>> From WXXI News.

This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made in a small cabin in a quiet island off the coast of Sweden.

It was 1980 and two men were on a deadline.

They were under intense pressure to write a powerful song that their band was due to record in just days.

The men were Benny Andersson and örn Ulvaeus.

The band was ABBA, ABBA.

I think I'm Swedish.

I should know that the song that Benny and Bjorn wrote was initially called The Story of My Life, and the world would come to know the final version as the winner takes it all.

Benny and Bjorn began by playing riffs they wrote on their own and found ways to make them click.

When that worked, they brought the song to the studio, where session players built on their work.

After that, Bjorn took the track home and wrote the lyrics on his own.

And finally the singers Agnetha Faltskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad stepped in and added harmonies.

And the ABBA approach is one that started with individual work, expanded to collaboration, then returned to focus solo work and ended with more collaboration.

And in his new book, Social psychologist Ron Friedman writes, quote, ABBA's approach to songwriting differs from the way we typically think about collaboration.

It does not involve constant togetherness.

On the contrary, it involves cycling between private, individual work to develop ideas and coming together as a group to bring ideas to life, end quote.

So when you think about what makes for the most successful collaborative teamwork in the workplace, I wonder what comes to mind for you?

Current trends in corporate culture point to shared communication platforms, coworking and open workspaces.

Large brainstorming sessions, lots of meetings, and more.

But in his book, Superteams, Friedman explains how the science pushes against that.

What does work, according to his research, may seem counterintuitive to what our culture seems to promote.

The best teams, Friedman writes.

Prioritize time for focused individual work.

They phase out most of their meetings, and they understand that downtime is downtime disconnection rather than constant availability, helps teams become more productive.

So what can we learn and how can we apply it to our work lives?

Ron Friedman is our guest this hour.

The book is called Superteams The Science and Secrets of High Performing Teams.

Ron, congratulations on the book.

Megan Mack and I were talking about it this morning.

We're both digging in and going, well, there's a lot here that we can kind of run with here.

So congratulations on, I think an outstanding book.

It's great to have you.

>> I really appreciate that.

Thank you.

And there were a lot of surprises for me too, as the author of the book.

You know, we did a lot of original research for this, and much of it was counterintuitive.

>> Well, so if that if it's counterintuitive when you're figuring it out, what's the seed that tells you this needs to be a book?

When was that moment for you?

>> I wrote a piece for the Harvard Business Review called Five Things High Performing Teams Do Differently.

And that was the seed for this research.

We just basically looked at a few things that high performing teams do differently, and the article proceeds to go viral.

And it became the second most widely read article on HBR history.

And that told me people were interested and they were interested because people want science based strategies for collaborating more effectively.

You know, three quarters of our work hours are spent collaborating together in teams and knowing how to do that well is a skill.

>> So listeners, I do want to hear from you as we go throughout this hour.

I want to know if you feel like in your work setting, either now or in the past, does it feel like a team?

Do you want it to feel like a team or even sometimes people say, I want my work to feel like a family, which I want to get Ron's take on that.

But I want to know what it feels like to you and what works and what doesn't, because there's a lot that doesn't really work here.

And this book turns a lot of our assumptions on their head.

Here.

You can email the program connections@wxxi.org.

Connections@wxxi.org.

You can call the program toll free, 844295 talk.

It's toll free ( 844)295-8255.

If you're watching on the WXXI News YouTube channel, you can join the chat there.

I just have to start by thanking you for eliminating most of the meetings that we're going to have in this building.

No offense to any of my colleagues.

I probably call too many meetings, but there are too many meetings.

We have meetings about meetings.

Look, can I just start there?

Just because it's right on the top of my head here?

Why do we meet?

What are we getting wrong with meetings?

>> Well, first, let me give you a snapshot of how the average worker spends their time at work.

18 hours a week on average, is how often the average worker is spend meetings.

They then lose another 11 hours a week digging themselves out of messages.

So what does that leave for real work?

It's about a day.

What happens when you have to cram a week's worth of work into a single day?

You look for ways to create more time.

You come in early, you stay late, you work weekends.

That approach leads to burnout.

And so Superteams the teams that are the high performing teams, we can talk about how we identified them.

They're meeting far less frequently.

They're not making meetings the default.

They're making them a last resort.

>> And there's this idea of the purpose of a meeting.

And if we carry that forward here, it says that you really don't meet unless a decision is going to happen, something is going to be decided.

Some change will be made or some something some decisive action will be chosen.

That's a really refreshing idea.

>> Yeah, I appreciate you saying that.

So that was one of the strategies we uncovered by studying Superteams is that there are 50% better at avoiding unnecessary meetings.

There are 54% less likely to schedule recurring meetings, recurring meetings, particularly insidious because they're so difficult to remove from your calendar.

You have to have an awkward conversation with your colleague and say, hey, I don't feel like our time together is valuable anymore.

And that's a really difficult conversation to have.

So people end up keeping them on their calendar because they want to avoid that conversation.

So Superteams are much better at avoiding these unnecessary meetings.

And how they do that is by establishing meeting guidelines, they get clear on what deserves a meeting and what doesn't.

So you asked earlier, what's what are we doing wrong with meetings is a lot of times meetings are the default.

You have a question meeting.

You want to you want to give somebody an update meeting.

And when you do that, you end up eating up so many of people's productive hours during the day that the only way for them to make it up is to work after hours.

>> Let me pose a scenario, and I kind of want to pick your brain on this to hear this is in the pandemic and everyone's working differently, trying to figure it out.

And, um, I don't think I'm getting any trouble here.

I think this is a good thing we instituted around here this idea of check ins that managers would check in with employees and say, like, how are you doing?

