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Exploring how humans connect and get stuff done together, with Dan Hammond and Pia Lee from Squadify.
We need groups of humans to help navigate the world of opportunities and challenges, but we don't always work together effectively. This podcast tackles questions such as "What makes a rockstar team?" "How can we work from anywhere?" "What part does connection play in today's world?"
You'll also hear the thoughts and views of those who are running and leading teams across the world.
[00:00:00] Dan: Hello and welcome back to We Not Meet the podcast where we explore how humans connect to get stuff done together. I'm Dan Hammond.
[00:00:13] Pia: And I am Pia Lee.
[00:00:14] Dan: We're back. Pia. how is the jet lag? First of
[00:00:18] Pia: it's terrible. It's terrible. It was so worth it because just to spend two weeks with you and to be able to drink coffee with you in real time was extraordinary. but the, yeah, the, but the payback by the toilet at the back,
[00:00:31] Dan: uh, and also by, at least by a window to yes. But, uh, yeah, so, uh, we, yeah. So we are back,
[00:00:36] Dan: from the states. We had a wonderful trip both in, um, California and then Boston and New York. Accompanied by our Chief Data Officer, Juliet Owen, which was wonderful for the first, um, for the first week because we were there to, um, we'll, we'll start kicked off our book, um, which is really exciting.
[00:00:55] Dan: So we can't say too much about, about this at this stage, but, uh, we'll keep it under wraps. But
[00:01:00] Pia: or, or our very, our very clever coauthor,
[00:01:03] Dan: Yeah, he's, uh, very clever and, uh, very exciting. So spent some time in Berkeley, working with him and, uh, really thrashing out the book about teams and teamwork and connection. And, uh, that's gonna be a, we hope, a monumental, sort of move towards more We Not Me, and how people can, Support each other and work together in, in high performing teams.
[00:01:25] Pia: Interesting because, you know, we do this little test when we go into, when we travel internationally and looking at the bookshops to see in the business section what's out and coming back, actually I looked at the, you know, the Harvard Business Review that sort of the top reads for 2025 and. I was pretty underwhelmed if I, I, I don't wanna, I don't, I don't wanna sort of float to my own boat here, but there wasn't anything new.
[00:01:48] Pia: And so that's actually why this, conversation that we're about is so important because this was new and this was innovative, and this was thinking about the actual value of teaming in design and innovation. but it, we've still got stuck on this individualistic path. And some of the references in HBR I, I read them 10 years ago,
[00:02:12] Dan: Ancient. Ancient. Yeah. I think they all look a bit dusty. I think it's something new is needed. And in terms of teams, it's when we did our sort of literature review with our co-author, with our writer, he, you know, Lencioni that a lot of people know Five dysfunctions of a team.
[00:02:27] Dan: 2002 we're getting on for, 25 years um, since that book, which is really interesting and so much science and so much experience to take and so much. Upheaval in the workplace has taken place since then. and then, um, my personal favorite, Stanley Cri Stanley McChrystal team of teams, which I think was 2011, maybe I might have that wrong.
[00:02:49] Dan: but we're in need of another, uh, of something new, something fresh and a different approach and, um,
[00:02:54] Pia: So it won't be long, folks. It is
[00:02:56] Dan: it won't be long. It's
[00:02:57] Pia: and it, and it's, gonna be a book that you will want to read. Not lot of gather dust.
[00:03:03] Dan: you won't be blowing the dust off it in the bookshop. Um, so yeah, and while we were there, we were in Berkeley and we went to what they call Cal, the University of, um, California.
[00:03:13] Dan: I. Berkeley. Um, and, uh, we met Sarah Beckman, who, um, was introduced to us by our co-author and, and the writer of the, uh, this great book that's coming along. and, well, we'll let her introduce herself, but she really gets to the heart of things and helping students across that university to work better in teams and, um, such a valuable.
[00:03:38] Dan: It is an emergent practice actually, as we'll see, but it turns out to be one of the most valuable things that these students learn. Um, it's how to work well in teams. I have to say, I mentioned this in the thing, but as soon as you're a, when you're a student and people say, right, this is a team project sends a shutter through you, or they've engaged with that and made it a different thing that they can really support their team.
[00:03:59] Dan: So, it was a wonderful conversation in Sarah's office. So let's go and hear from her now.
[00:04:06] Pia: So here we are in situ, which is very exciting, and, uh, it is my absolute pleasure to welcome Sarah Beckman welcome on our our first ever podcast. Here in Berkeley. Very excited to be here. It's a
[00:04:20] Sara: pleasure to be here.
[00:04:21] Pia: Yeah. Really wonderful. So part of what we do is that we ask you a tricky question just to really warm you up. You know, we like to make, make people feel really comfortable and uh, yeah. Very comfortable on this podcast. So I'm gonna hand you over to Dan. Yes. He's going to ask you a question, which is
[00:04:37] Dan: random.
[00:04:38] Dan: Of course. Of course. And I have one of our famous. Conversation starter card questions, which is, and it might be interesting for someone in your position, what did everyone say you would be when you grew up, when you were growing up,
[00:04:49] Sara: where do I start? So one of the things I read many years ago was Mary Catherine Bateson's book Composing a Life.
