Teams that Work
An analysis of the essentials of team performance.
Author(s): Scott Tannenbaum, Eduardo Salas
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Date of publication: 2020
Manageris opinion
The authors of this book are coaches to teams that face often-extreme conditions: astronauts, smokejumpers, gastronomic restaurant teams, executive teams, etc. They here combine their experience with the learnings from research to offer us a rich and documented analysis of the fundamentals in team performance.
The book starts by defusing a few preconceived ideas: working as a team would hamper individual excellence; teams that get on best would be the highest performing ones; etc. The most part is dedicated to review seven major pillars in team performance, covering a wide array of factors such as: what is the ideal number of “stars” you should have in your team? How can you encourage cooperative behaviors? How can you ensure that the entire staff constantly remains on the same page? Etc.
As a bonus, the authors propose a checklist of questions and practical advice to audit each of these seven pillars in your team. A read that immediately makes you want to move into action.
