by Daniel Coyle
5 · How to Design for Belonging
For more on Thomas Allen’s work, see Managing the Flow of Technology: Technology Transfer and the Dissemination of Technological Information Within the R&D Organization (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984).
Hsieh’s urge to MacGyver is still strong. Around the time I visited, he began implementing a radical new management approach called holacracy, which seeks to replace traditional managers with self-organizing “circles” in which people determine their own tasks and roles. To say that holacracy wasn’t an immediate success would be to put it mildly. It caused a wave of employee departures, and in 2016 the company failed to make Fortune magazine’s Top 100 Best Places to Work list for the first time in seven years. Hsieh has since moved to an even more abstract management system called Teal. Whether the organization and the culture can continue to thrive remains to be seen.
6 · Ideas for Action
For more on the power of gratitude, see L. Williams and M. Bartlett, “Warm Thanks: Gratitude Expression Facilitates Social Affiliation in New Relationships via Perceived Warmth,” Emotion 15 (2014); and A. Grant and F. Gino, “A Little Thanks Goes a Long Way: Explaining Why Gratitude Expressions Motivate Prosocial Behavior,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 98 (2010), 946–55. For more on the shortcomings of sandwich feedback, see C. Von Bergen, M. Bressler, and K. Campbell, “The Sandwich Feedback Method: Not Very Tasty,” Journal of Behavioral Studies in Business 7 (2014).
Emails are rich repositories of belonging cues; here are two studies that show how they reveal the internal fabric of groups: L. Wu, “Social Network Effects on Productivity and Job Security: Evidence from the Adoption of a Social Networking Tool,” Information Systems Research 24 (2013), 30–51; and S. Srivastava, A. Goldberg, V. Manian, and C. Potts, “Enculturation Trajectories: Language, Cultural Adaptation, and Individual Outcomes in Organizations,” Management Science, forthcoming.
7 · “Tell Me What You Want, and I’ll Help You”
Flight 232’s cockpit voice recording can be found at aviation-safety.net/investigation/cvr/transcripts/cvr_ua232.pdf. Captain Al Haynes provided a detailed account of the crash in a May 24, 1991, speech to the NASA Ames Research Center at the Dryden Flight Research Facility in Edwards, CA, the transcript of which can be found at clear-prop.org/aviation/haynes.html. In addition, see Flight 232 by Laurence Gonzales (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2014) and Confronting Mistakes by Jan U. Hagen (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
Another element of Flight 232’s story involves a set of training procedures called Crew Resource Management, which had been established by the National Transportation Safety Board in the late 1970s after several crashes caused by pilot error. The training sought to replace the top-down “pilot is always right” culture with frank, fast communication, teaching captain and crew a series of simple behaviors and habits designed to reveal and solve problems together. Prior to Flight 232’s crash, Captain Haynes had undergone several weeks of CRM training; he credited the program for saving his life and that of the other survivors.
8 · The Vulnerability Loop
For more on the science of generating individual and group closeness, see A. Aron, E. Melinat, E. Aron, and R. Bator, “The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness: A Procedure and Some Preliminary Findings,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 23 (1997), 363–77; W. Swann, L. Milton, and J. Polzer, “Should We Create a Niche or Fall in Line? Identity Negotiation and Small Group Effectiveness,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 79, (2000), 238–50; and J. Chatman, J. Polzer, S. Barsade, and M. Neale, “Being Different Yet Feeling Similar: The Influence of Demographic Composition and Organizational Culture on Work Processes and Outcomes,” Administrative Science Quarterly 43 (1998), 749–80.
For more on the the machinery of trust, see D. DeSteno, M. Bartlett, J. Baumann, L. Williams, and L. Dickens, “Gratitude as a Moral Sentiment: Emotion-Guided Cooperation in Economic Exchange,” Emotion 10 (2010), 289–93; and B. von Dawans, U. Fischbacher, C. Kirschbaum, E. Fehr, and M. Heinrichs, “The Social Dimension of Stress Reactivity: Acute Stress Increases Prosocial Behavior in Humans,” Psychological Science 23 (2012), 651–60. For a deeper exploration, see David DeSteno’s The Truth About Trust (New York: Hudson Street, 2014).
For more on the Red Balloon Challenge, see J. Tang, M. Cebrian, N. Giacobe, H. Kim, T. Kim, and D. Wickert, “Reflecting on the DARPA Red Balloon Challenge,” Communications of the ACM 54 (2011), 78–85; and G. Pickard, I. Rahwan, W. Pan, M. Cebrian, R. Crane, A. Madan, and A. Pentland, “Time-Critical Social Mobilization,” Science 334 (2011), 509–12.
9 · The Super-Cooperators
For more on the origins of the Navy SEALs, see America’s First Frogman by Elizabeth Kauffman (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2004). For more on the Upright Citizens Brigade, see High-Status Characters by Brian Raftery (New York: Megawatt Press, 2013); The Upright Citizens Brigade Comedy Improvisational Manual by Matt Besser, Ian Roberts, and Matt Walsh (New York: The Comedy Council of Nicea LLC, 2013); Yes, And by Kelly Leonard and Tom Yorton (New York: HarperBusiness, 2015); and The Funniest One in the Room: The Lives and Legends of Del Close by Kim Howard Johnson (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2008).