[00:04:58] Dan: Mm.
[00:04:58] Sara: And she opens by saying there's always just two kinds of people aren't there anyway, there's two kinds of people.
[00:05:05] Sara: There are questers. And there are quilters, right? And a quester grows up saying, I'm going to become the CEO of a Startup company or whatever. And then there are quilt quilters who just keep adding squares to their quilts. And I was so happy to know that there was something besides a quester.
[00:05:29] Dan: Yeah, the quilters existed. That quilters existed. Wonderful. Yeah. And
[00:05:33] Sara: I'm one. Excellent. So. I was probably destined a little bit to be on the path by a mother who was a kindergarten, first grade teacher forever. So education, yeah. Was maybe o is in my, um, horizon and my dad really liked it when I took engineering classes and physics.
[00:05:56] Dan: Mm-Hmm. So
[00:05:57] Sara: there was always maybe gonna be some of that in my future. But I don't have any recollection of thinking when I grow up, I'm going,
[00:06:07] Dan: yeah, because you're a quilter. So qui, quilter, yeah. You didn't, I, I still don't know what I'm gonna be when I grow up. And so I did, I did wonder where you'd stand on the growing up question, actually.
[00:06:18] Dan: But this is the perfect segue because the next question is to tell us a bit about your life. Get a bio in a box. So, um, brief. By tell us about the quilting. What were the squares you've added along the way? The patchwork patchwork of my life. Mm-Hmm.
[00:06:32] Sara: So I've always gone back and forth between academia and the real world, as they call it.
[00:06:41] Sara: Supposing this is not, and there's a real world out there, there, it's pretty solid here. Um, and you know, I did consulting work for a while, so I was out working with a lot of different companies, learning a ton of stuff. But then I said I miss abstract thinking and being back in the space of maybe thinking
[00:06:59] Dan: about,
[00:07:00] Sara: so I came back and did my PhD, but then the middle of my PhD I went back out and worked for Hewlett Packard, and that's where I got all the data from my doctoral research.
[00:07:11] Sara: uh, so I've kind of always tried to patch those two together, um, teaching different things. I also, I get bored. So I teach operations for a while and they say queuing theory is interesting and inventory management is important, but Huh, new product development, you know, they make things another patch,
[00:07:31] Dan: another square in the field.
[00:07:32] Dan: Exactly.
[00:07:33] Sara: They make things that we can't build in in the manufacturing cell. Why don't I go learn that? So then I'm teaching new product development and then this thing called design thinking comes along and I think to myself, a. Did, haven't I been teaching that? Like haven't I been teaching human-centered design?
[00:07:50] Sara: So what is this design thinking thing? And then I find myself in this space of, well, isn't it just dot, dot, dot thinking. Yeah. So, you know, there's systems thinking, there's total quality management, there's scientific method, there's design thinking, there's system thinking. So then I get into the problem framing, problem solving space.
[00:08:11] Sara: And then today I kind of mix teaching MBA students with a lot of executive education. Mm-Hmm. So companies that are using education to shift maybe to become more customer centric. Mm. Whatever the case might be. Right. And along the way, kids and grandkids and all that stuff. Right. So, you know, there's always, uh, yeah. The other parts of the quilt.
[00:08:39] Sara: Right.
[00:08:39] Dan: Wonderful, wonderful. Cool.
[00:08:40] Pia: and you've developed this concept of teaming by design. So can you tell us a little bit about what that is and how that might be different to other types of team effectiveness? What distinguishes it?
[00:08:52] Sara: it started really, I don't know, 30 years ago when we were teaching classes on product development that had engineering students, MBA students. And California College of the Arts, um, design students in them. And it became pretty apparent that teaming was often a struggle, uh, when they were trying to take an idea from, well, for an idea through to first pass prototype in a semester. And so we began to say, well, how do we help them? And, um, drew on colleagues, uh, from industry who came in and.
[00:09:28] Sara: Said, here's how I do teaming at Quantum Corporation, or, um, wherever it was that happened to be a very bleeding edge implementation where the whole company was intersecting circles of teams. Oh, yeah. So it was, it was very cool. Yeah. Um, you know, structure, but so, so we kind of picked up, I, I wouldn't call it different from anything you would all know as teaming effectiveness work.
[00:09:53] Sara: Mm-Hmm. But we said, how do we introduce it in a class? That's not about teaming. In fact, that's an interesting, you know, the students would say, well, I didn't take this class for teaming. But then 10 years after they're out, what do they mention as the most important thing they learned? Right?
[00:10:10] Dan: Yeah.
[00:10:10] Sara: I learned how to work in a cross disciplinary, cross-functional team, right? So that's how we sort of came to saying, well, how can we do a better job of embedding this in classes? Mm-Hmm. Yeah. ultimately that resulted in the business school hiring a team effectiveness coach to work with all the classes in the business school that had teaming in them.
