336. The Science of Super Teams: What High-Performing Teams Do Differently with Dr. Ron Friedman

A team full of smart, capable people can still feel slow, stressed, and stuck and the reason usually isn’t effort. It’s the system. Dr. Ron Friedman, award-winning psychologist and author of Super Teams, joins me to challenge the way we think about high performance and to explain why “busy” often hides broken coordination, unclear roles, and incentives that pull people in different directions.

We get practical about what separates elite teams from the rest, starting with the basics of a real team mindset: a shared goal everyone is pushing toward, clear roles that prevent turf wars and dropped balls, and true interdependence where we genuinely need each other to win. From there, Ron shares the three strengths super teams build: managing time, energy, and attention; making each other better through peer accountability and credit sharing; and continuously improving through feedback seeking, experiments, and innovation.

We also tackle a modern workplace trap most leaders miss: individual productivity hacks can backfire at the team level. When one person batches email or disappears into deep work alone, they can become a bottleneck for everyone else. Ron explains how super teams fix this with collective focus blocks, meeting guidelines like “no decision, no meeting,” and trust behaviors rooted in competence, caring, and consistency. You’ll also hear a simple, future-focused approach to feedback that avoids defensiveness and actually improves performance.

If you want a calmer, faster, more resilient team culture, hit subscribe, share this with a leader or teammate, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

🌐 Connect with Ron:
• Website: https://superteamsinc.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronfriedmanphd/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronfriedmanphd/

📚 You can purchase Ron's books on Amazon:
• Superteams: https://www.amazon.com/dp/198218633X/
• The Best Place to Work: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0399165592/

Transcript

Why Teams Underperform

Mick Spiers 0:01

Have you ever been part of a team where everyone was individually capable, but somehow the team still struggled to perform? Have you ever seen productivity hacks help one person but accidentally slow everyone else down? And have you ever wondered what the best teams actually do differently? Today I'm joined by Dr. Ron Friedman. Ron is an award-winning psychologist, best-selling author and keynote speaker. He's the author of The Best Place to Work, Decoding Greatness, and Super Teams, where he explores what separates truly high-performing teams from the rest. In this conversation, Ron helps us challenge some of the biggest misconceptions about team performance. As you listen today, I invite you to think about your own team. Are you aligned around the same goal? Are the roles clear? Do people feel they genuinely need each other to succeed? And are your current habits helping the team perform or just helping individuals survive? Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Leadership Project. I'm greatly honored today to be joined by Dr. Ron Friedman. Dr. Ron is an award-winning psychologist, a best-selling author, and a keynote speaker. He translates the psychology of human behavior into practical and actionable strategies for leaders and for high performance teams. He's been featured in Harvard Business Review and in the New York Times, and he's the author of multiple books, including The Best Place to Work, Decoding Greatness, and Super Teams. And he's famous for having this saying that team performance is often misunderstood. So that's what we're going to explore today. What does high performance really mean in a team setting? And what are some of the misconceptions that we have about high performance teams? And how can we course correct if we find ourselves into those traps of some of those misunderstandings? So without any further ado, Ron, I'd love it if you'd say hello to the audience. Give us a little flavor of your very rich background. But most importantly, I'm keen to know what inspires you to do what you do today.

Dr. Ron Friedman 2:21

Well, much of it came from my experience of being

Turning Science Into Action

Dr. Ron Friedman 2:23

in the corporate world. So I started off as a psychology professor, teaching at colleges and universities, and then I went off into the corporate world. So I got into education because I love learning new things. And one of the tragedies of being a professor is you're basically teaching the same thing over and over again. So it's kind of like being in your favor class and then never being allowed to leave that class ever again. And so I decided to become a pollster. So my job was to measure public opinion, figure out what it is that organized uh that individuals believe, and then advise organizations on how they can shape those opinions using psychological principles. And what I discovered in my experience in the corporate world is that there was a massive divide between the latest science and the modern workplace. All the factors that I had spent years studying and researching in terms of what it is that gets people motivated and engaged and creative, all of those factors were being ignored. So that led me to write my first book. It was the best place to work. And in it, I took over a thousand academic studies and translated them into plain English so that regardless if you're just someone starting out or you're a CEO, you have access to the best research on creating a great workplace. But there was something valuable that was missing from that book. And that is what do the best teams do differently? Because even within great organizations, you have a lot of variation in terms of the quality of the teams. Some teams are high performing, some are not. So in this book, Super Teams, I focused in on what is it that the best teams do differently?

Mick Spiers 3:49

Yeah, really interesting, Ron. There's three things that jump out to me that I want to test probably one at a time. This difference between the academic world and the real world. Kind of curious to know what you learn about human behavior being a pulster. And then, yeah, what is emerging around these teams? So, but let's go with the first one first. Yeah, this is curious. I I had a very similar conversation about psychosocial safety with uh a construction team recently, right? And you can imagine a bunch of, I'm gonna say laborers, skilled laborers, like I'm talking highly skilled laborers, and this science of psychosocial safety is taking hold in Australia where where there is some academic research coming through about what it means. But here's these people in the workplace that are turning up at a work site at 7.30 in the morning and they're having their safety talks around, and all of a sudden they're getting asked to talk about mental health, role clarity, all of these types of things. And it's and it's coming from the academic world. And I gotta tell you, I get puzzled looks from some of them going, I'm gonna swear for a second, what is this shit? Right. So how do we translate because the academic science is important, it's drawing out emerging things for us, emergent properties and new ways of looking at the world. But it can be, I'm gonna say, not arm's length removed from the workplace, it can be 17 arm's lengths removed from the workplace. How do we do that translation, Ron?

Dr. Ron Friedman 5:24

Well, first, let me just say there are a lot of findings in research. And I'm not here to suggest that all findings in research need to be applied to the workplace, but there are some that are just no-brainers. So, for example, we have research showing that 80% of people lie during interviews. I mean, we continue to conduct interviews, we continue to bring people in. And what do we actually decide on when we have an interview? More often than not, it's whether or not we like the person. And who do we like? We like people who remind us of ourselves. And so we end up hiring for the wrong reasons. Um, that's just one example. Another example is how managers motivate. In many cases, they motivate through rewards and punishments. And we know that that doesn't really sustain motivation. We know from research that people need a quiet space to do focus work. This is actually one of the findings that we confirmed in the research in super teams is most workplaces are an intentional war zone. It's impossible to get your actual work done. And when that happens, people end up compensating in all these ways that make work longer and really harder to recover your energy and lead to burnout. So, those are just some examples of the gaps between science and the workplace. And so I, you know, again, there there are some very specific, concrete things that any leader can apply to be more effective. And the wonderful thing about looking at this research is that you it takes the guesswork of how to do it effectively. Because we, you know, when we have research-based findings, what that means is we've identified specific variables that lead to specific outcomes. And so the guesswork gets taken out. So you asked another question, which is why isn't more of it being applied? And the answer to that is because if you're a leader in a business setting, you probably don't have spare time to read academic journal articles. And even if you did, you would have a hard time knowing how to apply them because academics write for other academics. They don't write for the business world. So I saw that as an opportunity to apply my very specific skill, which I developed during polling, which is you write research reports for executives. And when you do that, the last two pages are the actionable recommendations. And what I noticed doing that work is all the executives would like they they love the fact that the research was done, but what they really care about is the actionable settings at the end. So they'd always turn it to the final two pages. So I thought, what if I did that for all these academic studies? And that's exactly what the best place work to work was about was making over a thousand academic studies actionable for leaders.