Like, first of all, I mean, no one's ever worked through.

Most of us never worked through a pandemic before.

How are you doing?

Um, are, are the changes that we are making that are temporary working for your workflow?

So in my mind, really a smart little quick 15 minute check in that I thought was really thoughtful.

And then the pandemic ends and we, we kind of just keep the check ins and which I thought was really thoughtful.

I mean, like, again, I think the intention is really good.

But there were times where I felt like I was swamped and I would, I would miss a meeting or not really have an update or feel like, but I didn't want to say like, I don't think we need to do this anymore.

And I felt bad about it, you know, so it stays on the calendar.

To your point, it's hard to surgically remove it, but it's really well intended.

And in fact, in many ways, it was kind of this little life raft during the pandemic.

So.

So how do you what do you do with that going forward?

>> Yeah, we learned a lot of bad habits during the pandemic that.

>> We learned a lot of bad habits.

>> That's correct.

The constant check ins can be valuable to a point, but another bad habit is that every call or every zoom rather defaults to video.

And when you have these constant video calls, what ends up happening is you end up having less energy and making work decision as the day progresses.

And it's because in real life it's completely unnatural to stare someone in the face for an hour straight on video.

Looking away comes across as rude.

And so we overcompensate and it's exhausting.

The other thing that happens when you go on these video calls is the first thing you see is you see a visual of yourself, and that makes you self-conscious.

In fact, there's there's some studies showing after the pandemic, plastic surgery skyrocketed, it's because people were looking at their faces all day long and they didn't like what they saw.

That's amazing.

And so, you know, these video calls, to be fair, there's value to having a video call if you're just establishing a relationship, you want to build that rapport.

Or if there's a disagreement and you need to resolve it, you want to make sure that no one misreads what you're trying to say, but is a default far better to go to calls because you can serve more of your energy.

You end up making better decisions.

>> We're talking to Ron Friedman, whose book is Superteams The Science and Secrets of High Performing Teams.

Uh, we think the book's really smart and very interesting and, and filled with a lot of really interesting data, which we'll, we'll peel back a little layers as we go throughout this hour.

To me, there's a lot that's counterintuitive.

I'm curious to know what you think is the most interesting aha that you had that maybe a couple of years ago, you would not have assumed to be correct.

>> Turns out productivity tips.

Many of the things that we read about online end up not helping when you're working in a team.

So an example of a common productivity tip that you'll encounter online is, you know, check your email only three times a day because then you conserve more focus time, allowing you to be more productive.

What happens when you do that when you're part of a team is you unilaterally make yourself unavailable.

That makes that becomes a bottleneck for another member of your team.

And so if everyone is independently deciding when they're shutting off their email, then the team ends up slowing down.

You end up lengthening the workday and making it harder for everyone.

And so when we think about how do we make teams productive, we need to really solve for these issues on a team level.

We can't leave it up to individuals because if everyone is just using their own approach to productivity, the team ends up slowing down.

That, to me is really counterintuitive because you'd think teams are made up of individuals.

So if every individual is more productive, wouldn't the team operate better?

And the answer is no, it doesn't help.

>> The idea of a coworking space has gained a lot of currency.

And I don't know where that is now.

I mean, I feel like, Megan, when were we doing those conversations, especially around, I feel like it was 3 or 4 years ago that was more common.

And I'm not saying at all, by the way, anything bad about coworking spaces.

If people love it, I want you to love it.

That's awesome.

Um, if you feel like that has freed you up or has inspired you, I, I am not here to tell you that's bad.

I'm here to tell you that when I read this book, it felt to me like, you know, this is not really an endorsement of the notion of coworking spaces.

Is that fair?

>> Well, I think there are benefits to being around other people.

So having that sense of camaraderie, feeling like you're part of a tribe that's valuable and it's an important part of what makes work rewarding.

The challenge is when we go too far to the extreme of having everyone together all the time, because it prevents us from doing the focused work we need in order to be successful.

So we started off with that story of ABBA.

And, you know, I think what's really telling about that is that if you want creative solutions, you can't have everybody in the same room all the time.

You know, the, the classic example of the quintessential teamwork activity is brainstorming.

Everybody get into the conference room.

We're all going to brainstorm.

And what ends up happening when you brainstorm together as a group is the first person who speaks.

Everyone is now anchored to their response and evaluating whether it's a good or bad idea, and they're not contributing their own individual ideas.

It turns out if you want more solutions and you want those solutions to be high quality, a far better approach is something called brain writing.

And brain writing means every person comes up with 5 or 6 ideas on their own, and then we all go together the conference room and discuss the ideas we hatched independently.

And so you need to have that balance between individual focused time and then collaborative opportunities to build on one another's ideas.

>> And so when you ask employees, what do you want that would make your work life better?

Um, I thought for sure, you know, it was something besides like a quiet, dedicated solo space, but that, and I don't know if I'm describing exactly correctly, but like that, that dedicated individual space is, is prized and would be even more prized if we created more of them, it sounds like.

>> Absolutely.

And so just to flesh out that, that finding in the research.

So what we did was we asked people, which of these amenities do you have in your office?

And we gave them a very long list.

And it was all the things you read about in terms of the Silicon Valley dream jobs that that we talk about, you know, things like Google and places like that where they have things like ping pong tables and they've got basketball courts and they've got office dogs.

And so we asked people, which of these do you actually have in your office?

And we found that only one amenity actually predicts having a high performing team.

And that amenity was a quiet space to do focus work.

And what that speaks to is how most workplaces are an intentional war zone.

They make it impossible to get real work done during the day.

And this is why working from home became so popular, is people realized that going back to the office actually made them less productive.