[00:10:34] Sara: Wow. And I took it more broadly to the rest of the campus. Mm-Hmm. And we've named it a lot of things over the years. Um, I think because most of the classes I work with are innovation. Design new product development kinds of classes. So we sort of called that teaming by design. But the objective was in, in, in my opinion, you can't teach teaming in a class called teaming. I mean, you can try, but Mm-Hmm. If they're not actually working on something, doing hard
[00:11:06] Dan: thing, right? Mm-Hmm. Then,
[00:11:07] Sara: then, then what's the point? So then the question became how do we embed it in other courses? Where the first question is always, I have to teach all these other things. I don't have time for this.
[00:11:20] Sara: Mm-Hmm. Or so how do we really think about embedding it in ways that take as little away from the real content Yeah. Um, of the class and, um, and still give students a chance to develop and, and learn. So my dream was always that as a freshman you would come in. And you, you would, every time you were on a team project, you would get this kind of feedback and so longitudinally over time, you would, you would develop as a team member or a team leader.
[00:11:56] Sara: So maybe as a freshman, you're still learning how to show up for the team meetings. Mm. With the work done on time and by the time you're a, a senior. Uh, you, you would be able to say, you know, the team is not on the same page with our goal. We need to sit down and sort that through.
[00:12:16] Sara: So, you know, lots of complexity and figuring out how you actually roll it out. But our objective was. Minimize time away from a class, maximize student feedback and the opportunity for them to explicitly think about teaming as opposed to listen forever. High school, college, middle school, we teach teaming.
[00:12:42] Sara: Well, how do you teach it? We make the students work in teams.
[00:12:46] Dan: Yeah. Wonder and these
[00:12:47] Sara: poor students, what do they learn? And my sons, what did they learn?
[00:12:51] Dan: And it's a huge heart sake actually for the students. Absolute. Let's face it, isn't it? Absolutely right. We're doing this in teams and it's sort of, it's the worst possible.
[00:12:58] Dan: Oh god chills. Oh, the, the blood of any student, mom, I'm on another team
[00:13:03] Sara: project. I'm gonna have to do all the work myself. Yes, exactly So it, you know, it becomes something where they don't actually learn how to make the teams work well. Mm-Hmm. In fact, if anything, they learn.
[00:13:15] Dan: Yeah.
[00:13:15] Sara: I hope I'm never on one.
[00:13:18] Sara: Right.
[00:13:18] Dan: And possibly to say even to, right. Forget the team, I'm just gonna do this, or you know. Right. Or just
[00:13:24] Sara: break up the work. Break up,
[00:13:25] Dan: split, split it up and then we'll just put these pieces. That's why I call those groups, not teams. A group, when you do
[00:13:31] Sara: problem A, you do problem B. I'll bring the stapler.
[00:13:34] Sara: Yeah. And we'll turn it in. That's not a G. You get the stapler. Hold on a second. Do you think though,
[00:13:42] Pia: because is this a paradigm that you, that. You are uncovering here, which is we don't really ask the question or we don't really look at how to bring teams together. We make an assumption that the task will naturally do that without any skills. Right. And has that been also your experience of seeing this in corporate settings,
[00:14:05] Sara: Yeah, I mean, I think, so there's some stuff that's happening in corporate that's not happening in the academic world, like Slack, for example. Mm-Hmm. Or Microsoft teams. So, you know, there are a bunch of products out there now that do a lot to help with project management.
[00:14:20] Sara: But they still don't embed. What do you wanna get out of this project?
[00:14:25] Dan: Mm-Hmm.
[00:14:26] Sara: What do you wanna get out of this project? Oh my. That's different than what I wanna get out. So it doesn't embed even. Yeah, like at a personal level, are we, you might want to learn a skill and if I don't know that I can't help you. Learn it, I'll, I'll go do it myself 'cause I'm better at it instead of helping you learn it. Right. So that whole conversation, um, maybe doesn't happen. Goal at the high level goal congruence, I think that remains a challenge in the corporate world.
[00:14:56] Sara: Like what this is from years ago I did work at, at Hewlett Packard and we were studying teen dynamics and we would ask. On this entire product, Velma team, what's your goal? We'd ask each person to write the one sentence goal,
[00:15:10] Dan: right? Yeah.
[00:15:10] Sara: One team that we interviewed, maybe out of 20, I don't remember, but one team, they all said the same thing.
[00:15:17] Sara: A laser quality printer that prints on plain paper for end thousand dollars. That's how long ago that was. Okay, got it. Yeah,
[00:15:24] Dan: I think I saw that research actually. Honestly, I think that stayed with me. Um, and when you think about clarity and teams and that, that gold congruence, as you say, it's, it's, um, it's really, really powerful.
[00:15:35] Sara: And so what are we doing with product managers in the room next door? I've got a bunch of product managers here, and what are we talking about? How do you have a product vision? How do you make sure that vision is clearly stated and b. Understood and shared by the whole team.
[00:15:50] Dan: Yeah.
[00:15:51] Sara: Right.
[00:15:52] Dan: Mm-Hmm. How do you
[00:15:52] Sara: do that through storytelling?