Mick Spiers 7:56

Yeah, that's really good, Ron. Because I would say a lot of people wouldn't know where to start if they even to be able to translate sometimes what it means. Like, so if they're if they're reading some deep research on identity, on the psychology of identity, they'd be more informed and they'd be knowledgeable and go, oh, yeah, that's really interesting. They might even scratch their head at one point and go, oh, never thought about that. But what does it mean for the way I do my next one-on-one? Or what does it mean for the way I do my next team meeting? Or what does it mean for the next time I give someone feedback as an example? Because feedback is a practical thing that they have to do in the workplace. How do they translate this academic research about identity into, well, what's that gonna mean in terms of how I deliver feedback? That's the missing thing that you're feeling here, Ron.

Dr. Ron Friedman 8:45

Yeah, I appreciate you saying that. And I will just add to that, Mick, that that's kind of one of my, it's one of my crucial filters, which is A, if I wouldn't do it myself, I'm not gonna put in my book or write about it because I wouldn't recommend anybody else do it. If I don't do it myself, I'm not gonna recommend you do it. And secondly, if it's not actionable, I I don't write about it. Because it's like, it's like what if you want to be educated in theory, good for you. That's not my role. My role is to help you apply the best of what science has uncovered so that you could be a more effective leader.

Mick Spiers 9:15

Yeah, really good. Okay. Now, how do we then make that a closed loop? I'm making an assumption that you do this because looking at you, I can imagine that this is what's happening. Then the other part is real life is then the petri disc. This is when the experiment can happen. Like, so if you if you come up with a a new theory, a new framework, a new actionable insight, well, then in the real world, we need to pressure test it and we go, okay, well, what's working? What's not working? Do we need to subtly pivot this framework a little bit, make little little adjustments? So, how do you make it a closed loop learning?

How Super Teams Were Studied

Dr. Ron Friedman 9:53

Well, part of the research that we did in Super Teams is we looked at what real-world teams are doing and what the most effective teams are doing differently. And so how we did that research was we interviewed over 6,000 knowledge workers and we asked them two simple questions about their teams. The first question is how effective is your team at achieving its goals? And the second question is compared to other teams in your industry, how would you rate your team's performance? And then we took the teams with a perfect score. It was a very small group, about 8% of teams. We call them super teams, and we looked to see what are the super teams doing differently. And we looked at everything from how they structure their day to how they run their meetings to even how they recover after work hours and on weekends and on vacations. And that is why I think this research is so vital and so important is because we're not talking about theories. We're talking about real-world teams, people who have worked together for years on end and what they do differently.

Mick Spiers 10:52

All right. So this is this is where we need to go in this conversation. This is where we all need to lean in and pay attention. Such a large study of organizations of, you know, comparing really high performance teams versus let's call it the rest of us. I'm going to put myself in the rest of us category for for now, because I I I strive for high performance, but I know that I don't always uh achieve it. What I'm curious about the first part is when you in the two questions that you're asked, what did you learn about kind of self-awareness gaps? Like, so were there people out there that think they're performing here and they're really here, or or even vice versa, they think, oh, this place is not really that great, but it's actually better than average. Like, how strong was the self-awareness when you're asking those questions?

Dr. Ron Friedman 11:41

It's a great question. We didn't look at self-awareness, actually. That's that's a good topic for future studies. Here, what we looked at, actually, we have let me just take a step back and say part of what you're I'm gonna rephrase this, Mick. So let me let me start that part over. One of the things we know about people's evaluation of their own teams is that it is the single best predictor of a team's actual performance. And when you think about the alternatives to a team evaluating its own performance, there are not too many alternatives that are more uh promising than that. In other words, if a manager evaluates the team, a manager's evaluation is likely to be very different than people's actual experience working on the team. And people's actual experience is going to be a much better predictor of whether they want to stay at the company, whether they are looking for an alternative position, whether they're engaged with their work, whether they'd recommend their employer to someone else. And so that's why we were very curious about how people view their own teams, because that tends to be the best predictor of a team's actual performance.

Mick Spiers 12:44

Yeah, that's interesting. So was there often quite a distance, I'm gonna say, or did you come across many examples where the where the leader is going, oh, my team, 90%? We're we're awesome. And then finding out the team were like, yeah, 30, 40, like how big was the gap?

Dr. Ron Friedman 13:04

That's interesting. That's also not something in this study, because this study was done in a particular way, which is polling people about their teams. And then we looked at the behaviors. But what you're asking is, is there typically a gap between leaders and individuals? And you know, I I think that there are some, there are certain personality types that lend themselves to that dirt to that diff to having potentially a gap. But I would imagine that there's going to be a fairly high correlation between the leaders' perception and people's actual experience.

Mick Spiers 13:33

Yeah, okay. All right, very good. I feel like my curiosity is just gonna get away on me a lot today. I now now got another another thought. How much of it do you think then becomes, I'm gonna say almost self-fulfilling prophecies fueled by confirmation bias? Let me explain the question a little bit. Like, so if I go to work and I think that my boss hates me, I'm gonna see all of the signs that confirm that my boss hates me. And I'm likely to ignore the the contrary evidence that actually she really likes me and she thinks I'm doing a great job. So, in that theory of, oh sorry, in those polls where you're asking people, hey, you know, what's it like around here? You know, what's is this a good place to work and all these kind of things? If they're in a frame that might have come from initially a real evidence, but if they get into that mindset of this place is a crock of shit, so I'm gonna swear again, this place, this workplace is crap, they're gonna see all the things that confirm it's crap. And conversely, if they think, oh, my team is awesome, we are so cool, they're gonna see the signs all the time. They're gonna go, oh, see, see how good we are? How much does confirmation bias come in here where it just gets away on you, either in a good way or a bad

Biases That Shape Team Reality

Mick Spiers 14:48

way?

