How to design teams that don’t suck

Worklife with Adam Grant

TED

Management, Worklife Podcast, Worklife With Adam Grant, Work Life Balance, Ted Talks, Podcast About Work Life, Ted Adam Grant, Adam Grant Podcasts, Ted Podcasts, Adam Grant, Organizational Psychologist, Business

4.8 • 9.4K Ratings

🗓️ 8 October 2024

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Too many teams are less than the sum of their parts, and building a great team requires more than just picking an all-star roster or doing trust falls. Adam dives into the hard-hitting research on what makes teams work — with members of the “Miracle on Ice" Olympic hockey team and organizational behavior professor Anita Woolley. You’ll also hear some special tape from Adam’s late mentor Richard Hackman, a leading expert on teams. Available transcripts for WorkLife can be found at go.ted.com/WLtranscripts

Transcript

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0:00.0	Ted Audio Collective. of as we tackle big topics like how whales became the face of environmental activism,
0:25.7	how to succeed at failing, and whether public transportation should be free.
0:30.3	Go ahead, listen to Freakonomics Radio wherever you get your podcasts. It was the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, and the U.S. men's hockey team was facing off against the Soviets.
0:50.0	On paper, the winner looked obvious.
0:52.0	The Soviet team had won gold in four straight Olympics.
0:56.1	Just a year earlier, they'd beaten the NHL All-Star team.
0:59.7	And just three days before the Olympics started,
1:02.1	the Soviets had destroyed the U.S. team, 10 to 3.
1:05.0	Yeah, they were the best.
1:07.5	You know, it could beat you at the top end of their lineup or they could beat you at the
1:10.4	back end of their lineup.
1:12.3	John Harrington was on the U.S. team.
1:14.0	They knew the odds were stacked against them.
1:17.0	At that time, it wasn't like, hey, we think we can win this thing.
1:20.0	It was like, we're hoping to get to the medal round.
1:22.0	And I think we rallied around that feeling that we were underdogs.
1:26.0	That might have given them an extra boost because as the games began, the US team started winning and upsetting higher ranked teams.
1:33.9	And I think as games went on, each game went on,
1:36.5	we were getting better as a group. We were getting more confident as a group.
1:41.0	All of a sudden, they found themselves in the medal round facing down the Soviet team.
1:45.0	To have a shot at gold, they had to beat the best team in the world.
1:51.0	Team Captain Mike Aruzioni remembers the anticipation in the world. Team Captain Mike Aruzioni remembers the anticipation in the locker
	...

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