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hi I'm Jeff Klein executive director of the MCN leadership program at Wharton
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I'm here today to talk with Mario Musa author of committed teams three steps to
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inspiring passion and performance welcome to knowledge at Wharton Mario great to be here so Mario I've known you
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for some time and your interest range from influence to negotiation to organizational performance this is a a
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book about teams specifically committed teams what led you to write this book now yeah
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well for the past three years my co-authors and I have been involved with EDP the executive development program
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and as you know three times a year EDP brings in Executives from around the world about 60 Executives and they come
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here um they take uh they take courses uh they take sessions about uh leadership and finance and marketing and
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so on sure and then there's a very intense immersive simulation and then the third part of the program is
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teamwork they form into teams and they compete with each other for two weeks within the simulation within the
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simulation and the environment is very realistic so tensions Run High there's
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Euphoria lots of competition lots of collaboration the ups and downs of yeah right exactly so EDP really is a um a
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living laboratory in which we've had the opportunity to observe as we like to say
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a 100 te teams forming and competing with each other over a 100 simulated years so we like to think of this uh
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living laboratory as um an opportunity to do a lot of field work and so over that time uh We've gathered lots and
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lots of data and all that data now is captured in our book in a framework that we call the 3X3 I if I'm not mistaken
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Mario your two co-authors Derek Newberry and mine Boer both come at this work from anth anthropological training yeah
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AB so it must have been heaven for them to watch a hundred teams forming uh and evolving over time you got it yeah that
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that's exactly it so uh Derek Maddie were trained as anthropologists cultural
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anthropologists or business anthropologists really and then we work with a number of other observers we we
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call this whole team the HPT High performing team team of observers and most of them are trained social
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scientist and most of them are anthropologists so what they excel in is observing um we love to quote that great
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philosopher Yogi Bara you can observe a lot just by watching so most of the time we're not
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watching because we're distracted so we've really focused in on the experience that these teams have had as
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I said forming and competing and we've learned a lot from that so you mentioned
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uh the 3X3 framework which has come out of these observations um can you start to describe that for us a little bit
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sure what we found is high performing teams U basically when they're getting
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started on a task focus on three things goals roles and Norms so that's the first part of the the 3X3 and if you
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look at the teams literature you'll find versions of those basic foundations
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again and again and again uh so I wouldn't say that is all new though we've streamlined the the framework a
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little bit in that respect but we also find that you need to teams need to continually re revisit those foundations
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in the three steps that we mentioned in the title so step one is to commit to Shared goals roles and norms and what I
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hear in that is there there's something about being explicit about what those
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goals roles and Norms are absolutely yeah explicit and having a really good conversation about th those three things
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and maybe we could come back to you know how you really good conversation and then given that there are all kinds of
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pushes and pulls um in the typical work day so you may be one may be on multiple
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teams uh you may be working on multiple projects you have commitments out outside of work how are you describing
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my life right now exactly so you're distracted and you're going in many different directions and over time
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naturally almost inevitably there's drift on teams around those those goals roles and Norms so you need to revisit
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them so we um we found that high performing teams check in from time to time what does that look like
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it's going back to those original commitments like what do we want to do how do we want to work together how
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we're going to share information make decisions so on and so forth are we still committed to those things that we
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initially talked about if not how are we going to close the gap between what we say we want to do and what we're
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actually doing which leads to the third step which we call close and the key activity there is closing the Gap
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closing the saying doing Gap as we like to put it MH and what we found is that the the most effective way to close that
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Gap is in small steps Okay small steps uh targeted at really specific changes um with attention paid to the
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environment in which the team is working and and attempts made to create an environment that supports taking those
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small steps and then being realistic about what you can do and what you can't
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do uh we like to say realistic optimist better than pure optimists because realistic optimists think ahead about
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what can get in the way of doing what they want to do so um the 3X3 you know in some uh is initial conversation about
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goals roles and norms and then checking in from time to time and then working to
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close the gap between what you're actually doing and what what you say you want to do and then doing that again and
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again and again and that's an iterative process and the and the key to doing
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that well is having a really good conversation or really paying attention to what's happening on the team and it
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turns out that it's really hard to pay pay attention yeah absolutely I mean as
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I think about it um you know the teams that I'm a part of now the teams that
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I've been a part of kind of flash through my mind and I'm I'm aware that
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in some of those teams those conversations felt like they were easier they were expected in other teams they
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were much harder right um what suggestions do you have for for for leaders of teams for teammates who want
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to make sure that they're able to have these kinds of check-in conversations
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yeah yeah so three things that um that I would offer as guidelines uh one is pay
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attention to style so we all have different styles of different kinds like some of us are extroverted some
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introverted some of us love conflict some of us don't and and so on so I'm
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going for kind of a rustic Dabber style uh and you you pull it off very well uh so have a conversation about Styles um
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two have one-on ones you know the best way to build relationships or a very helpful way to build relationships is
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through one-on-one uh dialogue not that you don't want to have group dialogue as
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well but if you just have group dialogue sometimes the group dynamics become so complex yeah uh it's just hard to manage
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so you're building trust more on a one-on-one basis uh and then uh I would say uh focus on a few things versus a
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lot of things right uh and you know teams typically get overwhelmed or often get overwhelmed because they're just
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trying to do too much or their goals are too big uh so keep it simple keep it uh