Dr. Ron Friedman 14:48

Well, you know, confirmation bias certainly is something that predicts how people perceive their reality. And in fact, one of the findings that I think is so interesting that we uncovered in doing the research for the book is something called the liking gap. And most of us struggle with this. Most of us misperceived how well liked we are by our colleagues. And typically it's uh we underestimate how well we are liked. And what happens when you underestimate how well you are liked is you start acting in a way that is consistent with how a person who is disliked would behave. So we smile a little bit less, we are less extroverted. And if you this is something you can use to your advantage because if you just simply assume that people like you more, they will actually like you more. And so you might think to yourself, well, isn't that just fooling myself? And the answer is no, it's actually a much-needed correction for a bias that we all struggle with. And so I think it's a really interesting idea because you can apply it not just to dealing with your colleagues, but also to dealing with your boss and to dealing with potential clients. Oh, that's really interesting.

Mick Spiers 15:54

It makes me think of the spotlight effect in some degree, like uh a little bit of a projection of our own insecurities where we we think that people are are thinking of us in in certain ways and and all, or they're they're worrying about oh, they noticed how scuffy my shoes were today, or they're noticing that I'm carrying a little weight around my midriff, and and they're not at all, they're not at all noticing those things. So we're walking around. This is a a theory of mine that I haven't fully tested, by the way, Ron, but with a psychologist like you, I feel in safe ground to test it a little bit here, that with this spotlight effect, we walk around in the fear of judgment. And the fear of judgment is about our own insecurities. But the funny thing is, is we're walking around, I'm I'm sitting here going, oh, what does Ron think of me? And the two most likely scenarios, in my view, is that either Ron is going about his own day, going, he's worried about he's got to remember to pick up the milk on the way from home, or he's worried about preparing for his presentation tomorrow or whatever. So he's not even thinking about me at all. Or the second most likely is Ron is sitting there going, Oh, I wonder if Mick is judging me. So we're all all walking around wondering whether we're judging each other. And if that's the case, we would think, yeah, people don't like me as much as they really do. How does that extrapolation sit with you?

Dr. Ron Friedman 17:18

Yeah, I'll tell you, I'll tell you something about something that I think about often, which is in preparation for public speaking, which obviously can be stressful for just about anyone. And one of the things that I've learned about a strategy that is effective for reducing stress, but also making you a better speaker, is recognizing that how people usually remember events is based on peak and end, meaning peak, which is the best part of the talk. That's people are gonna remember the best part of the talk, and they'll remember how it ended, which means if you screw up along the way, they're probably gonna forget it. So even if you have screwed up, just focus on delivering a peak and remember that you need to end strongly. And if you do those two things, most people will remember it as a positive experience. And I think that applies to far more than public speaking. I think that is true for just about every client interaction you have, every colleague interaction you have. And it reminds me of something that Momo Ma Yo-Yo Ma said with regard to his performing on the cello. And uh what he would say is once he's made that first mistake, it's a relief. He doesn't, because now he knows, okay, I no longer have to worry about being perfect. And I just think that's a great way of looking at it.

Mick Spiers 18:30

Oh, that's awesome. That's awesome. And I think there is, I'm gonna extrapolate a little bit further here and go, you know, the prevalence that you might have made a little mistake. You might have, I don't know, you might have said something in a meeting that didn't come out exactly the way you intended. And then you go away and uh beat yourself up about that for three days. Everyone forgot about it 30 seconds later, but you're the one uh still thinking about it. So, okay. So there's two things I want to replay to the audience now as takeaways, and then go on to more about teams here, that chances are you're more like than you think you are. So stop beating yourself up about this. And second, I love this uh bit about the peak and the end. So whether it's a team meeting, a one-on-one, a presentation, any interaction, focus on giving a peak and making sure that the end is memorable. That's really good, Ron. Okay, so two big ones, and I don't know which one to go with first, but I'm gonna go with the negative first.

Three Basics Of Team Mindset

Mick Spiers 19:28

So when you've studied all of these super teams, what would you say on the other side, on the low performance teams, what was the most common denominators you found? And I'm gonna I'm gonna call it toxic teams, even just to put a put a label on it. What was the most common denominator that you found in the ones at the other end of the scale?

Dr. Ron Friedman 19:50

Well, first, let me just say most people are not really on teams. They may work in the same department, but that doesn't mean they have a team mindset. In order for people to develop that team mindset, they need three things. They need, first, a shared goal. They need a single outcome that everyone is pushing for together. A lot of times have people have different agendas. So, for example, Mick, if I want to get home at five o'clock to take my kids to soccer and you're focused on getting a promotion, then we're gonna have some conflicts because we don't have the same goal. So you need to make sure people are all pulling in the same direction. And also I'll add to this and say compensation sometimes plays into this because if everyone's simply rewarded for their own performance, it's really hard to feel like you have a shared goal. So you need some metrics that everyone is fighting for together. That's the first thing. The second thing is you need role clarity. I need to know what I'm responsible for, and I need to know what you're responsible for, and I need to know how those two things fit together. If we don't have role clarity, then either we're gonna drop some balls or we're gonna have some turf wars. Either one of those is problematic. The third thing is you need interdependence. Interdependence is just a fancy psychological word, which means we need to feel like we need each other in order to succeed. So if I feel like if I just do my job, I don't care what you're up to, we're not gonna have that team mindset. I need to feel like I need you in order for both of us to feel like we have that team mentality. So most teams are lacking in at least one of these. They don't have the shared goal, the role clarity, or they don't have the interdependence. And when you have a team that's missing one of those, what you have is a recipe for dysfunction. And I think most people listening to this can think about a team that they've been on that was pretty bad, and they can quickly identify which one of those was missing or which two of those or which three of those were missing, right? Because there's so common, so common. So that's the first thing is you need to have those three elements to develop a team mentality. And it's up to the leader to make sure people have that. But this book isn't just about creating a team, this is about creating a super team. And so that I'll just leave it there and say that's where I think most people are coming from, from a position of not even having a team mentality.

