The Hidden Reason Your Team Has Stopped Improving

About this episode

This episode explores the practices that enable teams to continuously improve and thrive, inspired by research on super teams.

This Impactful Teamwork Podcast episode, inspired by Ron Friedman’s Harvard Business Review article “How to Build a Super Team that Keeps Getting Better,” explains how top “super teams” improve over time and links the ideas to the host’s Unbridled Teamship roadmap (trust, contribution, adaptability). Drawing on research from 6,000+ knowledge workers, it highlights that super teams manage time/energy/attention well, make one another feel better, and continually build skills. The episode focuses on seven practices: run more small experiments and reward intelligent risk-taking; model curiosity and admit what you don’t know to build psychological safety; ask “what are you stuck on?” to surface blockers; stay close to the work without micromanaging; make feedback frequent and supportive; encourage growth even when it doesn’t directly benefit the leader; and lead with meaning, not just metrics, to connect work to purpose. 00:00 Teamwork Advantage 01:24 Super Team Research 02:27 Teamship Mindset 03:55 Experiment Often 06:49 Lead With Curiosity 08:58 Name The Blockers 11:13 Lead Close To Work 13:40 Feedback That Fuels 17:37 Support Growth Beyond Roles 20:50 Purpose Over Metrics 23:01…

People in this episode

Host: Julia Felton

Topics covered

• team improvement
• super teams
• psychological safety
• feedback
• growth
• experimentation

Keywords

• teamwork
• super teams
• leadership
• psychological safety
• feedback
• experimentation
• growth

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Harvard Business Review

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