Leading Teams: Setting the Stage for Great Performances

by J. Richard Hackman

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.

Genres: Leadership, Business, Management, Nonfiction, Psychology, Self Help, Professional Development

330 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 1, 2002

Reviews

[Sicofonia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leading Teams is simply a must read book for anyone in a leadership position.

It proposes a simple framework aiming at the conditions that are conducive towards high-performance. Namely compelling direction, structure and supportive context. But professor Hackman was no business consultant. He was not in the business of selling certificates, so he is quick to point that out that those conditions may be necessary, and certainly they are not sufficient. As there is a variety of reasons why work teams might not be the best option depending on a number of factors (organizational context, type of work, etc.).

Hackman also debunks the myth that self-managing teams are the only setup that allows for high performance. He provides examples (People's Express Airline being the case in point) where the ideological concept of empowering and democratic organization contributed to the demise of it. This is very important nowadays, in the age of the Agile consultancy when statements such as "autonomous teams are best" are taken as absolute truths.

Beautifully researched, with plenty of informative notes and exhaustive bibliography; professor Hackman poured into this work all of his knowledge product of decades working and researching in the field.

I rarely give 5 starts to books, but this one was a true gem. Read it, you'll learn a lot with it.

[Ricardo Cavalcanti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting insights especially if you work putting teams together and creating the proper environment for them to strive. The author proposes an effective model based on research. He is always using real world examples from airline crews and orchestras. The examples are nice and made me think a bit on how to transport that reality to my own reality, which I liked.

Some downsides are the length of the chapters, and sometimes the examples are a bit too long.

[Taylor V. Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

A delight to read this author. The bottom line is teams create their own destiny; a team leader's job, therefore, is to set the conditions that improve the likelihood of success, make minor adjustments, and hope magic happens. That's a little unsatisfying as a leader, but an important predictive from an expert in the field.

[Caroline · Rating 2 out of 5]

Boring business book I had to read for a management class. Great class though.

[Scott Pearson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Books on leadership continue to fill bookstores’ bookshelves. Most more or less peddle the same message: Exhibit these characteristics as a leader, and your team will perform great. The problem then becomes how to attain a leadership position. However, life and business usually don’t follow such a simple cause-and-effect pattern. A simple set of postulates cannot control team performance, as if it were a geometry problem. And individual leaders alone do not shape a team; its entire membership do. J. Richard Hackman advances such thoughts as he contends that everyone bears the leadership’s responsibility to set the conditions for great team performance. Great performance is never guaranteed, but its probability for success can be increased by creating the right culture.

I write this review as the book has been around 22 years. The idea that organizational culture drives success has since been well tested and supported in many settings ranging from sports teams to academic units. Though not a leadership expert, I haven’t found many instances where a healthy culture hasn’t significantly increased success rates. Thus, I assert that this book has become a classic and its contributions have already become internalized by organizational leadership gurus. In fact, my biggest criticism of this book is that its lessons have been so widely absorbed that it doesn’t contribute much new in 2024. That’s a nice problem to have.

Hackman has two basic theses. First, good leaders can come from anywhere, not just from the top down. Second, good leadership attends to team direction, structure, support, and coaching. Good leadership alone cannot secure success, but bad leadership can quickly dampen and destroy even the strongest team efforts. He also explores the cost of good leadership: Good leaders can create a productive, self-reliant team to the point where they can work themselves out of a job. The team might no longer need them.

Hackman’s basic approach grows out of the concept of a leader as a teacher instead of a leader as a puppeteer. His perspective heavily supports empowering knowledge workers to leverage their maximal efforts to benefit the organization. It correlates conceptually with an educated workforce, but I could see where it might struggle with more menial workforce sectors. Again, so much of this thought is now business orthodoxy that I would have liked to have read it in 2002 when it first came out. Presumably, its suppositions were more compelling and impactful then. Still, it’s great to study a classic whose structure remains foundational for today’s successful environments.

[Stuart Macalpine · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really pragmatic and balanced account of how to lead teams, and how teams function. Hackman identifies some key conditions, such as a clearly bounded team, shared norms, a compelling direction and a supportive environment - but then shares the enormously pragmatic insight that ‘great leaders’ often just reflect these conditions, and that coaching disproportionately helps well set up teams, but cannot save a poorly created team. ‘Leadership’ is often a proxy for a well set up team. Leaders need EQ and flexibility to adapt, but there is not one set of ‘leadership traits’ that accounts for good leaders - quite the contrary.

Certain habits are helpful - but there are no universal answers.

For metrics, very similar to Adaptive Schools - the success of a team can be measured in did they get the task done (better than they would working as individuals), did their processes work, and would they work together again. This is an analogue for : task, collaboration and relationships, which is the triad that I normally use from Adaptive Schools.

[Po · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books that I've read on leadership and management. This book answered long-time questions I had: "Why are there so many books on leadership and management?" and "What is the best way to lead and manage teams?".

The book feels very grounded in research and empirical evidence rather than anecdotes which a lot of such leadership/management books are based on.

I wish I had read this book early in my career as it seems to be a great "foundation" on a lot of leadership and management concepts.