Mick Spiers 21:56

Yeah, okay. That's really interesting. That probably Would say that they're on a team if you ask them, but the ingredients aren't there. The things that were jumping into my mind, Ron, if I can test them with you when you were talking through that. The first one, yep, made complete sense. Do we have a shared goal? And is our reward around that shared goal or is it around individual goals? And that's going to govern our how we show up and what we focus on. When you're spoken speaking about role clarity and interdependence, the things that jumped into my high my mind, and this comes from Drexlis Sibett's team performance model, what I'm sharing here. But I the questions that came into my mind was do I understand why I am here? And do I understand who you are and why you're here? And if I understand why I'm here, what gifts or superpowers I'm bringing to the table, and I understand what why who you are and why you're here, what what is your gift and what are you bringing to the table? Then we can bring those two gifts together and go, oh, okay. Now, Ron and Mick, we can actually create something. We can co-create something, bring something new into existence that wouldn't have existed without the two of us. So we need each other. But I understand who I am, I understand who you are. Now I understand why we need each other. How does that sit with you?

Dr. Ron Friedman 23:18

Yeah, you need to feel like you're a valued member of the team. You need to feel like you're contributing something valuable and unique. Now, again, that's up to the leader, but it's also, and this is the this is now stepping into super team credit territory, is it's up to your colleagues and teammates as well. Because on the best teams, the credit doesn't just come from the top down. It gets shared from peer to peer. They're much people on super teams are much higher in sharing credit with one another. You know, a lot of people think that if they share credit, they're going to make themselves less impressive. And so they hold on to it because they feel like they're worried that people won't respect them. But the truth is, and this is what the research shows us, is people will respect you more if you share credit with your colleagues. And it's because the only person who would share credit is someone who's confident and has humility. And those are the exact traits people look for in a leader. So the next this is why I tell people all the time is the next time somebody praises your work, don't just soak it in yourself. Redirect the spotlight to someone who contributed to your success. People will respect you more and your team's performance will improve.

Mick Spiers 24:28

I'd need to triple down on that one and confirm it, Ron. And it's not just your team members will respect you and appreciate it. It goes all the way to the CEO and the board. When senior executives see someone be able to do that, share the credit and say, Yep, this is what this person contributed and this is how we we succeeded, that person's the opinion of that person increases dramatically. And if they stand up and say, I did this, I did that, it actually has the counter, you like you think that you know you're self-promoting your achievements. No, it actually has the the opposite effect. People think less of this. Yeah.

Dr. Ron Friedman 25:09

It's actually a there's research showing it's a great way of touting your own praise if you can do it in a way that discusses the the team's role in doing it. So this is uh something um people find sometimes challenging. And I I I'll admit I'm one of these people. I don't like to toot my own horn and talk about all the things I've achieved, but if you can do it through the lens of here's what our team achieved, people don't view it as arrogance, they view it as competence and they see it as a sign of leadership.

Mick Spiers 25:37

Yeah, and they're gonna extrapolate themselves. You don't have to do it for them. I say this all the time. The CEO who's just had that presentation where the person's done that, they'll often turn around and go, Hey yeah, thank you, Ron. And by the way, thank you for your leadership. This wouldn't have been possible without you. You didn't have to say it. They all connect the dots.

Dr. Ron Friedman 25:56

That's right.

Mick Spiers 25:56

Yeah, really good. Okay. So there's some there's a big takeaway for leaders listening to the show. Listen to those three ingredients that that Ron is talking about there. Do you have shared goals? Are your rewards connected to those shared goals? Do you have role clarity and do you have clarity around interdependence on how people need each other to be successful? If you can tackle those three things, you're you're heading in the right direction. All right. I mentioned this a little bit when we did the intro, that you often say that team performance is misunderstood. So in all of this research, what was your biggest surprise around our misunderstandings of team performance? Oof.

Dr. Ron Friedman 26:41

I don't know how much time you have, Mick, but let me let me take a second back, step a step back and share with you what the three things are that super teams

The Three Strengths Of Super Teams

Dr. Ron Friedman 26:49

do differently. So we kind of took all the findings and we put them in three buckets. Super teams share three key strengths. The first is they get more done by better managing their time, energy, and attention. The second is they don't just collaborate well, they actively make one another better. They lift one each other up, they bring out the best in each other. And the third is even when things are going well, they're not satisfied. They're constantly looking to build their skills and improve over time. So those are the three key strengths. So you need to have all three. You can't just have one or two. If you want to be a super team, you need to be a team that gets more done by better managing time, energy, and attention. The second is making each other better, and the third is improving over time. The good news is every one of those strengths is learnable, which means by building the right habits, any team can dramatically improve its performance. Now, you asked, what are some of the surprises? There were literally a ton. Like there's every other there's a surprising finding to me, almost every other page in super teams, and I'll give you just a handful. The first surprise is productivity tips. A lot of times we encounter these productivity tips online about how do you get more done during the day. Well, one of the secrets is turn off your notification. Another is batch your emails. Only look at your email three times a day. And as it turns out, those productivity tips, while they may help the individual, they don't help the team. And it's because if I unilaterally decide that I'm not going to be available to the team unless it's eight o'clock or 12 o'clock or four o'clock when I'm checking my email, that slows the rest of the team down. And so, as I say in the book, one person's deep work becomes another person's bottleneck. And so you can't just unilaterally decide these. And so super teams are solving these issues on a team-wide level. They're setting aside dedicated focus blocks. They're doing things like on Tuesday, between 3:30 and 5, no one has to monitor their email. Everyone can just put their head down and get work done. They're also scheduling meeting-free days so that people can attend to work without the constant disruptions of meetings. And so what we find in if when you look at how they're managing to get more done, it's by minimizing distractions and maximizing focus as a team.

Mick Spiers 29:08

Yeah, really good, Ron. You hadn't, you probably looked at puzzled looks on my face when I was listening to you, because I was I was sitting there going, yeah, but we need some of these individual productivity measures. But I what I'm seeing here is it's now a collective decision. So yeah, we we might have deep work Thursdays, but we're all doing it. We're all doing it at the same time. Yeah, okay, that's really interesting. And if we don't have that conversation, you end up with those bottlenecks.

Dr. Ron Friedman 29:36

Yeah, to be clear though, I am not suggesting that people don't need as you said, I'm not suggesting people don't need deep work time. In fact, they need they very much need it. So one of the findings that we came across while looking at average teams is the average worker loses 18 hours a week to meetings. They then lose another 11 hours a week, digging themselves out of messages, meaning email, Slack, text messages from their colleagues. That leaves about a day to do a week's worth of work. And 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 work late, you work weekends, or you multitask. And all of those are problematic and lead to burnout. And so you've got to address this at the team-wide level because this is, you know, we for years we've been asking, why are people getting burnt out at work? A better question is how

Team Level Focus And Meeting Rules

Dr. Ron Friedman 30:25

do they manage to get any work done in the first place when they lose 29 hours a week before they've accomplished a single task?

