Extreme Teaming: Lessons in Complex, Cross-Sector Leadership

"Extreme Teaming" also includes case studies that demonstrate cross-sector teamwork in action. One describes how a healthcare company joined forces with a software firm. Another tells the story of a real-estate business that teamed up with an energy company, an IT provider, and the government. We hear how managers brought different personalities and skill sets together, and how they motivated team members to get behind common goals.

So, who is this book for? Leaders at all levels will find lots of useful tools and practical takeaways to help them make the most of this new style of teamwork. Researchers, students, academics, and anyone interested in leadership or management theory will also enjoy this book, because as well as being a practical handbook, "Extreme Teaming" is also an academic work. Edmondson and Harvey are university professors, and they want their research into teamwork to be part of the academic literature on management. So there's a lot of theory in this book, and its pages are crammed with citations of research papers. Be prepared for plenty of jargon, too.

Amy Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School. She specializes in the dynamic forms of collaboration needed in uncertain times, which she refers to as "teaming," as in the book's title. Edmondson has also studied the role of psychological safety in teamwork and innovation. Previously, she was Director of Research at Pecos Learning Centers, designing change programs for large companies.

Jean-François Harvey is Assistant Professor in the Department of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at HEC Montréal. His work explores how individuals, teams, and organizations learn – focusing especially on how they can work effectively across different specialisms.

So keep listening to hear why teaming is set to replace traditional teamwork, why an engaging vision is vital to building team spirit, and why leaders need to create an environment where everyone feels comfortable sharing ideas.

Before we go any further, let's make sure we understand what "teaming" means, and how it differs from traditional forms of teamwork.

In the past, teams usually had a stable structure. Team members worked in the same building and tended to focus on projects for a reasonable length of time – several months, or even years.

Today though, team members can be scattered across continents. They often come from diverse backgrounds and work together for short periods, on temporary assignments. They may belong to a number of teams at the same time, and collaborate with people in industries and professions very different from their own.

This is what the authors mean by the term "teaming." It's a much more fluid and dynamic process than the teamwork we might be used to. In the future, more and more teams will operate this way.

So, why do we need this new style of collaboration? The first reason is that there's been a knowledge explosion. Information is developing at such a fast pace that people need to invest more time to keep track of changes in their field. This has led to a narrowing of specialisms. Think of all the sub-fields in internal medicine, for example – cardiology, endocrinology, oncology, and so forth.

With so many areas of expertise, and with technology constantly changing the ways we work, we have more experts in more subject areas than ever before. We also face increasingly complex problems that require professionals from different fields to share their knowledge and work together.

Edmondson and Harvey use the 2010 Chilean mining accident as an example of a complicated situation that showed extreme teaming at its best. A huge explosion trapped 33 miners some 700 meters underground. Hundreds of people from different countries, including politicians, police officers, NASA officials, geologists, engineers, technical specialists, mining experts, and search-and-rescue teams, all came together to solve the problem of how to get them out. It took 70 days but, against the odds, all the miners made it home.

Teaming is clearly effective when it comes to dealing with man-made or natural disasters on a big scale. But it's just as powerful in the business arena. Innovation is the name of the game in today's competitive environment, and it's the organizations that share knowledge – and collaborate across boundaries – that will be able to tap into the best ideas. This will help them come up with better solutions, such as new processes, products or services.

Edmondson and Harvey leave us in no doubt about the need for extreme teaming and the benefits it can bring, and we like the way they make a strong case for this new way of working at the start of the book. But what does it mean for managers, and how can they get the best out of their new teams?

Most teams present challenges of one kind or another. There might be personality clashes, different communication styles, shift patterns, and flexible working hours that make it hard for the team to bond and move forward. Extreme teaming magnifies these problems and adds some new ones, from language barriers to specialist jargon, and from professional divides to boundaries between organizations. Leaders need to bridge these gaps, and this takes some specialist leadership skills.

Edmondson and Harvey identify four things leaders must do to unite different teams. They chose these practices after studying five projects where extreme teaming worked really well. Each project brought experts together from at least two different fields and, in some cases, as many as four or five. The industries and professions that collaborated included architecture, construction, design, real estate, energy, IT, software, healthcare, engineering, and government.

The four essential leadership skills that emerged from the research were: build an engaging vision, cultivate psychological safety, develop shared mental models, and empower agile execution. Let's take a closer look at the first two of these now.

Teams that span organizational boundaries need to bond better than the average team, because the chances of members clashing or misunderstanding each other are higher. Leaders are responsible for team cohesion, and their ability to build an engaging vision is crucial to this.

The authors say there are two ways managers can help a team to bond. These are: by coming up with a clear set of shared values that everyone on the project can get behind, and by setting an ambitious and challenging goal that excites every team member. In extreme teaming, groups need to own the project and truly believe in it. Having a strong common goal will help them overcome the inevitable hurdles they'll face.