[00:15:53] Sara: How do you So that purpose, goal thing?
[00:15:56] Sara: Feels super. I mean, the literature shows that teams that have goal congruence outperform teams that don't. Mm-Hmm. So we know it's both working on that matters. And in fact, so we did a research project looking at the goals on student teams, this before ai.
[00:16:12] Sara: Now it's a little easier, but still we said, how could we measure goal congruence? Like if five students turn in five goals, can we evaluate? Are they all on the same page? So we could automatically give them feedback and say, um, you know, you guys won't want to chat about this. Yeah.
[00:16:28] Sara: Or And it turns out that not only are they not on the same page, their goals are all in different categories. So somebody might say, get an A. Somebody might say, learn to and measurement, somebody might say, have fun with the team. So
[00:16:48] Dan: bringing these together is right.
[00:16:49] Sara: Yeah. Something. So I think we've improved it significantly by saying, here's some categories of goals. When you write your goal statement, you know, maybe one of us is taking it past no pass and one of us getting a, so understand that we don't have congruence on.
[00:17:05] Sara: On certain outcomes, but where do we have congruence? Mm. so stuff like that. Yeah. That we've been playing with that I would say, 'cause your question was in industry, you know, how is that happening? The coordination part I think in industry seems better. Like, how are we gonna communicate? How are we gonna make decisions, um, et cetera.
[00:17:27] Sara: Um, not that it's perfect, but it seems to be like attention is paid to that supported by these project management. capabilities and then psychological safety's become the hot new topic, right? So trust it feels like it's always hard to know if people are telling the truth. We actually ask people to position themselves in the trust and accountability matrix.
[00:17:50] Sara: Mm-Hmm. And now increasing numbers of companies put themselves in learning as opposed to apathy or, I forget the names of
[00:17:58] Pia: the other two quadrants, right? Is that to remain psychologically safe? It, it, it can have that impact, can't it? I mean. We have a series of questions too. And sometimes that's the most difficult conversation to have if there is an issue around psychological safety. 'cause somebody has to call the elephant out in the room. Exactly. And that's a challenge. And that in itself can really, it has to be a courageous act. Yeah.
[00:18:21] Sara: So it's hard to tell.
[00:18:22] Pia: Yeah.
[00:18:23] Sara: In industry and students, um, we just found this out in some recent analysis we were doing that they don't mention ever conflict. Like, it doesn't emerge when you do a theme analysis of there, what do we do? Well, what could we do differently? Ah, conflict never shows up. Well, it shows up if you search for
[00:18:41] Dan: it. Right. But on the But as a theme, yeah. Not
[00:18:44] Sara: showing up. so this is interesting 'cause it says to your sort of point, like, I'm psychologically safe, but I'm not gonna ever You read a concept.
[00:18:54] Sara: Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah.
[00:18:56] Dan: so if we think about, it would be great to hear some stories from you about some teams that you've seen through this amazing, um, work that you do. If we think about a team that you've either been on or observed or supervised that was super effective. If you think about that one, is there one that you have in your mind that you look back on maybe that gives you hope every morning, um, if you can, is is there a team like that? And if so, what was their story?
[00:19:22] Sara: So for a few years we taught a class. Called collaborative innovation. It was jointly taught among theater and dance, performance studies, art practice, and me representing business or engineering, whatever you wanna think I do. And we went through the problem framing, problem solving process from the point of view of each discipline. And then they had to integrate all of it in a final project. So now we've got 18 or more different disciplines in the class. And they, they wanted to create. The University of Unlearning,
[00:20:09] Sara: it was just too much fun. Yeah. And, and, and they all seem to be on the same page about it, even though some of the rest of us didn't know what they were. Yeah. Really and about Right. and um, I think that was partly 'cause there was a woman who ran that team who just sparkled. You know, she was just one of those, you're, you're drawn to her.
[00:20:34] Sara: Mm. And so she created a team dynamic that, that worked, that they really were able to, um, bring things together. There was another experience in that class. Incredibly powerful. We asked, they were supposed to create a piece of what we call socially engaged art, and this group is all women. And they built a three foot coffin and they cut out images of women from magazines and then cut their eyes out and put them around the outside of the box, and then they lay.
[00:21:10] Sara: it was like a, a, a doll is the wrong word, but it, you know, a figure of a Yeah. Mm-hmm. Of a woman with these huge hands on her inside the box. And you can imagine the conversations that happened around this, that people would come over and just Yeah. Talk about what they saw. Mm-Hmm. And what, it was incredibly evocative.
[00:21:32] Sara: I'm sure this isn't true, but in my recollection, they didn't talk while they made that like it was so deeply drawing from their personal. Experiences, um, that they didn't really even have to talk in order to build this representation of, sexual assault and yeah. Wow. Um, so there's all the way to that extreme where they were so on the same page that they just made it.
[00:22:03] Sara: Yeah. Mm. Which I, I have, it's a pin, no idea how to replicate that. Which then leads me to another experiment we did in that class. So we said form teams around shared interests. So everybody proposes, I wanna work on climate change, I wanna work on, whatever, some topic. So we formed teams around that, and then we said, now take an inventory of the people on your team.