And so the best organizations think carefully about creating opportunities for do, for doing focused work during the day.

>> When we have talked about the spaces in which we work, especially with remote work on the rise with the pandemic, I mean, remote work is always going to be on the rise.

If we never had a pandemic, it would have, I think, still been very, very powerful.

And it's obviously it still is.

I have had more than one executive reach out to this program to basically say, you know, I want you in an office and I want you in a meeting because I don't trust you to be working all the time.

If you're in a dedicated space, you know, eight hours a day.

And this book is pretty explicit, a Superteams doesn't really work.

If you have to take work home with you.

And it's work and it's all night and it's weekends.

I read this book thinking the best teams are hyper productive in their workdays, and they know how to disengage and give people that space to have something, some, a some semblance of balance.

The best teams are not like, we're high achievers and it's going to be your life now, but you're going to love it.

But it says when you're here, we're going to be really effective.

We're going to be really productive.

And executives said to me, like, I just don't trust people to do it.

You know, like you get distracted by social media and you're, you're, you're on your device and you're on your phone.

And I want to see that you're working.

I don't want you at home and I don't want you in a. So what's the lesson there?

>> Well, first, I would say if if someone doesn't trust their team to get work done when they're not being monitored, they've probably hired the wrong people.

That's the first point.

And secondly, I would ask that executive, you know, whether they've created the right structure for people to prove they're productive.

And how that happens is when you have the right metrics in place.

And so when you evaluate people on their work product rather than attendance, you have a far better gauge of how effective people truly are.

And so I would turn that back on the executive and say, how do how do people what does it mean to be productive here?

What are we actually trying to achieve?

And if your measure is people, you know, just simply coming to an office, that's a pretty weak indicator of whether a team is going to be effective.

>> Then why do we have so many people who are paranoid about their workers?

>> I think it's because they're not exactly aware of some of the research of what it means to develop a high performing team, and what that requires is really three things.

So these are these are the three strengths that define having a super team.

The first is the team gets more done by better managing their time, energy and attention.

You can't get more done if you are constantly being distracted by meetings and messages.

You have to have opportunities for doing real work.

The second strength is they don't just collaborate well.

They actively make each other better.

They bring out the best in one another.

And the third strength is even when things are going well, they're not satisfied.

They're constantly looking to build their skills and improve over time.

And you need all three.

You can't.

It's not like a menu where you can say, I want one, one and three.

You need to have all three.

If you have all three, that's when you have a super team and they're rare.

8% of teams qualify as Superteams.

That means 92% do not.

>> Well, let's define this term, though, because throughout the book, there's these really interesting bar graphs where you see, you know, if we ask a super team X, what do they say if we ask typical workplace X, what do they say?

And your readers are going to go like, well, what is that culled from?

What's the answer?

>> Yeah.

So we surveyed 6000 workers and we asked them two simple questions about their teams.

The first question is, how effective is your team at achieving its goals?

The second question is, on a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your team's performance compared to other teams in your industry?

And then we took the teams with a perfect score.

We call them Superteams, about 8%, and we looked at what they do differently, and we looked at everything from the way they structured their day to how they run their meetings, to how they recover after work hours.

And again, the patterns are striking.

Those three strengths show up again and again, regardless of industry.

They get more done by better managing their time, energy and attention.

They make each other better, and they keep improving over time.

>> And so when you say these teams Superteams bring out the best in each other, some of that includes understanding how to deal with criticism.

And there's a section on the book on both negative and positive feedback, how to deliver it better, how it often gets, uh, stuck where nothing good comes out of it.

There's a stat in there that I do want you to explain a little bit, because I would have guessed, you know, the majority of feedback and by feedback we mean constructive criticism or instructions on how to do your job better.

Um, I would, I would have guessed the majority is not either well received or internalized or put into practice.

The number I saw in the book was 3%, 3%.

What what's the actual what does that mean?

>> So through meta analyzes and all that means is a complicated statistical methodology by which you combine lots of studies together.

So they looked at three decades of study on feedback.

And what they discovered is that of all the negative feedback that people receive, only 3% actually improves performance.

A third actually worsens performance because it's so demotivating.

And so if only 3% of feedback is effective, how do you do it?

Well?

And so in the book, I talk about some of the strategies that have been proven to elevate the degree to which feedback is effective.

One of them is focusing on one thing at a time.

When you give people feedback on nine different things, they could have done better.

They shut down.

If they shut down, they're not going to incorporate the feedback.

Another tip is don't focus on the past, focus on the future.

So in other words, if I if we're having this conversation and this isn't going well, I might say, Evan, the next time we have this interview, maybe you can send me your questions in advance so I can prepare a little bit more effectively.

That's past focused feedback.

Future focused feedback would be, hey, the next time we do this, please send me that feedback.

If you if you focus on the on the past, what ends up happening is people become defensive and you don't want that.

You want to focus on one thing.

>> But that's.

>> Their problem.

Come on, Ron, this is where I want to argue with you a little bit here.

So there's, there's, um, an example you give in the book in which, uh, a scenario in which someone doesn't meet a deadline, someone on a team doesn't meet a deadline, and someone else on the team has to pick up the work and they, they may pick up the work on their off hours.

That may affect what they're able to do over the weekend with their family.

And all of a sudden, things are out of balance and people are, you know, understandably kind of resentful.

And the advice to be just future oriented, part of me wants to be like, look, we're going to be future oriented.

But for the moment, I need you to see that this action that you took wasn't just not good enough for the team.

And now it means it screwed up my weekend with my family.

Yeah.

Or I wasn't able to go to my son's game or I missed a date night because you didn't do the job.

And I think you would tell me, resisted the urge to do that.

So why?