Mick Spiers 30:30

So a listener listening to this, how do they start with this then? So if they're listening to this going, yeah, we do none of that, we don't do any of what Ron's talking about here. How do they start those conversations about aligning individual productivity and team productivity so it's so it's actually cohesive together?

Dr. Ron Friedman 30:49

There's a lot of things that you can do. And I it's tough for me to pick a single tip because there are so many in the book, but I'll give you one just to start. I think experimenting with a 30-minute focus block where no one has to look at their emails and no one can have a meeting on a Tuesday or a Thursday, just try it. Try it as an experiment and then see if the team feels like it was helpful. I'm willing to bet it is because what's happening right now is there's so much coordination tax that we're all incurring because everyone is kind of a everyone, it's kind of like I described in the book as a focus free-for-all. Everyone is trying to carve out their own time, and then we end up incurring all these delays that slow everyone down as a team. So that's one idea. Another idea that I talk about in the book is something called meeting guidelines. And meeting guidelines are simple rules that you decide with your team about what constitutes a meeting and what doesn't. So, you know, in most companies, there aren't any guidelines around what deserves a meeting and what doesn't. Just about anybody can call a meeting for any reason. And the unfortunate truth is a lot of people use meetings as a crutch. They call a meeting because it makes them look good, because it looks to other people like they're getting stuff done, but then it gives them license to procrastinate because after all, they're waiting for the meeting. Meeting guidelines prevent that from happening. So, for example, in my team, we have a simple rule: no decision, no meeting. Unless there's a decision to be made, we're not gonna have a meeting. If you have an update, great, send an email. You have a question, pick up the phone. Unless there's something we all need to collectively decide together, we're not gonna pull people away from their work. Another example of a meeting guideline is from a company called Percolate in New York City. They have a meeting guideline that says no spectators. If you're not contributing to the meeting, you don't need to be there. It's not a criticism, it's respect for your time. You know, a lot of people understand very clearly that if you invite people who don't need to be in the meeting to the meeting, that's a waste of their time. What they don't quite appreciate is just having those extra people in the room makes the meeting worse for the people who actually need to be there. And it's because the more people you have in the room, the more everyone feels like they need to contribute, the longer the meeting, and the worse the decision. There's research out of Bain showing that past seven people, the quality of a group's decision drops by 10% and it gets worse the more people you add. And so meeting guidelines, great way to start in terms of saving people time, given that half their week is now going to meetings.

Mick Spiers 33:13

There's an interesting dichotomy that shows up in a lot of workplaces here, Ron, around what you said about the meeting attendees. Right. I think most people would agree a meeting with the right people in the room is going to be a more efficient meeting. But we do have people that get offended, Ron. They get offended and go, well, why wasn't I invited to that meeting? It can be the very same people at the end of the week that can that then complain that they got invited to 21 meetings. So we do have a dichotomy there. But I think the answer's uh having an adult conversation about it with everyone and setting, setting ground rules, like you're saying. And to have to have a mentality that more meetings doesn't mean more better alignment. It's better meetings makes better alignment. How does that sit with you?

Dr. Ron Friedman 34:00

I I appreciate you bringing this up because this is one of the strategies I bring up in Super Teams is how do you diplomatically disinvite someone from a meeting they don't need to attend? And so I provide a sample email that you can use as a template the next time you want to try this yourself. And basically, what the meeting does, the the email does is it tells the other person, I'm gonna have this meeting with the following people. And here's what we're interested in accomplishing. And I'd love your input on your because I know you've had a lot of good experience with this. Could you share your input on this? And I'm happy to loop back on what we what we discussed so we can save you some time. And if you'd like to attend the meeting, of course, you can join. And so what that does is it allows them the opportunity to weigh in. They know they're going to be in the loop, and it gives them the autonomy to decide if they need to be there. And so a lot, you know, I think a lot of times people feel like they need to be in the room, but what they really want is they want input and they want access to information. And if you provide them with input and access to information, they no longer feel like they have to be in the meeting.

Mick Spiers 35:03

Yeah, good. Okay. So I'm I'm feeling now that if that's done well, that they're not going to feel excluded, but they're also going to feel respected, that their time was respected. I didn't get, you know, invited to a 90-minute meeting when I got other things to do, right? So it's uh if you got if you get that pitch right, I think you can get there. All right. So some of these rituals and habits we're talking about here, I can really see how these can align with the the first part that you said, which is we're going to manage our time, our energy, and our attention better. What about the second one? Making each other better. What does that look like, Ron?

Trust And Fast Response Times

Dr. Ron Friedman 35:42

So making each other better happens in a few different ways. One is when people are surrounded by others who do good work, it raises the bar for everyone. And so that's exactly what we see in re in our research, where on super teams, 94% of people say, my teammates motivate me to do my best work. The other way that it makes each they make each other better is by raising accountability. In our research, we ask people a simple question. When things go wrong on your team, who do you feel worse about letting down? Do you feel worse about letting down your boss or do you feel worse about letting down your teammates? And on super teams, it's not even close. 82% say, I feel worse about letting down my teammates. And there's this quote I love from a football coach here in the United States who says something along the lines. His name is PJ Flack, he's a college football coach. And he says something along the lines of on bad teams, no one leads. On good teams, the coaches lead. But on elite teams, it's the players who lead. And I think that's exactly right. When people feel accountable to their teammates, they try harder, they take ownership, and they look for ways to make each other better. And the final thing I'd say about making each other better is that when you're surrounded by teammates who are really good at what they do and care about you, it gives you a ton of confidence to take on big projects. When you're facing a tough deadline, it no longer feels quite as stressful because you know your teammates have your back. And so those are just some examples of the ways in which being around high-performing teammates makes each of us feel more capable and more effective at our jobs.

Mick Spiers 37:12

Oh, there's a there's a lot there to unpack. The accountability is uh interesting. I'm gonna play to you a behavior that I see often and gonna stick up my hand and be honest and say, I think I do this. So I'm gonna test it with you, Ron, and say that around that accountability topic that I see people prioritize emails from their boss above the team, right? So they'll when they look at their email and they might have a one-hour block where they're reading their emails, the first thing they're checking is that whether they've got some email from their boss. They're not checking whether, oh, hang on, one of my teammates is relying on me. They're waiting on this input that I promised them. Why aren't I prioritizing that just as much?