[00:22:28] Sara: Do you have the skills and backgrounds that you believe you'll need in order to succeed at that goal? And most of the team said, well, not really, you know? Mm-Hmm. Like we could really use somebody who, you know, has some, talent in building artifacts or, um, whatever the case might be. So then we said, okay, now everybody make a piece of paper that says, I am good at.
[00:22:53] Sara: And another piece of paper that says I need help with and walk around the room and make a team of people that compliment each other. Now, find a topic you have in common. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. a few teams stayed together like they were able to find a topic, but most of them said. No, we wanna find a balance somewhere in between. Right? Mm-Hmm.
[00:23:18] Sara: And there's another extreme, this team was working on mental health and mental health awareness. Very common topic among undergrads. And there was one guy on the team who was super introverted and kind of.
[00:23:33] Sara: Would show up but not really fully engage. And it was hard to tell where the whole thing was going to go. And one of the women on the team drew him out and managed to engage him and, and they ended up building, um, a game that would cause you to talk about mental health, um, which was picked up by our. The health center to be able to actually use it.
[00:24:01] Sara: So it was, uh, so they turned out something. Um, and they also produced a, a video about mental health and, um, challenges that people had on the campus. So I, I'm trying to think of different examples. Like the example where the team leader's just
[00:24:15] Dan: like,
[00:24:17] Sara: ah, you know, and the whole team goes, yeah, let's do that.
[00:24:19] Sara: I suppose
[00:24:19] Dan: what this tells us is that we just asking that ques simple question in a way about. Effective teams. It, success seems to come from a number of sources, actually. Yeah. here's the flip side
[00:24:30] Sara: of that, that's kind of fun. So the students worked on four teams that semester. So every team got teaming feedback and the most interesting ones are the ones that said, my first team said, you talk too much.
[00:24:45] Sara: And my second team said, you should talk more.
[00:24:47] Dan: Yeah,
[00:24:48] Sara: I'm oversimplifying. I don't remember the exactly that, but, and they said, so I've learned that I have to pay attention to the team. Right. And figure out what,
[00:24:59] Dan: which me I bring. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Mm-Hmm. Um, that was a, that was a really interesting exploration of successful teams. If you think about teams that have. Not been so good the most, the teams that have just failed. Yeah. They've been ineffective. Is there anything you would, again, is, is there a story of one of those teams that just continually struggled and never managed to get on their feet? Yeah.
[00:25:21] Sara: I would say the biggest problem is generally driven by lack of shared goal. And. We actually did, this wasn't me, Alice Aino did this work, but they did latent semantic analysis of the communications of teams and they found that they converge at milestones. Not entirely surprisingly, but, but good when they did.
[00:25:49] Sara: The teams that don't sort of flail. Along for a long time because they're not, this is new product development. So we've got the, yeah. I call it the argyle sock model. Right? I diverge, converge. Mm-Hmm. Not completely. And I diverge, converge every time I'm converging a little bit more. But, some teams don't get there.
[00:26:09] Sara: Right? Or they don't get enough convergence, or they may be diverge. Way too much. Yeah. Yeah. In late cycles. Oh, yeah. It goes out,
[00:26:20] Dan: out again.
[00:26:21] Sara: Yeah. Yeah. And, and most teams figure it out. Mm-Hmm. I, I remember one team totally imploding. I, I have a memory of it. It was a long time ago. I don't remember. But that was new product development, but they just could not figure it out.
[00:26:35] Sara: Mm-Hmm. They probably turned into deliverables or something. Like, they, like, they just couldn't, couldn't get there. Yeah. so I would say that's, that's why to me, the management of goal congruence is really critical because particularly in design and new product development, like I start here and you know, I'm gonna end up somewhere else.
[00:26:57] Dan: Yeah.
[00:26:57] Sara: So what does that process look like? And it's a team process. It's bad enough if I do it by myself. Mm-Hmm. Yeah. But as a team, how do I manage those diverge, converge cycles? And
[00:27:11] Dan: what does that look like? Is that the team being really aware that that's important, that that's what we have to do and that we have a shared conversation about it and being deliberate about that?
[00:27:21] Dan: Is that, is that, to me, that what it's about,
[00:27:24] Sara: it's, it's sort of not in collaborative innovation that's. My theater friend teaches converge, diverges, throw your arms up in the air and converges, you know? Yeah. It's like she would, what's the embodiment of diverge, converging? Where are you now in your process?
[00:27:41] Sara: And so we do try to, even in, in the executive programs, we try to do some explicit teaching of You can't divergent converge at the same time. So how did you manage that? So if are you in diverge mode, then this is how the team behaves. And then it's also how does it not only as it behave, how does it feel?
[00:27:59] Sara: Mm-Hmm. Diverge is fun. That's a classic, right? You get to halfway through the semester and they've been interviewing customers, and they've been brainstorming ideas and needs and yeah, they're all having fun. And then you go, okay, now it's time to narrow down on two or three options. No, it's not. You can just watch.