>> Well, I guess the question I'd ask you is, do you want to be right or do you want to be.

>> Happy?

>> I want to be righteous.

>> Um, well, look, look, I will say that there is one select group of people that actually prefers negative feedback to positive feedback.

And it's high performers, high performers appreciate that.

The only way to get better is to get negative feedback.

However, most people don't have the self-esteem of a high performer, and if you put them on the spot and you say, hey, your missed deadline ruined my weekend, your conversation's over.

I don't care what you say next because most people are going to feel like they have to stand their ground.

>> And they're feeling, feeling attacked and.

>> They're feeling attacked.

And so if you want to be effective, focus it on the future and make it a conversation.

Say, hey, the next time we do this together, do you think you can get it in on Thursday that way?

That gives us both a day to talk about it before we submit it.

And I think that is far more likely to be better received.

>> So when an executive reads your book and follows up with you and says, listen, I am not going to sugarcoat it.

When people screw up and they need to have thicker skins, you would say to them, do you want to be right?

Or do you want to be happy?

>> I would say.

>> That, okay.

>> But I will also say it depends on if you're if you're trying to hire a particular type of character and optimize your team for that kind of mentality, then you've got to address it at the hiring stage.

I think a lot of times what ends up happening is people, um, they hire people and they think I'm going to change them when they get here.

It's kind of like marrying the wrong person and saying they'll change once we get married.

If you are, if you develop a hiring process that helps you call out the people that don't have the right personality fit, that'll save you a whole lot of heartache.

And so in the book, I talk about hiring strategies and how you hire people who are going to be good teammates.

In one example from an airline is if a company that has people come in and then present in front of other candidates.

And so most people assume that what they're having people do is they're having they're looking to see how well you speak in front of an audience, but what they're actually looking for is how well you support the other candidates when they speak.

And so it's a very kind of it's an unusual approach, but it gives you information that's valuable when you're looking to hire people who are going to be good teammates.

>> Um, can I ask from your social psychologist background, can you train yourself to handle criticism more effectively?

Or is that innate?

>> I think it's a little bit of both.

But you can certainly train yourself.

And so one tip that I would offer anyone who is very sensitive to negative feedback or really just, you know, setbacks in life in general is to focus on one thing you can do better next time, take that feedback and translate it for yourself into a behavior change that you can apply.

And the reason I say that is because there's research showing that once you have identified one thing, you can change in the future, it takes the sting out of criticism.

It feels a little bit less painful because the situation now feels more controllable.

>> You know, I, um, I don't manage anybody.

I, I, I have the one of the greatest jobs in the world.

There's only one microphone in this whole region.

Um, poor Robin Megan Mack deal with me, but I think we're kind of a super team.

I don't know how do you guys I think I think I think we are, um, there are days where I will get an email that is critical of my work and it kind of fires me up and makes me kind of like, you don't understand.

You don't know what the job is like.

And then there's days where I'll get that email and I'll go, hmm, I think this is correct.

You know, and, and it was a little sharp, but I think it was correct.

And I try to remind myself that those are opportunities to grow.

If I can set my ego aside.

Um, but I try to be intentional and reminding myself, like every critical email actually could have value.

>> Yeah, it can, but here's what I would suggest.

Assuming that you feel like this would be right for you is to potentially have your producer vet those critical emails or read them and then interpret them for you in a way that they know you'll be better received.

Because if you look at every if every single person who feels like they need to take time out of their day to rip you apart, I just I'm not sure that that deserves your attention.

But, you know, Stephen King used to say when he, when he would share his manuscript with, with readers is if one person points it out, it's not an issue.

But if five people pointed it out and then you know, you have a problem.

And so unless you have, you're hearing the same thing from multiple listeners.

I'm not sure it necessarily warrants your attention.

>> Oh that's interesting.

Um, before we go to break, I just because we're not going to do the whole hour on this subject, I'm going to divert, but stay kind of in the same lane here, uh, and ask you a question about AI.

So a lot of workers are concerned about eventually being replaced or how they adapt.

And one of the big themes of this book is the best teams are constantly getting better and learning new skills, and they're made to do that, that they are in work environments that really prize not standing still in your job.

But now if you're a worker, I think I understand the fear that, well, am I learning AI to replace me eventually, or am I learning AI to get more productive?

Do you have a general sense for what you think AI is going to do to the workplace?

>> Well, we actually just completed a study on how high performing teams use AI, and what we found is that AI can either shorten the workday or lengthen the workday, depending on how you use it.

So I've heard all of these horror stories about employees who now use AI to respond to their email.

And so you'll take a screenshot, you put your email, the email that you've received from a colleague, throw it into ChatGPT, ask ChatGPT for response.

Sometimes people cut and paste that response as their response without even having reviewed it.

Then the second employee takes their their email, puts that into ChatGPT, and then carves.

And so what ends up happening is basically we're just all assistants for ChatGPT, shepherding these responses back and forth.

Um, in addition, what's happening is that the people who are really effective no longer are delegating these simple tasks because they know chat can just do it for them simply.

And so they end up lengthening their workday by taking on more work than they normally would have delegated off to other people, the best teams, here's how they use AI is they're far more open with each other about their AI use, and they're sharing prompts with one another, helping everyone on the team get a little bit better.

On average teams, they're far more likely to feel ashamed about their AI use, and they hide it from one another.

And if you ask people, how worried are you about losing your job in the future to AI?

The people on average teams, they're worried the people on high performing teams are less worried because they can sense that their team is getting better every day.

>> Talking to Ron Friedman in the book is Superteams The Science and secrets of high performing teams, and we'll come right back.

I want to ask about the concept of risk taking and, um, how Superteams compare to maybe average workplaces when it comes to employees feeling emboldened to take risks?