Dr. Ron Friedman 38:03

Well, because they're smart. I mean, obviously, clearly you're gonna be more responsive to your boss, and I don't fault anybody for that. But here's what I'll say to that is when it comes to trust, response time is crucial. So one of the things we look at in super teams is what are the factors that contribute to trust in the workplace? And trust in the workplace is different than what you expect from a spouse or from a neighbor. There are specific criteria that we look for when determining whether or not to trust our teammates. And it comes down to three things. One is competence. Do you trust the person to do a good job? If you don't trust them to do a good job, you're not gonna trust them. Second thing is caring. Do you feel like the person has your best interests in mind? Don't feel like they have your best interests. Doesn't matter how competent they are, you're not gonna trust them. And the third thing, and this is the part that most of us fail at, is consistency. If you're inconsistent, it doesn't matter how good you are at your job and how much you care about the other person. If they can't count on you, they're not gonna trust you. And response time plays into that. Because if you're responsive some of the time and then you go off and disappear for three days, I can't trust you. And if I can't trust you, that slows everything down. I have to double check your work. I can't just hand things off. I'm constantly thinking about it. There's tremendous drag that is introduced when people don't trust each other. And so what we find on super teams is actually their response time is much higher, much, much lower, meaning it's much better than on average teams because you have that inconsistency on average teams. And again, it impacts trust. And when trust breaks down, everything slows down.

Mick Spiers 39:35

Yeah, really interesting. I'm gonna play something to you and go. What I'm taking away from it is to think about that in two directions. And I'm thinking about, well, what am I looking for in team members? And and I like your three C's there. I'm I'm looking for competence, looking for caring to know that they've got my back and I'm looking for consistency. And then I'm gonna look in the mirror and then I'm gonna ask myself, am I serving that out? Like so if I if I expect that from others, starts with me. I need to role model it. I need to show them that I'm competent and I know what I'm doing, that I care about them and I've got their back, and that I'm consistent and responsive when they need me. And then I'm gonna get it back to me. How does that see it?

Dr. Ron Friedman 40:23

Well, yeah, I think as leaders, we do need to model the right behaviors. And what I'll say is when I say competence, I don't mean perfection. Competence is not perfection. It's simply generally doing a good job, but when you don't know something, admit it. Because when you admit that you don't know the answer, it makes it safe for other people to be honest and it sends a signal that on this team, you know, no one is expected to have all the right answers. And so we're not talking about perfection. And in terms of consistency, you know, I will say that a lot of the trust traps that we fall into don't happen because we're bad people. They happen because we get crunched for time. And so one of the things that's really crucial is to look at some of the places where maybe you've let others down on the three C's that we just talked about and look for ways to anticipate future trust traps so that you don't fall into them quite as easily. So, an example of this might be if you know that you're gonna be in meetings on Tuesday, instead of waiting for those meetings to happen and then falling behind on your email, consider having an auto response that says, Hey, I'm in meetings all day, I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Or when you get an email and you know you don't have time to answer it, say, got it, I'll get back to you as soon as I can. That makes a tremendous difference because a lot of times when people don't hear back from you, especially if you're a leader, they don't always assume you're busy. Typically, people fill knowledge gaps with a story, and that story tends to be negative. So they'll assume that you're not writing back to them because you didn't like what they said or because you don't respect them. And so anticipating these trust traps, having a plan in place can be really helpful.

Mick Spiers 42:02

Oh, that's very powerful, Ron. A saying I use often is in a vacuum of information, people draw their own conclusions. And because of our, we're human beings, so our our loss aversion is gr much greater than our appreciation of a gain, we tend to catastrophize. We tend to go to the negative explanation, not the positive one.

Dr. Ron Friedman 42:24

Yeah, if you're not secure in your relationship with your boss or with your colleagues, it's really common to disentangle people's opinions with people's perceptions of you. So it becomes if you don't like my idea, you don't like me. And that's painful for people. And so that's why it's really important not just to be consistent, but for people to know that you have their back because they're less likely to make those harmful interpretations.

Mick Spiers 42:53

Yeah, really good, Ron. Okay, very powerful. Let's go to the third leg of the stool for want of a better term. You spoke about never being satisfied, striving for better. What do the rituals look like for this in a team environment?

Feedback That Improves Performance

Dr. Ron Friedman 43:10

So I'll give you just a handful. First thing is on super teams, they're just getting a ton more feedback. And on average teams, the feedback is happening top down primarily. It's the manager who gives feedback to the employees. On super teams, they're getting more feedback from their manager, but they're also getting way more feedback from their colleagues. And it's not because people are going to one another and giving out pointers on how to do the job better. It's because they're hiring something called feedback seeking. They proactively go to their colleagues and they say, Hey, what do you think of this? They're getting their input early, they're making revisions, and then they're applying the insights to before delivering the product to the manager or to the client. So they're constantly improving through more common, more frequent feedback. The other thing is they run more experiments, they're constantly experimenting. Percent more likely to experiment. So they'll those experiments can be small. It can be A B testing a landing page, or it can be much bigger, like trying to sell a service offering that doesn't yet exist. The key is to always be working on something that you're not 100% sure is going to work out because the lessons you'll draw from that quote unquote failure will help you improve in the future. And the final thing I'll say on constant improvement is that they incentivize innovation. And one of my favorite examples of this is a company called 3M. I'm sure you've heard of them. It's the company that produces scotch tape and post-its. They've been around for over 120 years. And one of the secrets to their success is something called the 30% rule. And the 30% rule says in order for a division to earn its bonus, at least 30% of its revenue must come from a product introduced in the last four years. And I love this idea because even when things are going well, no one's coasting. Everyone's constantly thinking about what's next. And so that's the that's the sort of mindset you need if you're going to continuously improve, is you want more higher quality feedback between teammates, you want more experimentation, and you want people to pursue innovation because they see it as the path forward.

Mick Spiers 45:15

Okay. So a feedback culture, which I think is going to be challenging for a lot because we know that this is one of the things that a lot of people struggle with. But it holds you back. If you if you're holding back that feedback and you're not, you're not giving it to each other, it's really going to hold the whole team back, not just the individual. It holds the whole team back. Uh experimentation and then and then innovation, always willing to try something new. It might be little tweaks, right? It could be, oh, why don't we why don't we try it this way this time? And well, let's see how it goes and see if that's any better. And yeah, really, really interesting, Ron. Can we quickly, because we've we've covered this on the show with other guests, how do we get past this fear of feedback? It's still prevalent in many workplaces. You're saying super teams give feedback quite readily. If someone's listening to this and go, but I'm not in a feedback culture, people are avoiding feedback. How do we get past it, Ron?