[00:28:18] Sara: No, it's fun anymore. Teams go from fun. It's not fun anymore to not fun. so that I think is a critical yeah, element of what teams mean. It takes
[00:28:27] Pia: discipline, doesn't it? It takes discipline and focus to get that level of clarity, because it's easy to assume. I would imagine if you've got a team of 6, 7, 8 people assume that you're on the same page and because you're having a similar experience, that you've got a different, the same interpretation.
[00:28:43] Sara: Exactly. But, and I think the other part is of course, student teams don't have a leader. they don't have a,
[00:28:51] Pia: a designated leader. Designated leader. No. So there's more self-managed
[00:28:56] Sara: They, yes. Um, we could have a long complex, I mean, they do have leaders. When I used to ask them, I don't ask them anymore, who's the leader on your team? And I have many instances where they'll say, Chris is our team leader. And Chris will say, I'm not somebody else's. I,
[00:29:17] Dan: I, yeah.
[00:29:18] Sara: Yeah. Because students don't want to be, they see leadership as putting myself above a status, not parallel.
[00:29:26] Dan: Mm. And do, how often do they. I suppose you've, you may have answered this question, but how often do they actually say, right, we do want someone to be a leader, to coordinate, we're gonna vote for someone and it is official. Does that happen very often or do they tend to remain lead sort of leaderless flat in most cases,
[00:29:45] Sara: we often ask them to, to ate a leader. We try to have them see that there are different leadership roles, so you don't have to have one. mm-Hmm. So like the person who proposed the project might be the champion?
[00:29:59] Dan: Oh yeah. Mm-Hmm.
[00:30:00] Sara: We had one team that was designing a sling to be inserted under the liver to lift it up.
[00:30:07] Sara: For surgery. Right. To get it out of the way.
[00:30:11] Sara: Well, the guy who proposed that had access to the cadaver lab, he could not have managed his way out of a paper bag, as they say, So they needed someone else on the team to say, we have a deliverable this week. Here's what we need to do to get that deliverable together. But he was the one who took them to the cadaver lab.
[00:30:33] Sara: These, yeah. Mm-Hmm. So I think this notion of separating out leadership roles, like who runs the agenda for the meeting. Yeah.
[00:30:42] Dan: Some people
[00:30:42] Sara: step into that role very naturally. That's great. which raises a whole other thing about student teams versus the real world, which is in the real world you might put a team together.
[00:30:54] Sara: Knowing the project manager's job. Mm-hmm. Is to make sure we get the milestones met. Mm-Hmm. The product manager's job is to make sure the voice of the customer is heard. The project manager's job is to, so I'm gonna put people in those roles who can do them. In the student world, we don't generally have that.
[00:31:14] Sara: Um, opportunity, liberty,
[00:31:16] Dan: Yeah, that makes sense. That's really interesting. The passing of the, the battle, I think. Yeah. so before we get to our final couple of questions for you, um, is there anything else that springs to mind about teaming by design that we haven't touched on that you've seen that, that we, we should really capture?
[00:31:34] Sara: if it's important for us to have people who are good at teaming in the So-called Real World. Then how do we best make that happen while they're in school? Mm-Hmm. Which then leads to these other questions that you're implicitly raising. Yeah. Around leadership. Now, by the way, the role of product manager rarely has anybody reporting to them, so they're kind of like a student team.
[00:32:05] Sara: So is the future of teaming. Stanley McChrystal's team of teams, in which case I'm doing okay at helping students know what the future will be like or is it, I'm gonna be the general and call the shots and, and so I should be training students to do that. I think we probably all have answers to that, that it's more like team of teams that said.
[00:32:34] Sara: Um, then what do we need to enable them to be able to do? And it's, we're still talking pretty generically about how do you make decisions? Are we actually teaching them how to effectively make decisions? Um, they're always working in. did have one class that had teams of 10, but, but mostly the teams are four, five, or six.
[00:33:01] Sara: Well, in the real world, that might be the core team, but there's a lot of people out there to coordinate. I tried that one year. I tried to teach a class right on the mall, coordinating each other with lot of stakeholders. They're like, I do this at work all day. I don't wanna do this at the, so I think there's.
[00:33:19] Sara: A fun opportunity to think about how do we best prepare students, whether starting in middle school, high school, um, college to be prepared to work in a dynamic team world. And then it comes back to your questions of roles. Mm. Have they played all the roles that they might ultimately have to play? How do we enable that?
[00:33:48] Sara: How do we enable that and still let them to get an A? Right? So if they want the best mm-hmm. Possible outcome at the end of the semester, right? It might not be by having somebody learn something new or play a role that, so there's some tension
[00:34:05] Sara: in how we can really best prepare them. Overlaid, of course, by.
[00:34:11] Sara: This isn't a class on teaming. Sometimes I go and I do one lecture for the class, but most of the time there's no lecture. It's just
[00:34:19] Dan: straight the way it is. Mm-Hmm.
[00:34:22] Sara: So this is where AI comes in, because what I'd like to do is have AI say you're not all in agreement on your goal.
[00:34:31] Dan: Yeah.