Um, how executives and leaders can maybe model what Ron thinks is effective when it comes to risk taking and a lot more on the other side of this break.

I'm Evan Dawson Thursday on the next Connections, Rochester native Danielle Ponder is back with us.

She's releasing a new single, a song in advance of Juneteenth.

She's going to talk about the themes, what inspires her to write and what art means in this present moment.

It's always great to catch up with Danielle, ponder on Connections.

>> Support for your public radio station comes from our members and from Bob Johnson Auto Group.

Believing an informed public makes for a stronger community.

Proud supporter of Connections with Evan Dawson focused on the news, issues and trends that shape the lives of listeners in the Rochester and Finger Lakes regions.

Bobjohnsonautogroup.com and Labella Associates, dedicated to the pursuit of partnership for more than 40 years, offering services in the development of buildings, infrastructure, environmental and energy projects.

Labella powered by partnership.

Labella pc.com.

>> This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson Superteams is the book.

Ron Friedman is my guest and Hoover and Pittsford is on the phone.

Hey, Hoover.

Go ahead.

>> Hey, what.

>> A great conversation this morning.

Um, just so your guests knows that, uh, you've got to be the best host and, uh, guy on the radio.

>> And get.

>> Out of here.

No, I I'm not doing it to brown nose anybody.

I'm just telling it like it is.

This is objective.

Uh, when I'm away from town like I was last week, Cape Cod, I missed, uh, your show, and I didn't want to.

I didn't want to listen to it because I had family with me.

But I'm back and I got a comment today, um, regarding these teams.

I, I'm retired now, but I work for more than a decade in the public sector, in the private sector, in higher ed and in every kind of environment.

And I never had a problem finding positions when I decided to bail out.

And to me, what makes a good team starts off with the best leader.

When you get a man or woman who you have comfort in, and you trust them because of their intellect, their experience, their judicious behavior, and the way they are treating everyone equal, you just thrive.

And when you end up taking a position in a large company and you're not sure who the supervisor is, and they turned out to be a schmuck, you're just asking for trouble.

And that's when you got maybe 8 to 12 months to find yourself a new job, because they're either going to perform or they're not, and you're not going to stick around if you really want to.

If you're a high performer, like I thought I was, and I think I am, then you want to get out of there.

So anyway, that's what I just wanted to put out on the table.

And if you have any response, I'll be happy to listen.

>> Hoover.

Thank you.

Welcome back to Rochester.

Go ahead Ron.

>> Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, there's no, uh, there's no substitute for a great leader.

But one of the things that I talk about in the book is how you take a group of strangers and turn them into a team, because most people aren't really part of a team.

They might work in the same department, but they're not really part of a team.

And so how do you how do you create that team mindset?

Three things.

One is you need to have a shared goal.

You need to have one outcome that everyone is working to achieve together.

If I want to go home at 5:00 to take my kids to a soccer game and you're trying to get promoted, we have conflict there in terms of our goals.

You need to get on the same page about what we're trying to achieve.

The second thing is you need role clarity.

I need to know what I'm responsible for and what you're responsible for, and how those two things intersect.

If we don't have role clarity, you get dropped balls or you get turf wars.

Either one of those is bad.

And the third thing you need is you need interdependence.

And interdependence is just a fancy psychological term.

All it means is we need to feel like we need each other in order to be successful.

Most teams don't have at least one of those, and that's where you see the dysfunction come in.

And so it's not just the bad leader.

It's the fact that the leader, most leaders don't know how to create that team mentality.

>> Can you have Superteams consistently with the wrong people in corner offices, leading companies or leading organizations?

Is it is it harder to have Superteams underneath people like that?

>> It's tough, and a lot of the mistakes are predictable.

So one example is saying one thing and rewarding another.

So you might have a leader who says, you know, I encourage you to have work life balance, but who gets promoted?

It's the people who work on evenings and weekends.

>> Oh yeah.

>> And when you have that, what it essentially trains people is to tune out what you say because they look at what you reward.

And so it's really tough to build a culture where people trust their leaders when they say one thing and reward another.

>> Whoever, by the way, he's still on the line there.

Does that address some of what where you were going there?

>> Hoover oh, yeah, it does.

And I would just add that, um, parents listening to this should encourage their young boys and girls to join a sports team in an organization where you've, uh, vetted the coach, had a discussion with the coach and see if they have the same leadership qualities that she, that, that it was just mentioned on this program.

Because if they're doing that and these kids are eight, ten, 12 years old and they're seeing that in their after school sports program, it's going to inculcate into them that those are the things that are successful.

And especially when the parents are encouraging it.

So, you know, team sports, uh, no different than team building in the employment sector for adults, in my view, as long as you get a good coach.

>> Well, Hoover, as someone now who's coaching two youth teams, I'm just going to say this, man, I totally agree.

That ideally, parents should be vetting coaches.

And there are too many people coaching kids who should not be coaching kids.

The problem is the choice is going to be now your kids out of sports or out of the sport they want to play because they're 12 years old, they're 13 years old, they're nine, they're 16, and you don't like the coach, and they feel the pressure.

So it's a hard trap for parents.

But I like the idea.

What do you think?

>> I think it's interesting, and I will say that a lot of times people just aren't taught what it means to be a good teammate.

I think we're all taught how to be productive employees, but when you're on a team, the reward structure changes.

Good employees, being a good employee and being a good teammate, they're completely different skills.

And so a good teammate isn't just someone who does a good job.

There's someone who does a good job but makes the people around them better by finding ways to contribute to other people's success.

>> I would just also observe that the best teammates actually do celebrate, celebrate other successes that are not their own, and do it genuinely.

