Good Team, Bad Team - by Sarah Thurber & Blair Miller (Paperback)

About the Book

"You want to lead a good team--a team that gets results, a team you look forward to working with every day. But many leaders are surprised to find themselves bogged down by people problems. They can't get people to row in the same direction--or row at all. They have a nagging sense that the team isn't reaching its full potential. This book is a primer for busy leaders who want actionable ways to build a better team with the people they have. Sarah Thurber and Blair Miller combine their decades of team-building experience with research from the fields of cognitive diversity and creative problem solving to help people lead teams that collaborate, innovate, and get results"--

Book Synopsis

Know yourself, know your team, solve your challenge.

You want to lead a good team--a team that gets results, a team you look forward to working with every day.

But many leaders are surprised to find themselves bogged down by people problems. They can't get people to row in the same direction--or row at all. They have a nagging sense that the team isn't reaching its full potential.

This book is a primer for busy leaders who want actionable ways to build a better team with the people they have. Sarah Thurber and Blair Miller combine their decades of team-building experience with research from the fields of cognitive diversity and creative problem solving to help people lead teams that collaborate, innovate, and get results.

Their advice? If you want to lead a good team, don't follow your instincts. Follow the science.

Built on research from their popular FourSight(R) system--used by Nike, NASA, and Navy SEALs--Good Team, Bad Team examines over 6 million data points on why people solve the same problem so differently. The data reveals unconscious problem-solving patterns which, left unmanaged, can cause conflict and stall progress. Once understood, they can help diverse thinkers achieve extraordinary results.

Good Team, Bad Team is the must-read leadership toolkit for leaders who want their people to take on big challenges--together.

Review Quotes

"We take good teams for granted, when we should be building them with intent. Here's a powerful blueprint to get you started." --Seth Godin, author, The Song of Significance

"This is a fabulous book for leaders and team members to better understand themselves and each other. I use this approach in my Creativity and Innovation class at Harvard to teach students that it's our differences, not our similarities, that help in problem solving." --Margaret Andrews, Harvard University instructor

"We've engrained this approach into our culture. We use it within teams and across team to increase empathy, cooperation, and innovation." --Ingrid De Clercq, Chief People Officer at Deliverect

About the Author

Sarah Thurber (Author)
Sarah Thurber is an author, speaker, entrepreneur, and team leader. As managing partner at FourSight, she has led a diverse team of experts to develop the FourSight System, which empowers teams to embrace their diverse strengths and enhance performance. Thurber works directly with academic researchers, professional facilitators, technical leaders, and designers to spearhead the development of online and print-based tools that support cognitive diversity and creative problem solving. She is coauthor of The Secret of the Highly Creative Thinker: How to Make Connections Others Don't as well as many popular FourSight training manuals and resources.

Blair Miller (Author)
Blair Miller, PhD, is cofounding partner and research coordinator at FourSight and president of Blair Miller Innovation. For three decades, he has combined team-building and problem-solving facilitation to help teams create new products, patents, and strategic plans. He codeveloped a business simplification process that led to more than $1.5 billion in savings for Fortune 500 clients like Mars and Kraft. Miller has coauthored influential training manuals, published academic articles, and received the Distinguished Leadership Award from the Creative Education Foundation. He is an adjunct professor at the Center for Applied Imagination at SUNY Buffalo State University.