Good Team, Bad Team: Lead Your People to Go After Big Challenges, Not Each Other

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.

Sarah Thurber is an accomplished author, speaker, entrepreneur, and team leader. As Managing Partner and Marketing Lead 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 in partnership with academic researchers, creativity trainers, and designers to spearhead the development of online and print-based tools that support cognitive diversity and creative thinking. She is coauthor of The Secret of the Highly Creative Thinker: How to See Connections Others Don’t as well as many popular FourSight training manuals and resources.

Blair Miller, PhD, is Cofounding Partner and Research Coordinator at FourSight and President of Blair Miller Innovation. For three decades, Miller has combined teambuilding 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 Adjunct Professor at the International Center for Studies in Creativity.