That's not always easy to find.

>> Yeah, it's true and share credit.

So when someone is successful, you know, we all love to absorb praise for a job well done.

But the best team a good teammate will say Will thank you for your kind words.

A great teammate will thank you for your kind words and then redirect the spotlight to someone who made that success possible.

Because when you do that, you make yourself more impressive.

You know, a lot of people think, if I share credit, I'm going to be less impressive.

People are going to think less of me.

But the opposite happens.

What the research tells us is that when you share credit, you make yourself more impressive because you're signaling humility and confidence.

Who would share credit?

Only someone who has a lot of confidence in their abilities.

And so when you signal humility and confidence, those are the precise traits that people look for in a leader.

>> Hoover.

Thank you.

Mel Rosen to say too many teams are too competitive.

They are fighting for a raise or promotion within the same team.

What would you say.

>> To Mel?

Yeah, that's exactly what we were referring to when we talked about shared goals.

And so a lot of times that needs to happen on the compensation level.

If you are on a sales team and the only way for you to be successful is to sell more than other people on your team, you're not going to have that team mentality.

And in fact, there's research showing that the most successful teams have a blend of compensation related to their individual performance, but also the team level performance.

And so when you have a blend of those two things, it makes it much easier to create that team mentality.

>> All right.

I want to talk a little bit about risk.

And, um, at the risk of, well, I mean, Jeff Bezos isn't the most popular American right now, but he's very successful.

Can you tell the story of the Fire Phone?

That's not a story that I knew.

The idea of risk and the notion of, well, if we create something, what's it called?

The fire phone at Amazon?

Is that what it was?

>> I believe so, yeah.

It was a it was a it was a failure.

It was a complete failure.

And he was asked about that by a reporter and he said, well, I got to tell you, we're working on much bigger failures right now.

>> I did love that quote.

I got to say, that's a great Bezos quote, because to you, what does it mean.?

>> Unless you're taking risks, you're not learning new things.

I mean, that's just the reality.

If you think about anything you've gotten better at in your personal life, whether it's trying out a new dish or learning how to play pickleball, you don't do that by repeating the same thing over and over again.

You do it by doing something that's just outside your comfort zone, and then utilizing the feedback you get to improve the next time.

And so you fail at that dish the first time.

The second time you try, you take some of those insights, you apply them.

By the third time you're doing it, you're nailing this dish.

That's how learning happens.

And unless people feel comfortable taking risks and potentially failing, there's just it's just impossible for the team to grow.

And that starts with the leader.

>> So the difference between Superteams and average teams, when it comes to feeling like you can take a risk and you can afford to fail.

Mhm.

Um, I mean, I got to find the bar graph here, but I mean, it's pretty significant.

>> It's, it's a huge difference.

And it's again, it starts with the leader.

And so if you're a leader, it's your job to make it feel safe for people to take risks.

And the best leaders do it a few different ways.

The first thing they do is they talk about mistakes they've made in the past, and that teaches people that mistakes aren't something to hide.

There's something to learn from.

Um, another, another thing that the best leaders do is when they don't know something, they admit it that teaches people that no one's expected to have all the answers and it makes it safe for them to be honest.

And finally, they are constantly telling people that if you're not making mistakes, you're not growing.

And a great example of this is from the book is at LinkedIn.

Reid Hoffman wouldn't ask his team to be perfect.

He actually wanted them to fail 15% of the time.

And his view was, unless a team is failing, they're not moving fast enough.

And another example is Reed Hastings at Netflix.

And if too many of Netflix shows are successful, he gets a little upset because it means they're not they're not taking big enough swings.

>> Too safe.

>> Yeah.

Too safe.

Exactly.

>> Right.

So that idea, that 85% number was another one that was on my list I want to ask you about.

So that's the definition.

So the 85 try to be 85% successful leaves room that says you've pushed yourself enough that you can be confident that you didn't just play it so safe that you didn't grow.

Mhm.

Um, do you accept that that 85%.

I mean, there's no science to this part of it, but like, is that a pretty good barometer?

Do you think.

>> There actually is science around this?

>> Well, there's always science.

>> Around 85% is a really good, benchmark to aim for because it suggests you're mostly successful.

But every once in a while you're falling short.

And that doesn't mean that you're a failure.

It means you're taking an appropriate level of risk.

And that's a really freeing way of looking at life because it tells you that perfectionism.

Perfectionism isn't the goal.

You don't want to be, a perfectionist.

What you want to be is somebody who takes an appropriate level of risks so that you're continuously improving.

And I just think that's a great way of viewing.

You know, I play a lot of pickleball.

I think about that for pickleball.

If you're if everything, every shot goes in, maybe you're not pushing yourself hard enough.

And so.

>> I like this.

I'm going to tell my son that when he says, you hit everything so hard in pickleball.

>> I'm taking an appropriate level of risk.

>> I'm taking an appropriate level of risk.

>> But no, it's a really interesting way to think about teams.

And I feel like there's a couple of things that's going to hold back a workplace or a team from thinking about that 85% and trying to get 100% number one, um, it's, are you in a position that feels like you can, you can afford to fail sometimes and, and it's a safe place to fail because it will be viewed as an attempt at innovation and attempted growth.

And then the other is just like, I don't have time to fail.

I mean, like, I've got I'm outsized with my tasks.

And sometimes I feel like that.

It's like if you're working at 2 a.m.

Just to get it done for the next day, you probably don't feel like you've got room to fail.

And I felt like when I read that section, to me, it connected to the idea that the best workplaces and the best teams are not the ones who are working 18 hours a day and feeling like that's the only way to get ahead.

That's the only way to be successful.

