Leading Teams: Setting the Stage for Great Performances

J. Richard Hackman

Jul 2002 · Harvard Business Review Press

About this ebook

Richard Hackman, one of the world's leading experts on group and organizational behavior, argues that teams perform at their best when leaders create conditions that allow them to manage themselves effectively.

Leading Teams is not about subscribing to a specific formula or leadership style. Rather, it is about applying a concise set of guiding principles to each unique group situation—and doing so in the leader's own idiosyncratic way. Based on extensive research and using compelling examples ranging from orchestras to airline cockpit crews, Leading Teams identifies five essential conditions—a stable team, a clear and engaging direction, an enabling team structure, a supportive organizational context, and the availability of competent coaching—that greatly enhance the likelihood of team success. 

The book offers a practical framework that leaders can use to muster personal skills and organizational resources to create and sustain the five key conditions and shows how those conditions can launch a team onto a trajectory of increasing effectiveness. 

Authoritative and astutely realistic, Leading Teams offers a new and provocative way of thinking about and leading work teams in any organizational setting.

About the author

J. Richard Hackman is the Cahners-Rabb Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology at Harvard University.