[Carlos · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely must for anybody that are really concerned about teams. A lot of good insight, knowledge and approaches in creating the right conditions to get a real effective team.

Highlights: no guru stuff, information based on extensive research and explained in a no directive way.

My only complain is about that lack some resume or more structure in examples (now mixed in the theory), but is clearly due to that is an old book.

[yyyy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I got a lot of resonates in the situation I was in. Let alone the researches behind the book, it states some facts about how team works or not works. How leaders role should be in building an effective team. My personal experience giving me the observation of how teams are not performing well. This book gives me the analysis to understand my situation. Recommend it if you have the situation want to solve in the team environment, if not, will be hard to see the values.

[Kim Sung · Rating 4 out of 5]

Learnt some good things from this book. The ideas and concepts make sense, are credible, and can be easily implemented in most work settings.

However, the only reason this book isn't a 5-star is because of the writing style - it's academic and not free flowing.

But I persisted over a long period of time and finally finished the book, and I'm glad that I did because it is worth the investment in time if you really care about learning how to establish the stage for great team performances.

[Patrick Verheij · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great model, great foundation. Alas, the book is a bit outdated and does not match the current TDS model completely. After reading this, catch up on most recent developments of the model at http://www.teamdiagnosticsurvey.com/

[Ingerina Kostaman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Answers

This book was introduced to me when I was announcing to start self organising my own team, as expected it really adds more knowledge (hard skills) needed to achieve better and effective team work. Nice work.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent book on team building and leadership. Unlike a lot of books on the subject that are mostly just one author's opinion, Hackman's theory is very much grounded in research. Poor Hank!

[Peter P. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not groundbreaking or original, but sound counsel on the challenges of managing teams. Better and more diverse case-studies might have made for a more interesting read.

[Kristin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A work assignment. It was ok. I wouldn't say it was something I enjoyed, but it wasn't painful as compared to other assignments....

[Karl · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a dense read, but it promoted a lot of self reflection on my own leadership tactics. Hopefully formatted in a way that would allow implementation of tactics into real life.

[Zoltan Csutoras · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the best book about helping teams becoming efficient.

[Mariano Iacobacci · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leading Teams by Richard Hackman is a great book especially written for those who want to build effective teams and also put some names to the things they already do.

[Toni Tassani · Rating 3 out of 5]

Based on research, the author explains his understanding of Leadership and Teams. The book was published in 2002 and there has been more research after that, but this book is still referred by many people studying group behaviour. Hackman suggestions can lead to increase the probability of good performances, there is no guarantee.
The 5 conditions for effectiveness described in the book are:
A real team, Compelling direction, Enabling structure, Supportive context and Expert coaching.
Worth reading.

[Subbu Ramanathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The research findings are great. No questions there. But the book drags on longer than needed. It would have had a larger impact had it been more to the point.

[Timothy Darling · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hackman is worth a re-read, and one of these days I will do it. This is one of those books that lays out a philosophy for team that is not, strictly speaking, backed with study. It is backed by Hackman's study, which looks to be impressively broad, but he does not state everything in terms of statistics and control variables. Instead, he talks about the practical, day-to-day workings of what to expect from teams and how to work at them. For example, he is the one person I've read who talks about the advantage of having teams together for a long time, rather than switching out members all the time to gain the new blood advantage. His thinking says rather that the more a team works together, the more likely they are to know each other very well and work together effectively. It makes sense, as long as you don't give into the idea that the team also becomes complacent. The way he describes it, that is one of the leader's responsibilities, keeping complacency out, by reminding the team of the task and keeping the team working toward it in creative ways.

If you work with a team, this book can be helpful. Don't expect to have all your questions answered, Hackman doesn't work that way, but do expect to have ideas. He will challenge you.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this in tandem with "The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work" by Teresa Amabile and the two books are nicely complementary. Hackman addresses the exterior supports to encourage teams to be self-managing and productive; Amabile examines the "inner work life" and how progress at work leads to motivated and energized employees. Both books were good reads with plenty of practical bullet points to put directly into practice.

[Flavius · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're a manager trying to build more effective teams, this book will provide a variety of options. It will make you ask yourself questions like:
- Is it clear who is inside the team and who is outside?
- Am I setting just the direction, or am I also controlling the means to achieve it?
- Does the team get feedback on their work?
- Is someone coaching the team?

[Tilman Moser · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hackmann offers an excellent, research backed view on good team designs, the (supportive) context and how to coach those. The various models presented in this book are very useful and a must read for every coach on the team level.

[Jay]

Bob Sutton reccomends

[Ravi]

Being a team lead comes with additional set of responsibilities. This is an excellent resource.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this as a textbook for a business class. Pretty good stuff about types of teams, formation of teams, and dynamic.

[Gerard Chiva · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fundamental book for leaders, managers, team coaches and agile coaches. Wisdom and experience fill its pages.

[Suzanne Yoder · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit repetitive but certainly makes excellent points about team work and leadership

[Captain063 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I highly recommend to know and understand the model itself. Project's teams will be in favor if their leader instill the values the model stated into their environment.