[00:34:31] Sara: Or you could include an agenda around X or, and I think we're starting to um, play with some of that and I think it is proving to be helpful to them. Um, you know, you say you're communicating with chat. what are you communicating with chat? Do you make decisions by chat or just communicate? Updates by chat and it, we run the risk of overburdening them with a lot of this, the details, but that's.
[00:35:01] Sara: You come from that real world of what do they need to be able to do and with AI to support us. So we're not, I mean, I can read a thousand lines of, you know, data from students and try to write a note back to each of them, which I used to do. Um, but now we have a way to coach them.
[00:35:20] Sara: so my, my hope is that we can move that kind of thing forward and, you know, really be helpful to them. To the point where they are leaving over time. Way better prepared.
[00:35:34] Dan: Yeah. Well, and
[00:35:34] Pia: what do you think would be the benefit for them? So, you know, the what's in it for me to have this by design and to capture them early in their career?
[00:35:45] Sara: Yeah. That's a good question. I, I think benefit number one. Yeah. Is your experience of doing team projects is way better?
[00:35:52] Sara: So, I mean, you know, un the unpleasant experiences we all hear about
[00:35:57] Dan: are
[00:35:57] Sara: hard. So that's thing number one. There's evidence that peer-to-peer learning is really valuable and teaming presents that opportunity so they could actually enhance their, their learning. and then finally they'll be better positioned. For any kind of job that they do anywhere.
[00:36:15] Dan: Mm-Hmm.
[00:36:16] Sara: If they can appreciate the dynamics of the teams that they're, that they're working on.
[00:36:21] Pia: Mm-Hmm.
[00:36:22] Sara: And I think, I don't think I have data that can show this, but I think students are way more aware now of team dynamics and some of the elements of managing them than they were 20 years ago. Yeah. So. I think, you know, we've made a lot of progress, but we're not helping them on that path. You know, they're having to kind of do it on their own more than, than I think they should have to.
[00:36:53] Dan: yeah, it seems like very much our experience that the teamwork is essential. It's the thing that's gonna deliver the task, but it has to be somehow inserted in the gaps. You've gotta find a way into it. Yeah. It's, um, a joint struggle. I think we're, we're having, um, Sarah, it is been wonderful hearing so much about your, your really valuable work.
[00:37:13] Dan: Um, final question, we always finish with a media recommendation, a book, podcast, uh, anything really that's inspired or interested you, have you got a, a recommendation for our listener
[00:37:27] Sara: Seems like I've been reading a lot of books set in Dublin lately, or Ireland, which is kind of fun.
[00:37:33] Dan: Claire Kegan have you
[00:37:35] Sara: gems, that's a lovely, lovely book. Yes.
[00:37:39] Pia: I'm, I'm right in the allocation. You are countryside. I'm reading Demon Copperhead. I loved that book and it's a little long. It well, I'm, I'm, I'm enjoying it. I got, I got through a period of time. Yes. I think there's a bit where you sort of trying to No, off you, you have to sort of coast through, keep pushing on thinking something's gonna happen. Something's gonna happen. Yeah. But an extraordinary
[00:38:01] Sara: No, I thought, I love her books in general. I just, that she brings alive, real world. That's it. Problems and challenges. Real humans and people. Mm-Hmm. Tracy Kidder does a nice job of that as well. I don't know if you've read Rough Sleepers, um, which is about, uh, a doctor in Boston who sort of was co-opted while in medical school to work with the homeless, and he, um, spent his life dedicated to that.
[00:38:28] Sara: But the unpacking. The reality of homelessness as opposed to the way we see it from the outside in many cases. Uh, he had done a really nice job of, of that. And the same with mountains, beyond mountains. I, I really, I loved his book of Haiti and healthcare and,
[00:38:47] Pia: and these are problems that not cannot be solved just by single people alone.
[00:38:51] Pia: So I think brings us right back. It's a
[00:38:52] Dan: good, a good we not need point to end on,
[00:38:54] Sara: which is. The other world I live in is teaching systems thinking. Yeah. So trying to kind of unpack all these things and figure out how do we make a dent in them.
[00:39:04] Dan: Yeah.
[00:39:05] Sara: Yeah.
[00:39:05] Dan: Well, maybe that's, maybe that'll be another episode.
[00:39:08] Dan: But, uh, for today, Sarah, thank you so much for being a guest on We Not Me. It's been
[00:39:13] Sara: my pleasure. Thank you for having me. Really thought
[00:39:14] Dan: provoking and thank you for the valuable work that you do. Sending these young people, youngish people off into the world with a whiff of interest and, and ability in, uh. In working in teams. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.
[00:39:30] Dan: So, Pia, there were two things that struck me in that, in that, uh, con amazing conversation that you said, one of them was absolute genius. no, genuinely I've used this phrase since, and, and I, and I, and I think it's so powerful. You said that this is a paradigm that the task will do the job of uniting the team.
[00:39:51] Dan: And I think that is. Such a, I know this is not something that Sarah said, something that Sarah inspired by what she was saying, but I do think that at the heart of this topic of teaming is that idea that it's okay, we've all got something to do and we're going to team, but as Sarah said, there are many ways in which that fragments actually, you divvy up the tasks.
