Teams without strong clarity feel frustrating. Often, each team member starts feeling like their efforts are carrying the team and everyone else is letting them down. And yet, those other team members feel the same way in reverse. (And yes, I realize I’ve just described every project team you were ever on in college.) When you don’t know what to

goal isn’t to punish employees; it’s to make sure they’ve been given enough clarity to succeed. “If

As they racked up wins, Kondos Field’s empathic coaching would make an even bigger impact on her athletes and the sport.

“We’re not going to be able to manage a secret,” Mulally once told them when he explained the rationale for these meetings. “The idea is that we can share what the situation is and help each other.”35 To help them help each other, Mulally asked the team to color-code their slides. Green slides would mean everything was on track. Yellow slides would

Instead, psychological safety happens when teams develop norms of behavior that allow productive, task-focused conflict without devolving

at all. (And yes, many of those who did merely mentioned shareholders.)68 Think about the missed opportunity for impact, or the impact that awareness of their influence would have on employees. One of the core questions of Gallup’s famous Q12 employee engagement survey asks whether the mission or purpose of the company makes employees’ jobs feel

Teams with trust explore more possibilities than teams without trust. And teams with trust willingly put forward their ideas and aid to others on the team. Trust even makes working on a team more enjoyable, even when it’s working on a team trying to stop losing $17 billion a year.

Research suggests that stories are twenty-two times more likely to stay in our memory than facts or raw data alone. (It’s the reason every chapter of this book opens with a story.) So, if you want to help your team remember the impact they make, tell stories. Particularly, share Impact Stories, which help the team build a mental bridge between the

After each question has a suitable answer, capture each answer in a collaborative document that can be shared team-wide. Then agree on a time to reexamine how well these guidelines are working and what changes need to be made (or if the guidelines were even