Dysfunctional Teams

Is your teamwork not working? In this episode of HBR’s advice podcast, Dear HBR:, cohosts Alison Beard and Dan McGinn answer your questions with the help of Amy Edmondson, a professor at Harvard Business School and the author of The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. They talk through what to do when your team isn’t communicating, doesn’t respect its leader, or has one employee who’s causing problems.

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Listen to more episodes and find out how to subscribe on the Dear HBR: page. Email your questions about your workplace dilemmas to Dan and Alison at dearhbr@hbr.org

From Alison and Dan’s reading list for this episode:

HBR: The Three Pillars of a Teaming Culture by Amy Edmondson — “When you join an unfamiliar team or start a challenging new project, self-protection is a natural ins tinct. It’s not possible to look good or be right all the time when collaborating on an endeavor with uncertain outcomes. But when you’re concerned about yourself, you tend to be less interested in others, less passionate about your shared cause, and unable to understand different points of view. So it takes conscious work to shift the culture.”

HBR: Too Much Team Harmony Can Kill Creativity by Darko Lovric and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic — “Consistent with these famous case studies, scientific research shows that creativity and innovation can be enhanced by reducing team harmony. For instance, a recent study of 100 product development teams found that two common disruptors of team harmony, namely diversity and task uncertainty, were positively associated with creative performance.”

HBR: Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams by Lynda Gratton and Tamara J. Erickson — “Our study showed that a number of skills were crucial: appreciating others, being able to engage in purposeful conversations, productively and creatively resolving conflicts, and program management. By training employees in those areas, a company’s human resources or corporate learning department can make an important difference in team performance.”

HBR: The Secrets of Great Teamwork by Martine Haas and Mark Mortensen — “Team assignments should be designed with equal care. Not every task has to be highly creative or inspiring; many require a certain amount of drudgery. But leaders can make any task more motivating by ensuring that the team is responsible for a significant piece of work from beginning to end, that the team members have a lot of autonomy in managing that work, and that the team receives performance feedback on it.”