Dr. Ron Friedman 46:14

Yeah, I appreciate you asking this. We actually have a chapter in Super Teams on feedback. So, how do you give good feedback? So, first, let me give you some jarring statistics. 97% of feedback fails to improve performance. 97. Only 3% improves performance. And a third of feedback actually worsens performance. And it's because it's delivered in a way that demoralizes people. So, how do you do it better? The number one tip I can offer you, and this is very counterintuitive if you've been received training on how to deliver feedback, is don't focus on the past, focus on the future. And here's what I mean by that is if someone handed in a memo late and you had to work on the weekend because of that, don't talk about how they delivered it late and what an impact it had on your weekend and how it ruined your weekend, how you had to struggle. And did they know that had that impact on you? Because all that's gonna do is it's gonna make them defensive and they're not gonna hear the rest of it. What you should do instead is say, hey, the next time we have a memo that's due on Friday, how do you feel about sending it to me on Thursday? Because that'll give me a day to think about it and really make some bet better changes before I submit it to the client. They're much more likely to be receptive to that because you haven't criticized their past behavior. And so focus on the future, focus on the one change that you'd like to see made in the future. And I say one change because a lot of times when we deliver feedback, we assume that we need to be comprehensive. And what happens when you give people lots of feedback is they shut down. They don't hear it anymore. So focus on one thing, make it about the future. And if you can, make it a conversation. Say, hey, what do you think about that? Because now they no longer feel like you are telling them what to do. You're talking about it, but you're you're collaborating together on finding the best possible solution. And that feels like teamwork to people.

Mick Spiers 48:03

Okay. There's a few ingredients I'm picking up there. It sounded quite specific. It wasn't generic or vague. It was one thing and it was future focused. Yeah, that's yeah, that's really quite interesting. And the defensiveness, I I can tell you a hundred percent uh that's true. As soon as someone gets into a defensive notice, I I'm gonna say I've got this saying that the blood rushes from their ears, they're not hearing a single word anymore. They're just in fight, flood, or freeze, and they've got their boxing gloves up against their against their face. They just think that you're you're a boxer coming at them from the other side of the ring and they're not hearing a single word that you're saying at that point as soon as they get into a defensive frame.

Dr. Ron Friedman 48:46

Yeah. And if I could just add to that, here's something else that you should never do. Never say, can I give you some feedback? Don't do that. Because the moment you do that, what do people do? They know you're they're you're about to get ripped to shreds, and that makes them defensive. So starting with, hey, can I rip into you? Not helpful. Just say, hey, what do you think about doing this the next time? Done. That's interesting. I think this is part of the reason why people don't like to give negative feedback, is because they feel like, oh, I'm gonna hurt this person's feelings. You're not hurting anybody's feelings if you deliver a future focus and you focus on one thing and you make it a conversation. Just do teammates talking.

Mick Spiers 49:22

You've given us something interesting to think about here. It goes against some of the science that people get taught, right? So they get taught about models like SBI, uh specific behavior. No, it's uh situation, behavior, impact. When I do that, I add the word action and I talk about future focus. What are you going to do differently in the future? But you're saying just go to the future. Just go, hey, what about next time we do it this way?

Dr. Ron Friedman 49:47

I just think we overcomplicate this and we make it harder for people to feel closer to each other at the end of the conversation. Because often what happens when you're delivering feedback to someone is you're implicitly saying, you messed up, and I know better, and I'm gonna fix you. And none of those are conducive to having a stronger relationship at the end of it.

Mick Spiers 50:15

I feel like we need to have you back on the show and just have an hour talking about feedback. All right. Look, Rod, this has been absolutely amazing. We are we are drawing to a close now. So I want to summarize a couple of points and then take us to our rapid round. So Dr. Rod Friedman telling us about super teams and all of the research that he finds about what are the ingredients of these teams and and what what are some of the misunderstandings that we have about team performance? So you've given us a lot to think about. You the the first ingredients. How are our teams rewarded?

Rapid Round And Where To Learn

Mick Spiers 50:50

Do they have a shared goal? And are they rewarded around that shared goal, not just around individual performance? Do they have role clarity? Do they have interdependence where they understand how they they rely on each other and how they can co-create something greater than any of the individuals can? That these super teams, they're able to manage their time, their energy, and their attention in a much clearer way, that they make each other better through accountability and and striving for each other and with each other, and that they've got a mindset that they're never satisfied. They're always looking for, oh, what can we do better? Always with this continuous improvement uh mindset. And that includes some of these great feedbacks that Ron is talking about in relation to feedback and future for future focused feedback. So if you're a leader listening to the show, maybe, maybe play that back again and think about things that you can do to put these things in place, the shared goals, the role clarity, the interdependence, having these rituals where individual productivity and team productivity come together instead of being in conflict with each other, having conversations about managing your time, energy, and attention, about having rituals to make each other better and to have this continuous improvement focus. Thank you so much, Ron. I really love this conversation. Going to take us now to our rapid round. These are the same four questions we ask all of our guests. So, what's the one thing that you know now, Dr. Ron Friedman, that you wish you knew when you were 20?

Dr. Ron Friedman 52:30

I started to know it when I was about 18, but it's been confirmed every time, which is your success rate is directly tied to your willingness to fail. And so the more things you strive for and don't get right, chances are you're also going to increase your success rate. And there's research showing on creative geniuses, this is what they that is kind of the secret of their success, is Mozart, for example, had way more songs written than his contemporaries. Today, of course, we only know him for a fraction of his successful songs, but he continued to deliver over and over again. And so in The Best Place to Work, I talk about this story. I forgot the name of the woman. You might know this, Mick. Uh, the woman who started what's like pantyhose for shapeware.

Mick Spiers 53:20

Yeah, yeah. Okay. Do you remember her name? I don't know her name, but I I'll I yeah, I'm familiar with the story.

Dr. Ron Friedman 53:26

Okay, the story is her basically that this woman used to sell fax machines door to door. And one day she came up with this idea for shapeware, which is basically like pantyhose but for the body. And so she started wearing these, she started making them herself by cutting off the feet, and then decided she's gonna make this into a company. And now it's a billion-dollar brand. It's called Spanx. I'm gonna get pieces of the story that's gonna be revealed to me as it's revealed to you. Uh Spanx. And so one of the secrets to her success is that she talks about how at dinner with her dad, her dad would always ask, What did you fail at today? And that taught her and her family that not just success is what matters, but if you've if you're not, you're not failing, you're not learning. And I I really like that and I think it's true. And I will often think about, you know, what did I fail at this week? And if there's nothing there, it means I was it's not, it doesn't mean it was a perfect week. It means I haven't tried taking enough big swings.

Mick Spiers 54:23

Yeah, good. I wish I had learned that one earlier as well, I gotta say. Okay, what's your favorite book?