It's the only way to be respected, because I feel like when you're in that position, then you don't have time.

You don't feel like because you're just desperate to meet whatever you're doing for the next day, as opposed to really thinking in a growth mode.

Does that make sense?

>> Absolutely.

And this is why when people ask me, how do I start applying this to my organization?

I think the biggest opportunity is freeing up people's time because I kind of view it as the first domino.

If you can teach leaders how to free up their teams, time, energy, and attention, that creates the bandwidth for all these other great things.

We're talking about.

People are now able to take risks.

They're able to try new things.

But if you don't have the time, if you're constantly swamped with meetings and messages, there's no no one has the bandwidth for any of that.

And so creating opportunities for people to focus at work is the biggest thing, because that then allows them to take those risks.

That enables the team to grow.

>> I will also.

>> Say, I like this, this graph that shows that how often managers talk about their own mistakes, it's triple in the Superteams.

So Superteams are much more likely to have leaders who don't project an image of perfection or a top down.

I'm at the mountain top and you know, you all you people are trying to climb what I've already climbed.

It's a a sense that we are all going to make mistakes.

>> Exactly right.

And, and, you know, I think that what it does is it tells people that, first of all, it lowers the pressure that people feel to be perfect themselves.

But it also creates this kind of shared journey where we're learning together with our leader.

And that's why the best leaders don't just talk about their own mistakes.

They actually reward people for making intelligent mistakes.

And so one of the best ways to reward a team isn't to identify the individual and to give them an award, but to reward the entire team in that person's honor.

And so when someone does something really well, take the entire team out to lunch in their honor, because what it tells people is that on this team, when one of us succeeds, all of us succeed.

>> Tom writes to say, I'd keep listening, Evan, but I've got a meeting to go.

>> To.

>> It's an unfortunate truth.

>> It's a question of if.

It's a good meeting for you, Tom, and if a decision is getting made, maybe it's the right meeting.

>> Mhm.

>> But probably not.

Um, so I want to ask you also something that is not part of the book, but is part of I want to I want to throw a narrative at you and I want you to tell me what you make of this.

So there's a narrative about how every generation has a different sort of set of values, and every older generation looks at the next generation and goes, oh, kids these days, or, you know, they don't have a work ethic or they do things differently.

And I don't like it.

And one of the narratives, fair or not, is that high teens and 20 somethings, uh, well, I don't think it's a narrative.

Certainly they are more vocal about work life balance than previous generations.

I think that that's probably true.

The narrative that older executives sometimes have is that they don't want to earn their place.

They don't understand that before you make demands, you've got to get a little capital in the company that you're working for and that they've got it backwards, that when you're 23 years old, you should be willing to work 16 hours a day.

And that's how you get ahead.

And so they have this jaundiced view of young workers, and they think, well, whatever happened to work ethic, whatever happened, like they they just want everything all at once.

And you got to earn that.

And to my ear, there are some valuable points that younger workers are more vocal about than older workers, which is saying like, I've watched what happens when people break down from a lack of balance or working 16, 18 hours a day or, or feeling like that's the only way you can ever move up in a company.

And I'm not doing it like, and I respect that in many ways.

I also understand the idea that it any pendulum can swing too far in any direction.

So how do you see those narratives and do you think there are generational differences?

>> I think there are generational differences, and I think both sides have valid points.

To me.

I mean, my default is always to look at the research and what does the research show and what the research shows shows is that past a certain number of hours, no matter how hard you want to work, you're going to start making more mistakes and that you're going to be less productive as a function of that.

Some studies show it's 55 hours, others show it's up to 65.

But the point is, if you're working seven days a week, the quality of your work dips and you end up creating more work for yourself.

And so having that balance is valuable in the sense that if you're trying to elevate people's performance at work, actually encouraging them to take time to disconnect is worth doing.

And in fact, one of the, one of the findings we have in the research is that on Superteams, their leaders are more than twice as likely to urge people to disconnect after work hours.

Now, we talked earlier about saying one thing and doing another.

If you're continuously sending those messages over the weekend.

>> Yes.

>> Then that's not going to fly.

>> Even if you're saying, hey, you got to take some time or you're not in the office, go enjoy the weekend.

And then Saturday afternoon, you're checking in with your people.

>> Yeah.

And so you've got to be consistent with what you say and what you do.

And part of it is recognizing that if you're trying to optimize for performance, taking your recovery as seriously as what you do during the day with your work hours is valuable.

If you look at high performing athletes, they take recovery.

They consider recovery as part of their job.

And what we find in the research is that on Superteams, they're far more likely to take work.

Free vacations, 39% more likely, in fact.

And what's really interesting though, is if you look beyond that number and you look at the people who choose to work while they're on vacation, and what you find is, on average, teams, most people who work during vacations say they do it because they're afraid of falling behind.

And that's a very draining experience.

To check your email during vacation because you're thinking about your work constantly.

And so if you look at some of the best organizations, a great example of this is Daimler, the German auto manufacturer.

And they've installed software that auto deletes people's emails that come in when they're away on vacation.

So if I email you, I'll get a response that says Evans away.

If you really need to reach Evan, email them again next week because this email is about to be deleted from the server.

And what that does is that it frees you up to actually make good use of your vacation.

Because even if you're tempted to check your email, there's nothing there.

>> You can't.

>> Do it and.

>> Then like it.

>> But secondly, when you get back to the office, you're not digging yourself out of email for three days.

You can put your newfound energy into doing something productive.

>> Um, I was happy to see that on one of the bar graphs.

I don't remember the exact number, but it's the question of, do you have Sunday night dread?

Do you have dread about going to work on Monday?

And everybody listening can probably relate to that feeling.