[00:40:09] Dan: You, you just, you know, you bring the stapler, I'll do the, do the analytics, whatever. You're not really working as a team. You just split it up. And we see this obviously through many. Teams in name only that we come across in the workplace. But I thought that was a really great phrase that you said. but the other thing that made me laugh was you, you were talking about reading demon copperhead and, um, and, and accidentally said that, that you, that it set in alopecia and I thought, oh.
[00:40:37] Pia: Which is is a new hairless state,
[00:40:41] Dan: You can imagine the bald mountaintops or something. Anyway, um, so that may be, that gave me a bit of chuckle, but I know what it's like. I've done the same thing where you, where the words just get a little bit, uh, confined.
[00:40:51] Pia: The Al and the and the app
[00:40:53] Pia: got
[00:40:54] Dan: I have to say, Peter, that that was one of the joys of being with you in the UU us.
[00:40:57] Dan: You've got these moments of, of profound wisdom and then these just hilarious
[00:41:04] Pia: bonkers,
[00:41:05] Dan: bonkers moments. So yeah. So.
[00:41:07] Pia: moment.
[00:41:08] Dan: Anyone who's spent time with you will relate to that. And I think we've probably heard so. Um,
[00:41:12] Pia: Yeah.
[00:41:13] Pia: and she talked also about, goal Congruence and that is a really important one too because we are really seeing that Clarity first plays such an important role in bringing teams together, which again, you know, we get to our earlier point. Patrick Lencioni, a lot of the work around his was trust first.
[00:41:34] Pia: And actually in this crazy bonkers world that we're in, you can get a faster run at things and a faster start through clarity. First. It's not clarity only, it's just get clarity as a hygiene factor. And I think that Sarah, Sarah also talked about that and, and, um, was really clear that, that, that. That alignment, getting people on the same page was, was the first base
[00:42:00] Dan: Yeah, it is interesting, isn't it? 'cause um, Lencioni, yes. Trust at the bottom, but actually when you listen to 'em talking, it's actually psychological safety. Before that, those words became really, um, animated by, um. Um, Amy Edson and, um, the Google project. Aristotle has psychological safety as a foundation, and yet, because one of the interesting that Sarah said is when, when we'd asked her about successful teams, she, she had this sort of.
[00:42:26] Dan: Blossoming of many different ways in which teams could succeed. Um, but actually when it came to right, where have you seen it fail? It was quite clear that that was when they didn't share a goal. So they lacked goal congruence and that work that she said that was done at HP, where they, you just sort of really.
[00:42:43] Dan: Get to you really look at understand, right? What, what does everyone have in their head around the table about your goal? it's very different. It's really different. It's a great exercise to do. Write down on a post-it note or write down a piece of paper where you are, what you think our goal is. Very, I think nine out of 10.
[00:43:00] Dan: It's low goal congruence. So that is the place to start. and also why be psychological safety safe, psychologically safe? I was working with a team, um, a couple of weeks ago who didn't have trust, but it was because they didn't really have a shared goal to work around. It wasn't that they distrusted or felt unsafe, they just didn't work together.
[00:43:21] Dan: So they hadn't, didn't have that need. So the clarity first, not only as you say, but clarity first is, is definitely a way to go. And Sarah, Sarah's experience over the many years really backed that up.
[00:43:32] Pia: So, and I, um, I.
[00:43:34] Pia: do remember, and actually we're going to talk later in a future episode, with Rob Dinsmore looking at when teams came together to develop sort of innovative. Projects. It was always the people dynamics of getting on with others and being unclear about how to work together and what they were trying to achieve that got in the way, um, that thwarted their technical wizardry.
[00:43:56] Pia: and clever thinking really, it just got in the way. So it is first base. and do not assume though that, oh, well that's easy because that there is that big gap between information and understanding, and you can assume that people understand things and they don't.
[00:44:12] Pia: And that's where, uh, miscommunication and it's like little train tracks, you know, they just go off a little, a millimeter apart and then all of a sudden, you know they are,
[00:44:20] Pia: they're, they're, 10 Ks apart. Down the track. So, so Yeah, so I think that's, it is seemingly simple.
[00:44:27] Pia: It is harder to do. all the data and now like, I think this was such a, a revealing conversation. So it's now being seen instead of academia in terms of sort of the development of student ideas as being, um, being really critical.
[00:44:43] Dan: Yeah, that's so true. It's wonderful. So, um, yeah, and the, the goal seems to bring people together, but we can't, as you said wisely, we can't assume that will be the case and it requires continuous work. But that is it for this episode. We Not Me, is supported by Squadify. Squadify is the complete system to help your teams to connect and perform.
[00:45:02] Dan: You can find show notes where you are listening and at squadify.net. If you've enjoyed the show, please do share the love. And recommend it to your friends. We Not Me, is produced by Mark. Steadman, thank you so much for listening. It's goodbye from me.
[00:45:15] Pia: And it is goodbye from me.