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keep it manageable and that helps then uh that if you do all those things you tend to have a better conversation uh
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than if you're you're not paying attention to how you talk to each other
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and you're not simplifying the things that you talk about as you uh as you and
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your colleagues observe teams within the executive development program did any um
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any ratio or relationship between kind of working time and check-in time emerge is there you know do you have guidelines
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uh for team leaders SP how to think about that yeah really good question uh so I want to give the answer the classic
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uh consultant answer it depends all right you heard it here uh so it really does depend uh some teams have a huge
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appetite for process and talking and have a huge need for that uh so they'll
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probably take more time with with check-ins uh some have more of a get it done sort of attitude and maybe are a
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little bit impatient and they're going to take less time for the for the check-ins but the really important point
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is to have check-ins yeah uh and then use your judgment as to what's most helpful you know how much time you want
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to spend on the check-ins now Mario I'd imagine um over a 100 teams that that you and
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your colleagues have observed uh I'd imagine that you witnessed some common errors or common mistakes that teammates
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teams can fall into do you want to maybe outline a few of those yeah sure uh a few yeah and uh yeah we've we've
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identified a few and we talk about them in in the book but one would be relying too much on one person okay uh we call
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that the you the great person Theory uh so there may be one person who has a really strong Vision who has a dominant
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personality or for one reason or another uh sends the message they can do it all
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uh it's uh it's you it's almost always a big mistake to focus too much on on one
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person uh another mistake that teams commonly make is focusing too much on simply a plan and not thinking about how
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to execute the plan and organizing people uh around that around that plan and that I imagine ties right right back
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into the discussion around roles absolutely yeah in fact you anticipated something that the next thing that I
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wanted to say which is that uh another mistake that teams make is not paying enough attention to roles uh so let's
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say they have a good discussion about their goals they're all behind their their goals and then they say let's go
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off and and do it if they don't have a conversation about who's going to do
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what in other words roles uh then usually they just don't maximize the their efforts uh you know so um roles uh
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not paying enough attention to execution focusing too much on one person those are some common errors that we see it in
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the book you describe uh a a trend that we see in the workplace that we see uh certainly in universities as well and
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that is this Reliance on teams to get things done um we are all members of multiple teams now so what's the kind of
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work that's really well suited to a team and and are is there a kind of work that
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maybe maybe a team's not best suited yeah yeah great question um I think um that's a really important question and I
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think probably it's not asked enough uh these days so there's lots of evidence
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that generally speaking groups don't maximize their their potential because they you know because they don't
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organize well and often groups take on tasks that should be done by individuals you know for example tasks that require
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specialized expertise or highly creative tasks um let's say uh writing a like
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writing a poem or a symphony but in a work setting it might be writing a report right uh so those sorts of tasks
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probably should be done by an individual and then also when time is really short
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you may want to have one person just do a task because individuals tend to be more efficient than than uh than groups
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on the other hand when you're working on a problem that requires multiple perspectives uh multiple sources of
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expertise that's probably when you want to work with a team and and you know
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apply the basic steps that we've been talking about right there's such pressure uh within organizations today
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to achieve um yet at the same time we know that teams need to be building capacity for the future uh what did you
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find and what advice do you have about how to manage that tension yeah no when to go fast and no when to go slow okay
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uh you know Dan can Dan canaman published a great book a few years ago called Thinking Fast and Slow absolutely
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and uh we like to say there's a lot of wisdom in that so uh when you need to go
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fast maybe don't pay so much attention to team process uh but when uh when team
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process is really important you know when you need to pull in multiple perspectives for example that's when you
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want to slow down and be deliberate about how the team forms and how the team has its conversations right and and
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I I want to take us as we start to wrap up our time here um back to the beginning of the conversation where you
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were talking about this this process of committing and checking in um within the
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book you talk about the concept of psychological safety for team members um why is that what is that first of all
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and then why is it important to uh to this 3x3 framework sure yeah most of the time uh people do not speak their their
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minds we know that from lots and lots of research so you know well over half the
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time people are not sharing what they're thinking and feeling even on camera maybe maybe not
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uh so um you know the more information you have the better your decisions are going to be the better your
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collaboration is going to be so creating an environment where people feel uh that
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they're able to share their thoughts in other words where they feel safe in other words where their psychological
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safety turns out to be really important and if I were going to focus on one thing um I think it would be that
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creating an environment of psychological safety and how do you do that that goes
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back to some of the things we were talking about earlier building trust having good one-on-one relation uh
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conversations uh listening uh showing empathy showing that you care um so this apparently soft factor of psychological
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safety uh plays a big role in delivering results I like to say that the soft stuff is the hard stuff absolutely
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absolutely now um you in my final question um want to ask you to do a little bit of reflection if I can sure
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um you wrote about teams in a team right and and so how did your partnership with
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Derek and meline um how did that evolve and how did you use the check-in process
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time sure yeah well being on a team is like being in a committed relationship uh you can't just phone it in it never
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works so um we were clear about what we wanted to do we wanted to write a book that was helpful to leaders making
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decisions in a in a in a team environment we were clear we wanted to speak to a wide audience
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uh we liked how each other wrote um we have compatible Styles and when things weren working out we talked about
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it so it's always nice when we get to live our work absolutely absolutely well
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Mara thank you so much for being here today with knowledge at work thank you it was a lot of
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fun [Music]