11 · How to Create Cooperation with Individuals
For more on Bell Labs, see David Gertner’s The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation (New York: Penguin Press, 2012). For more on IDEO, see The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley (New York: Currency Doubleday, 2001) and Change by Design by Tom Brown (New York: HarperBusiness, 2009).
For studies on concordance, see C. Marci, J. Ham, E. Moran, and S. Orr, “Physiologic Correlates of Perceived Therapist Empathy and Social-Emotional Process During Psychotherapy,”Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 195 (2007),103–11; and C. Marci and S. Orr, “The Effect of Emotional Distance on Psychophysiologic Concordance and Perceived Empathy Between Patient and Interviewer,” Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback 31 (2006), 115–28.
13 · Three Hundred and Eleven Words
For the starlings’ system of navigation, see M. Ballerini, N. Cabibbo, R. Candelier, A. Cavagna, E. Cisbani, I. Giardina, V. Lecomte, A. Orlandi, G. Parisi, A. Procaccini, M. Viale, and V. Zdravkovic, “Interaction Ruling Animal Collective Behavior Depends on Topological Rather than Metric Distance: Evidence from a Field Study,” PNAS 105 (2008), 1232–37.
Gabriele Oettingen’s work on mental contrasting can be found in Rethinking Positive Thinking (New York: Current, 2014), as well as G. Oettingen, D. Mayer, A. Sevincer, E. Stephens, H. Pak, and M. Hagenah, “Mental Contrasting and Goal Commitment: The Mediating Role of Energization,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 35 (2009), 608–22.
For more on the Pygmalion Effect, see R. Rosenthal and L. Jacobson, “Teachers’ Expectancies: Determinates of Pupils’ IQ Gains,” Psychological Reports 19 (1966), 115–18. For more on how narratives affect motivation, see A. Grant, E. Campbell, G. Chen, K. Cottone, D. Lapedis, and K. Lee, “Impact and the Art of Motivation Maintenance: The Effects of Contact with Beneficiaries on Persistence Behavior,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 103 (2007), 53–67.
14 · The Hooligans and the Surgeons
See C. Stott, O. Adang, A. Livingstone, and M. Schreiber, “Tackling Football Hooliganism: A Quantitative Study of Public Order, Policing and Crowd Psychology,” Psychology Public Policy and Law 53 (2008), 115–41; C. Stott and S. Reicher, “How Conflict Escalates: The Inter-Group Dynamics of Collective Football Crowd ‘Violence,’ ” Sociology 32, (1998), 353–77; A. Edmondson, R. Bohmer, and G. Pisano, “Speeding Up Team Learning,” Harvard Business Review 79, no. 9 (2001), 125–32; and A. Edmondson, R. Bohmer, and G. Pisano, “Disrupted Routines: Team Learning and New Technology Implementation in Hospitals,” Administrative Science Quarterly 46 (2001), 685–716.
15 · How to Lead for Proficiency
16 · How to Lead for Creativity
See Creativity Inc. by Ed Catmull with Amy Wallace (New York: Random House, 2014).
Recommended Reading
Laszlo Bock, Work Rules (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2015)
David Brooks, The Social Animal (New York: Random House, 2011)
Arie de Geus, The Living Company (Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 2002)
Angela Duckworth, Grit: The Power of Perseverance and Passion (New York: Scribner, 2016)
Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business (New York: Random House, 2012)
Amy Edmondson, Teaming: How Organizations Learn, Innovate, and Compete in the Knowledge Economy (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Pfeiffer, 2012)
Adam Grant, Give and Take (New York: Viking, 2013)
Richard Hackman, Leading Teams (Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 2002)
Chip and Dan Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard (New York: Broadway Books, 2010)
Sebastian Junger, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging (New York: HarperCollins, 2016)
James Kerr, Legacy (London: Constable & Robinson, 2013)
Patrick Lencioni, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002)
Stanley McChrystal, Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World (New York: Portfolio, 2015).
Mark Pagel, Wired for Culture (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012)
Daniel Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (New York: Riverhead Books, 2009)
Amanda Ripley, The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013)
Edgar H. Schein, Helping (Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2009)
Edgar H. Schein, Humble Inquiry (Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2013)
Peter M. Senge, The Fifth Discipline (New York: Doubleday Business, 1990)
Michael Tomasello, Why We Cooperate (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009)
By Daniel Coyle
Hardball
Waking Samuel
Lance Armstrong’s War
The Talent Code
The Secret Race (with Tyler Hamilton)
The Little Book of Talent
The Culture Code
About the Author
DANIEL COYLE is the New York Times bestselling author of The Talent Code, The Little Book of Talent, The Secret Race (with Tyler Hamilton), and other books. Winner (with Hamilton) of the 2012 William Hill Sports Book of the Year Prize, he is a contributing editor for Outside magazine, and also works as a special advisor to the Cleveland Indians. Coyle lives in Cleveland, Ohio, during the school year and in Homer, Alaska, during the summer with his wife, Jen, and their four children.
danielcoyle.com
Twitter: @danielcoyle
What’s next on
your reading list?
Discover your next
great read!
Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.
Sign up now.