuanced positions
• Stimulates creative thinking and novel solutions
• Enables integrative solutions combining elements of different options
• Allows face-saving position shifts as discussions evolve
• Brings team together in shared problem-solving

Techniques for generating alternatives:

• Brainstorming sessions
• Cross-functional input
• Scenario planning
• Benchmarking competitors and other industries
• Challenging assumptions and constraints

By expanding the solution space, teams can engage in more productive debates and often arrive at superior decisions.

4. Unite teams with common goals and shared vision

Create common goals. Unite a team with common goals. This rallies everyone to work on decisions as collaborations, making it in everyone's interest to achieve the best solution.

Align individual and team objectives. When team members share a compelling common purpose, they are more likely to collaborate effectively and subordinate personal agendas to group success. A unifying vision provides context for decisions and motivates peak performance.

Techniques for creating shared goals:

• Develop an inspiring mission statement
• Set ambitious team targets
• Link individual performance to team outcomes
• Celebrate collective achievements
• Reinforce shared purpose through regular communication

Examples of rallying cries:

• "Create the computer firm of the decade" (Star Electronics)
• "Build the best damn machine on the market" (Premier Technologies)

With a strong sense of common purpose, teams can maintain cohesion even amid vigorous debates and disagreements on specific issues.

5. Use humor to diffuse tension and promote collaboration

Humor—even if it seems contrived at times—relieves tension and promotes collaborative esprit within a team.

Laughter builds bonds. Humor serves as a powerful tool for diffusing tension, reducing stress, and fostering a positive team dynamic. It helps create an environment where people feel comfortable sharing ideas and engaging in constructive debate.

Benefits of humor in teams:

• Relieves stress and anxiety
• Increases creativity and mental flexibility
• Builds rapport and trust among team members
• Makes difficult conversations more palatable
• Enhances team cohesion and morale

Ways to incorporate humor:

• Encourage lighthearted banter in meetings
• Organize team-building activities with fun elements
• Share amusing anecdotes or self-deprecating stories
• Use appropriate jokes to break tension in heated moments
• Create playful traditions or inside jokes

While humor should be used judiciously and appropriately, it can significantly improve team dynamics and effectiveness.

6. Balance power structures for equitable participation

The CEO is more powerful than other executives, but the others wield substantial power as well—especially in their own areas of responsibility.

Distribute authority. Effective teams maintain a balance of power that allows all members to contribute meaningfully to decisions. While the CEO holds ultimate authority, other executives should have significant influence, particularly in their areas of expertise.

Strategies for balancing power:

• Clearly define decision rights and responsibilities
• Rotate leadership of specific initiatives or projects
• Encourage input from all team members, regardless of rank
• Use structured decision-making processes that give voice to all perspectives
• Empower functional leaders to make decisions in their domains

A balanced power structure promotes fairness, leverages diverse expertise, and increases buy-in for team decisions. It also helps prevent the CEO from becoming a "dictator by default" when the team reaches an impasse.

7. Seek consensus with qualification for effective decisions

If the team can't reach consensus, the most relevant senior manager makes the decision, guided by input from the others.

Strive for agreement, decide with authority. While consensus is ideal, it's not always achievable or desirable. High-performing teams aim for broad agreement but have a clear process for making decisions when full consensus isn't reached.

The "consensus with qualification" approach:

1. Thoroughly discuss issues and options as a team
2. Strive for consensus through debate and negotiation
3. If consensus isn't reached, the most relevant senior executive decides
4. The decision-maker incorporates input from team discussions
5. All team members support the final decision, even if they disagreed

This approach balances the benefits of collaborative decision-making with the need for timely and clear choices. It maintains team cohesion while avoiding decision paralysis or lowest-common-denominator compromises.

8. Embrace virtuoso teams for breakthrough innovation

If you want great performances of any type, you have to start with great people.

Assemble star performers. Virtuoso teams comprise elite experts brought together for ambitious, high-stakes projects. While potentially volatile, these teams can achieve extraordinary results by leveraging diverse, world-class talents.

Characteristics of virtuoso teams:

• Handpicked, complementary star performers
• Ambitious, transformative goals
• Intense, high-energy work environments
• Willingness to challenge conventional wisdom
• Strong individual and collective egos

Virtuoso teams are particularly suited for:

• Radical innovation projects
• Entering new markets or industries
• Solving complex, unprecedented problems
• Driving organizational transformation

While not appropriate for all situations, virtuoso teams can deliver breakthrough performance when conventional approaches fall short.

9. Make teamwork a contact sport with frequent interactions

When virtuoso teams are in action, impassioned dialogue becomes the critical driver of performance, not the work itself.

Prioritize face-to-face collaboration. High-performing teams, especially virtuoso teams, thrive on frequent, intense, in-person interactions. This "contact sport" approach accelerates idea generation, problem-solving, and decision-making.

Creating a high-intensity team environment:

• Co-locate team members in dedicated project spaces
• Schedule frequent, focused working sessions
• Encourage impromptu discussions and brainstorming
• Use visual tools like whiteboards to facilitate real-time collaboration
• Minimize reliance on email and formal meetings for core team communication

While virtual collaboration tools have their place, nothing replaces the energy and rapid iterations possible when talented people work closely together in person.

10. Challenge customers with higher expectations

Virtuoso teams believe that customers want more, not less, and that they can appreciate the richness of an aggrandized proposition.

Raise the bar. High-performing teams, particularly in innovation-driven fields, often succeed by challenging rather than simply meeting customer expectations. By aiming higher, they can redefine markets and create new sources of value.

Strategies for challenging customers:

• Anticipate unmet or unarticulated needs
• Introduce novel features or capabilities
• Reimagine entire product categories or experiences
• Educate customers about new possibilities
• Target sophisticated early adopters to drive broader adoption

Examples:

• West Side Story challenging Broadway conventions
• Sid Caesar elevating TV comedy beyond slapstick
• Apple introducing revolutionary product categories

By believing in customers' capacity for appreciation and adaptation, teams can drive innovation that reshapes entire industries.

11. Lead virtuoso teams with adaptable management styles

The challenge—familiar to anyone who has ever been part of a management team—is to keep constructive conflict over issues from degenerating into dysfunctional interpersonal conflict, to encourage managers to argue without destroying their ability to work as a team.

Balance freedom and focus. Leading high-performing teams, especially virtuoso teams, requires a delicate balance between unleashing individual creativity and maintaining collective focus on goals.

Effective leadership approaches:

• Set clear, ambitious objectives while allowing flexibility in execution
• Encourage vigorous debate while maintaining mutual respect
• Provide resources and remove obstacles to team performance
• Celebrate individual contributions within the context of team success
• Adjust leadership style based on team dynamics and project phase

Key leadership skills:

• Emotional intelligence to navigate team dynamics
• Ability to synthesize diverse perspectives
• Comfort with ambiguity and rapid change
• Skill in facilitating productive conflict
• Decisiveness when consensus cannot be reached

By adapting their approach to the unique needs of the team and the challenge at hand, leaders can harness the full potential of top talent without descending into chaos.

Last updated: August 30, 2024