Leading Teams: Setting the Stage for Great Performances (Hardcover)

J. Richard Hackman, one of the world's leading experts on group and organizational behavior, argues that the answer to this puzzle is rooted in flawed thinking about team leadership. It is not a leader's management style that determines how well a team performs, but how well a leader designs and supports a team so that members can manage themselves.

According to Hackman, cookie-cutter formulas and prescribed leadership styles often backfire because they place far too much emphasis on the leader as the primary cause of team behavior. In Leading Teams, he identifies the key conditions that any leader can put in place to increase the likelihood of team success-regardless of his or her personality or preferred style of operating.

Through extensive research and compelling examples ranging from orchestras to economic analysts to airline cockpit crews, Hackman identifies five conditions that set the stage for great performances: a real team, a compelling direction, an enabling team structure, a supportive organizational context, and the availability of competent coaching.

Leading Teams outlines what leaders can do to structure, support, and guide teams in a way that

· enhances the social processes essential to collective work;

· builds shared commitment, skills, and task-appropriate coordination strategies;

· helps members troubleshoot problems and spot emerging opportunities; and

· captures experiences and translates them into shared knowledge.

Out of these conditions, Hackman argues, the very best teams emerge-teams that exceed client expectations, grow in capability over time, and contribute to the learning and personal fulfillment of individual members.

Authoritative, practical, and astutely realistic, Leading Teams offers a new and provocative way of thinking about and leading work teams in any organizational setting.
AUTHORBIO: J. Richard Hackman is the Cahners-Rabb Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology at Harvard University. He resides in Bethany, Connecticut, and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

-Harvey Hornstein, Professor, Teachers College, Columbia University

"This is the book I have been waiting for on team effectiveness. Based on findings and containing insights from the leading researcher on teams, Leading Teams has everything. It is engaging, highly readable, and full of practical, useful advice."

-Edward Lawler, Distinguished Professor and Director, Center for Effective Organizations, University of Southern California, Marshall School of Business

"Full of rich stories and organized into compelling cases, Leading Teams clearly communicates an elegant analysis of effective team leadership. A gem for practitioners and researchers alike."

-Chris Argyris, James B. Conant Professor Emeritus, Harvard University and Director, Monitor Group

"In Leading Teams Dr. Hackman takes his extensive knowledge of how to effectively lead teams and mixes it with insightful research and humor, providing the reader with a powerful prescription for improving team performance."

-Dave Bushy, Former Senior Vice President of Flight Operations and 747 Captain, Delta Airlines

"Richard Hackman provides real-world tools that challenge everything you thought you knew about creating high-performing teams. I found myself cheering each time he demolished a popular but wrongheaded conception of how to lead teams and provided a common sense answer in its stead."

-Michael Putz, Senior Manager, Business Development and Strategy, Cisco Systems