So leaders need to take time to explain why the project is important in a way that resonates with all team members. They can do this in team meetings and one-on-one conversations. They need to combine excellent communication skills with empathy and humility, to inspire team members both from the front and from alongside them.

The authors choose a case study called Project Sofia to show this leadership function in action. Project Sofia was a joint venture between a healthcare company and a software company that was a leader in immersive technologies like virtual reality. The healthcare company wanted to explore new methods of diagnosis and treatment, while the software company wanted to change society for the better through high-end research.

Each company assigned a project lead and gradually came up with a clear, simple and compelling vision that would excite doctors, nurses, programmers, and designers. This was: to improve the well-being of sick children.

Edmondson and Harvey take us into team meetings and describe the step-by-step process managers followed to agree on this vision. The real-life case study backs up the theory, showing how leaders can bring different groups of people together behind a worthwhile goal. We get a real sense of the power of a shared mission to break down barriers between teams, ranging from professional jargon, to communication styles, to physical distance.

Let's now look at what "psychological safety" means, and why it's so important for extreme teaming to work.

The authors argue that there's no use having diverse expertise on teams if people don't feel free to share knowledge, experiment with new ideas, ask what might feel like foolish questions, invite feedback, and talk openly about their mistakes. But research has shown that these behaviors are harder in a room full of strangers. So in an extreme teaming environment, it's even more vital for leaders to help team members feel safe taking risks.

Managers need to show that they genuinely care about the individuals on a team. They can do this by connecting with people on an emotional level, and checking in with them regularly. How they are feeling? Are they coping with their workload? Are they stressed or overwhelmed? Do they need to take a break? Leaders who are humble, empathetic, accessible, and open to discussing failures and mistakes will get the most out of their teams in this new environment.

Edmondson and Harvey focus on a case study involving a craft company and an IT firm that joined forces to explore the huge growth in so-called makerspaces and fab labs, where children and adults work together on physical and digital projects in a playful setting. They also teamed up to look into the growing do-it-yourself, or DIY culture, in the U.S.

The project leaders from each company knew it was important to build trust between the two diverse teams before getting on with any actual project work. So they organized two informal sessions where people could interact, tell a few jokes, and generally get to know one another.

Once formal meetings began, managers made sure team members knew that the group would consider all ideas, no matter how off-the-wall they seemed. They encouraged people to "think out loud." Team members used a whiteboard and marker to get creative with their ideas and share them openly.

The authors note that one of the biggest breakthroughs came when a team member called Charles shared an idea that he'd initially dismissed as crazy – to build a mobile makerspace that could be parked anywhere. Charles's idea was the basis of the product the two teams eventually designed.

Again, this detailed case study brings the theory to life in an engaging way. It also makes it easy for readers to connect with the authors' ideas and relate them to their own working lives. Edmondson and Harvey share the names of managers and significant team members, and give us a flavor of their personalities and thought processes. We like the way they weave in these stories.

The five case studies in the book also help to inject color into what can be a dry read at times. "Extreme Teaming" is heavy in parts, bogged down by citations of research papers and academic studies, as well as by lots of jargon. The reference pages span almost 50 pages. We like the bullet-point takeaways at the end of each chapter, and the way the authors break up each leadership function into two elements, but we think this book would have benefited from everyday language and a more straightforward style. It would also flow better with fewer citations, although we accept this is how academics write. Edmondson and Harvey are clearly excited about the opportunities of extreme teaming, but some of this enthusiasm gets lost in the rather clunky writing style.

The other problem we have with this book is that while the authors make a strong case for a new style of teamwork, many of the points they make about good leadership practices apply to all kinds of teams. At times, it feels like there's nothing hugely groundbreaking about their ideas. You've probably read before about the need for leaders to share an engaging vision, or to find ways to use the knowledge of experts.

That said, it's great to be reminded of the basics of good leadership, and to read about the specific skills leaders will need to rise to the challenge of extreme teaming. If you're a leader or manager, this book will get you thinking about the importance of qualities like flexibility, curiosity, empathy, and humility in getting the most out of your teams – especially when they cross cultures, specialisms, or other boundaries. You might even come away inspired to build more diverse teams, knowing you have the tools to cope with the inevitable bumps in the road.

"Extreme Teaming" by Amy Edmondson and Jean-François Harvey is published by Emerald Publishing.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights. Thanks for listening.

Buy your own copy of "Extreme Teaming" from the Mind Tools store.

Find our review of Professor Edmondson's book with Susan Salter Reynolds, "Building the Future: Big Teaming for Audacious Innovation."

And listen to Amy Edmondson in her exclusive interview with Mind Tools discussing her book, "The Fearless Organization - Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation and Growth."

Note: Mind Tools is a product of Emerald Works, which is part of the Emerald Group along with Emerald Publishing, but we only choose books to feature in Book Insights and Expert Interviews that we think are suitable and worthwhile for our audience, irrespective of publisher.