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>> My name is Deb Gruenfeld and
I'm a faculty member at Stanford in the Graduate School of Business.
One of my favorite classes is called managing groups and teams.
And I'm going to share five key takeaways from that class today.
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There's no one way to design teams for success.
You have to start with the end in mind.
Often, when we talk about building a team, we think of people first,
who do I like to work with and how can I get as many stars as possible?
But we believe you can't know who to work with or
how to structure your team until you know what's needed for the team to succeed.
Teams should be designed around the clear, engaging direction, a goal.
So the building of the team is dictated, by the specific outcomes we hope to reach.
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>> When making choices about how to design teams for different purposes,
there are two key dimensions to choose from.
The first is that you have to decide what to do about diversity.
That is, what to maximize diversity to prioritize learning outcomes and
sharing different perspectives and inclusion.
Or do you want to control for
the effects of diversity by making sure team members goals are aligned.
And an agreement can be reached to the team to move forward?
The second big question,
in addition to what to do about diversity is what to do about hierarchy.
Whether to make sure participation and influence are even.
Or to make sure that the voices of experts or key stakeholders are more
influential than the voices of people who are more competent.
Those opinions shouldn't matter as much.
Your choices will depend again, on what's necessary for the team to succeed.
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>> It's not enough to compose teams with people who create the appearance of
surface level diversity and assume that our team will take care of itself.
Unless you take steps to ensure that the deeper level diverse perspectives and
experiences and knowledge that you're seeking actually surface and
receive attention.
There's a good chance that they won't.
So it's important to use processes in general,
that normalize, raising alternative points of view,
asking questions and challenging others assumptions.
These things don't tend to happen on their own in teams,
especially in diverse groups where levels of psychological safety might be loved.
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>> Expertise rarely predicts influence in teams,
while things like physical attractiveness and gender predict influence very well.
In part this is because teens fear of conflict and
are motivated to reach agreement as quickly as possible.
It's important to be aware of these dynamics, so
that we can all individually take steps to counteract them.
It's good to have ways of drawing out quieter members and
gently quieting others, to create space for
less hierarchical, more equal participation
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>> Many people think it's always better to bring a more participants in
collaborative, empowering hands-off approach to leading teams.
But in reality, managing or leading a team is a delicate balancing act,
between imposing enough top down structure and
control while inviting enough bottom up participation.
Imposing direction and structure can feel oppressive or paternalistic.
But failing to articulate and reinforce a clear vision of success
can leave team members feeling lost and unmotivated.
The takeaway here is that it's not a leaders job to manage
teammates feelings or be as likeable as possible.
The job is to manage the team's performance and outcomes in a way that
engages stretches and develops the team and guides them forward to success.
>> [MUSIC]
>> I was not a serious student in high school.
I mostly was interested in boys and going to parties with my friends.
So I think it has come actually as quite a shock to many of the people who
Knew me when I was younger that that I'm a professor, yeah.