And maybe, maybe for some folks, it's every weekend or every time they're going back to a a week or a shift of work.

Maybe it's when you're coming back from vacation, but everyone can relate to like, oh, I do not want to get up tomorrow morning, go to work.

I get it, I was worried that the Superteams number was going to be like 2%.

You know, like these people all love their job.

And it wasn't, I don't remember the number.

>> It was in the 60s.

>> It was still plenty of.

People who experienced that sometimes.

Yeah.

So if you're on a super team, it doesn't mean you're like some sort of pure as the driven snow.

You're like the ideal worker and you love your job and you don't even consider it work.

Know that you're human.

It's still okay to have that balance and that occasional dread.

And I just wanted to remark and put that out in the ether, like you're not trying to create like, automaton workers who just worship the company and can't wait to get back on a Monday morning.

>> No, that's exactly right.

But I will say that I think a lot of the features that make work satisfying are evolutionarily built into how we think.

And so if you think about what it is that we were evolved to do, we evolved to be part of a tribe, and that evolved to feel like we're contributing, valued, valuable contributors.

And there's, there's genuine pleasure that we derive from getting better at our job as we, as we continue to evolve in our roles.

And so when you create an environment that provides people with those features, it's no wonder that people look forward to Monday, and no wonder that they find their work that much more meaningful.

93% of people on Superteams consider their job meaningful to them.

And when we ask people, why do you find your work meaningful?

This was a fascinating finding as well.

On average, teams, the number one reason people find their job meaningful is earning a salary to support their family on Superteams.

The number one reason is being part of the team.

And I think what that speaks to is how rewarding it becomes to have that job where people around you are making you better, where you're learning new things, where you can actually put your hours to being productive at work.

It's freeing.

And it's, it's energizing.

>> Let me close with this here.

Um, you write that, you know, and the back end of the book here that you want teams to also think about how to take their next opportunity or improve.

And the best teams communicate really well.

The best teams are very direct and can be direct with each other and don't feel like that's threatening.

But what's a general idea that you would leave with us for actually not getting stuck in the stasis of of staying the same, of not seeing how we can grow, of not seeing where the opportunity to get better is.

How do we do it?

>> Running more experiments.

That's, that's something that I think more people need to consider.

When we look at average teams versus Superteams, Superteams are 48% more likely to run ongoing experiments.

And those experiments can be small.

It can be things like just a B testing a landing page, or it could be much bigger, like selling a product or service that doesn't yet exist.

Just to see what the client says.

When you have those ongoing experiments, what that does is it enables the team to learn new things, because even if you fail, you're going to learn something that you can all apply to get a little bit better the next time.

>> I do have a little feedback to the effect of, I would like my boss to read this book from some listeners.

So, you know, if you want to pick up the book, it's available now.

Um, you want to direct people anywhere where you'd like them to pick up the book.

>> Um, well, you know, you can pick it up at any bookstore, but once you do, we've created a course that teaches you the book's best insights in under 20 minutes.

It's completely free.

When you get the book, it's Superteams masterclass.com.

>> Superteams masterclass.com.

How has the feedback been for you on this, by the way?

I mean, like you have the best blurbs of anybody.

I think you got Adam Grant to write.

You got Adam Grant like anybody gets Adam Grant, you're doing really, really well here.

So the advanced stuff was great.

How is it going?

>> It's going well.

You know, people who read this, uh, like you, I get a lot of the feedback of, man, I need my boss to read this.

>> And I didn't say that.

>> I think that was.

>> The best quote.

>> Whatever he.

>> Wants.

>> And that that is, um, that, that, that, that to me is, is probably the best praise I could get because I think it resonates with people because they recognize themselves in it and they see so many of their hours going to waste and they want to do good work.

That's the part I think, that is so illuminating that I think most people, more people need to appreciate is the average person wants to do a good job.

They come to work wanting to do a good job, and they have all these barriers that are getting in the way.

And if we just remove some of those barriers, we can all have far better workplaces.

>> Yeah, that was one of the surprising points on the subject of meaning that you mentioned, when the average team workers talk about finding meaning, they talk about the salary.

I, I don't I wouldn't even have categorized, categorize that as meaning.

Of course it's meaningful, like supporting your family, but that's not where I would have even mentally gone with that question.

And I do think again, generationally, you probably hear more from younger workers about wanting to feel invested in something valuable, want to be part of a team that's doing something positive.

And I think that's healthy.

I think that that is a good thing.

And this book, I think, indicates to me, you're more likely to feel that way if you're part of a team that's working really, really well.

And I just appreciate the fact that you wrote it.

So thank you for coming in.

Thanks for sharing more with us.

You mentioned the the book website, your work.

This is not the only book you've written.

Uh, do you want to mention where people can find more of your work?

>> Yeah, you can find it on Amazon or my favorite book, bookstore book culture in Pittsford.

>> Book culture in Pittsford.

All right.

You are a local.

We get to claim you even though, you know, you got all these folks lined up to give you blurbs here.

It's great stuff.

Thank you very much for being here.

Come back sometime.

My pleasure.

Thank you.

Ron Friedman.

And the book is called Superteams The Science and Secrets of High Performing Teams.

I hope you're part of a super team from all of us at Connections.

Thanks for being with us on whatever platform you're finding us.

Have a great afternoon.

Great evening.

We'll talk to you tomorrow on member supported public media.

>> This program is a production of WXXI Public Radio.

The views expressed do not necessarily represent those of this station, its staff, management or underwriters.

The broadcast is meant for the private use of our audience.

Any rebroadcast or use in another medium without express written consent of WXXI is strictly prohibited.

Connections with Evan Dawson is available as a podcast.

Just click on the Connections link at WXXI News.org.