Dr. Ron Friedman 54:29

That's a tough question, Mick, and I'll tell you why, because I feel like the book that a book that for a book to really resonate, it's not just about the book, it's also about the time in your life in which you read that book. And so it's kind of like there's two things happening here, which is like who you are at the moment and what the book actually is, and you gotta meet at the perfect time. It's kind of like meeting your perfect spouse. Uh, you know, so generally I I read way more fiction than I do nonfiction. I feel like it's a just relaxing and centering and is a great way of like taking a bath for the brain at the end of the day. Uh, and so a book I I recently read that I I loved, uh, and I can look up the name of the author just so I can provide it for everything. I think his name is Matthew Pearl. The name of the book is the award, and it's about an author who, yeah, Matthew Pearl, the award. And the it's about an author who moves in, who's a struggling author, and he moves in into a building with a very successful author. And he thinks it's gonna, he thinks it's gonna completely transform his life. And he does, but just not in the way that he thinks. And it's just very, very fascinating to read.

Mick Spiers 55:29

That sounded interesting. Okay, what's what's your favorite quote?

Dr. Ron Friedman 55:33

So in the book, in in Super Teams, I talk about this guy named Sam Prestey. Sam Presti is a general manager of the Oklahoma City Thunder. And when you walk into his office, what you'll see is his office is filled with quotes everywhere. And it's because this is what he does. He reads books and he pulls out quotes that he loves and he just puts them on the wall. So he's reminded of these great ideas as he goes along throughout his day. And uh, I've kind of taken that same practice myself and I've stolen it from him. So I've got quotes all around the office. So progress and relief are usually found on the opposite side of a shitty first draft. So, in other words, just write the first draft. You're gonna feel so much better. It doesn't need to be perfect. And if you just lower your standards temporarily to get the first draft out, you're gonna feel a lot better.

Mick Spiers 56:18

Yeah, really good. Okay, very good. Okay, and finally, Ron, there's gonna be people listening to this, and they're probably self-diagnosing and going, yeah, I don't think I'm at the other end of the scale of what Ron's talking about and these approaches to creating a super team. How do people find you if they want to know more?

Dr. Ron Friedman 56:37

I'm available online at RonFriedmanph.com. The name of my company is Super Teams Inc., and we deliver keynotes and workshop to leaders and their teams on how to improve. But where I'd urge you to go, if you're interested in applying some of these insights, is a website that we've created that takes the best insights in the book and teaches them to you in under 20 minutes. It's available at Superteamsmasterclass.com. It's a course we've created completely free if you buy the book. And in addition to the free course, you'll also get a discussion guide that you can use to share some of these insights with the people on your team. So superteamsmasterclass.com.

Mick Spiers 57:12

Yeah, wonderful, Ron. Well, thank thank you so much for your time today. It's been a great honor and pleasure. I can tell you that you've challenged my thinking on some of these things. And I think about this all day, every day. And you've challenged some of my thinking, but you've also given me some practical things that I can go and try and do things a little differently. And I know the audience is going to be the same. So thank you so much for the gift of your wisdom, your experience, and your practical insights on what we can do to create our own super teams. Thank you.

Dr. Ron Friedman 57:43

Truly my pleasure. Thanks for having me, Mick, and and thank you all for listening.

Mick Spiers 57:47

What a rich and practical conversation with Dr. Ron Friedman. The idea that really stayed with me is that team performance is often misunderstood. We can have talented people, we can have good intentions, we can have hard working individuals. But that does not automatically create a high performing team. Ron reminded us that great teams are built deliberately. They have shared goals, they have role clarity, they understand how their work fits together. And perhaps most importantly, they feel a genuine sense of interdependence that we need each other in order to succeed. That is such an important distinction because without shared goals, people can pull in different directions. Without role clarity, we either drop the ball or get into turf wars. And without interdependence, we may simply become a group of individuals working beside each other rather than a true team. I also appreciated Ron's challenge around productivity. Many of us have learned individual productivity habits turn off notifications, batch your email, protect your deep work time. And those things can be very useful. But Ron gave us the warning. One person's deep work can become another person's bottleneck. That does not mean we abandon focus. It means we manage time, we manage energy, and we manage attention at a team level. Instead of everyone creating their own private system, super teams have collective agreements. They create focus blocks together. They reduce unnecessary meetings. They respect each other's attention. And they make it easier for people to do their best work without accidentally making someone else's work harder. The second major lesson was that super teams make each other better. Ron shared that on the best teams, accountability does not only flow from the boss, it flows between the teammates. People care about letting each other down. They lift the standard for one another. They share credit, they seek feedback, and they help each other to improve. That is powerful because it reminds us that leadership is not only top-down. On average teams, the manager leads. On elite teams, the players lead. That means everyone has a role in creating the culture. And the third lesson was continuous improvement. Super teams are not satisfied with good enough. They keep learning, they keep experimenting, they keep asking. How can we do this better next time? I found Ron's advice on feedback especially useful. Feedback should not be a dramatic event that puts people on the defensive. It should be timely, specific, and future focused. Instead of saying, Can I give you some feedback and triggering the boxing gloves? We can simply ask, What do you think about trying this next time? That small shift changes the energy of the conversation. So here is my invitation to you. Look at your own team and ask three questions. Do we have a genuinely shared goal? Are our roles and responsibilities clear? And are our habits helping the team succeed or just helping individuals cope? Then choose one small team agreement to improve the way you manage time, energy, attention, feedback, or accountability and do it together. Because high-performing teams do not happen by accident. They are built through shared habits, shared standards, and shared ownership. Thank you for joining me on this episode of the Leadership Project. If this conversation resonated with you, please share it with someone who is trying to build a stronger, more intentional team. And join us next week when I speak with Franz Kämpfer. We move from the systems and rituals of high-performing teams to the inner work of leadership identity. What happens when leaders remove the masks, reconnect with their values, and learn to lead with authenticity, courage, and integrity. You've been listening to the Leadership Project. If today sparked an insight, don't keep it to yourself. Share it with one other person who would benefit from listening to the show. A huge thank you to Gerald Calibo for his tireless work editing every episode. And to my amazing wife Sei, who does all the heavy lifting in the background to make this show possible. None of this happens without them. Around here we believe leadership is a practice, not a position. That people should feel seen, heard, valued, and that they matter. And that the best leaders trade ego for empathy, certainty for curiosity, and control for trust. If that resonates with you, please subscribe on YouTube and on your favorite podcast app. And if you want more, follow me on LinkedIn and explore our archives for conversations that move you from knowing to doing. Until next time, lead with curiosity, courage, and care.