For more than 20 years, teams around the world have taken our Five Dysfunctions of a Team Assessment. One challenge keeps rising to the top: avoidance of accountability. Even the best teams struggle with it. Contrary to what many people think, accountability isn’t just the leader’s job. As leaders, we have to set the example, but even more importantly, we need to help our team members feel comfortable holding one another accountable. Peer pressure is the most effective form of accountability on a team. Build a healthy team. Discover where your team can improve with The Five Dysfunctions of a Team Assessment. fivedysfunctions.tablegroup.…

Are you naturally disruptive or responsive at work? Visit workinggenius.com/ to find out.

Fatigue around stories related to AI set in long ago for me. I find it all to be a little bit overwhelming and sometimes confusing. So, here is my simple take. It's twice as bad as people who think it's wonderful think it is. But it's only half as bad as people who think it's horrible think it is. The good news is, like most things in life, the most important part of this is how each of us decides to interact with it. Here are four declarations that shape how I judge the use of AI.

Where exactly does artificial Intelligence fit within the lexicon of business and organizational health? If you're anything like me, you might find it overwhelming to even consider the implications of this question... but I believe putting it into the right context will allow us to at least begin to understand where it belongs. Ultimately, the goal should be to utilize AI where it is most impactful, while avoiding misuse in areas where it shouldn't be relied on. If you want to know where AI fits (and doesn't fit) in business, check out my latest article, Putting AI in Its Proper Place: tablegroup.com/putting-ai-in…

Your two geniuses tell you what you love to do. Your pairing tells you how you'll go about it. There are only 15 pairings. Do you know which one is yours? Discover the pairing that describes how you work best. Find your Working Genius: workinggenius.com/

Twenty-five years ago today I finished writing my book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, mere hours after the tragedy that we now call 9/11. I thought it might be a good idea to republish the short commentary I included at the end of that book that day, which was a tribute to the teamwork that brought ordinary people to do extraordinary things to save the lives of strangers, even at the expense of their own lives. May God bless those brave men and women, and may He bless their families.

Your greatest competitive advantage at work isn't your resume, your network, or even your work ethic. It's knowing what you're built to do, and putting yourself in a position to do it. Find your Working Genius and get to know your competitive advantage: workinggenius.com/

Team #1. The team you're on comes before the team you lead. Get that order right and everything below it gets healthier. More in The Advantage: bit.ly/4xBriR0

One of the biggest mistakes managers make is one I've made many times myself. We see one of our people doing something wrong, and we don't call it out. It's uncomfortable, so we wimp out and tell others close to us instead. The pressure builds, and eventually we lose it on them, ding them in a review out of left field, or let them go. All of it feels unfair, because it is. They never knew. Letting people know when something needs to change is one of a leader's biggest responsibilities, and it gives the other person much dignity. There is no better way to handle it.

Most meetings are like a stew made with twelve ingredients that don't belong together. We throw administrative, tactical, and strategic conversations into one pot, and then wonder why nobody wants to taste it. Knowing which meetings to run, and when, might be one of the most relevant skills in management. If you want to learn how to run your meetings and avoid the meeting stew checkout Death by Meeting: bit.ly/4z2NS6b

Most teams have one meeting for everything. That's why they hate meetings. These are the different meetings you should be having: The daily check-in. The weekly tactical. The ad hoc strategic. The quarterly offsite. This is the way to be effective and avoid having a meeting stew. If you want to learn how to run these meetings. Checkout Death by Meeting: bit.ly/4z2NS6b

Meetings don't have to suck.

As AI makes everything smarter and easier, the biggest competitive advantage won't be technology. It will be culture. Organizational health is about to matter more, not less.

When people talk about trust on a team, they usually mean the wrong kind. They mean predictive trust, the kind that comes from working with someone long enough that you can guess how they'll behave. It's helpful once in a while, but it has short legs and it keeps you from ever reaching the level of trust that actually builds better teams. The real value is in vulnerability-based trust. When people can genuinely say "I need help," or "I was wrong," or "you're better at this than I am." It's what allows teams to have healthy conflict and hold each other accountable. I've come to believe it's the core beneath the most important competitive advantage in business. Want more of that on your team? Have them read The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and take our Online Team Assessment to start building real trust. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: bit.ly/4wtUnwK Online Team Assessment: bit.ly/4pguePE

Our office was vandalized recently. At our annual retreat, we separated our 51 consultants into small teams, gave them one hour and a small budget, and told them to do something creative related to organizational health. One team found a musician at a coffee shop near by and paid her to write an original song about The Table Group. One team hauled an eight-foot tree through downtown Franklin, which now lives in our office permanently. And finally, one team slipped into our office while we were at lunch, painted one wall of our podcast studio Five Dysfunctions red, and covered the rest with diagrams of the models from our books. The circle represents the 4 Disciplines that every organization should embrace (The Advantage). The triangle represents The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. The venn diagram represents The Ideal Team Player model. Check out the podcast link below if you're interested in the full story. The Advantage: bit.ly/3J8atVT The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: bit.ly/4faA41q The Ideal Team Player:bit.ly/3QF8NKH 🎙️ At The Table | Ep 271: Time, Risk, and Innovation bit.ly/440jon0

After 40 years of work and countless interviews, here are some of the best tips I've found to figure out if someone is really the right person to hire.

Vulnerability at work gets a bad rap. It doesn't mean oversharing. It means being honest about what you're good at, what you're not, and where you need help. One of the most useful ways I've seen teams get there is The Six Types of Working Genius, For the first time, it gives people a shared language for something most teams never talk about: the work that energizes you, and the work that drains you. Once a team can say that out loud to each other, everything else gets so much easier.

Most leaders are chasing the wrong thing. They want a smarter organization. But I've watched brilliant companies fail because the culture wasn't healthy, and I've watched ordinary ones win because it was. Healthy organizations have the foundation to get smarter over time, seize great opportunities, and overcome big, unavoidable challenges, while merely “smart” ones often rise quickly, then fall just as fast or hit diminishing returns long before their product or service does. So the question isn't, “How do we get smarter?” It's, “How do we get healthier — so we can finally get smarter and truly grow?” If you want to go deeper on this topic, read The Advantage and start building a truly healthy organization.

A lot of people ask me which of my books they should start with. The best answer is: it really depends on who you are and what you're trying to work on. If you're a leader, start with The Motive. It checks you on why you want to be a leader in the first place. After that, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team to build a healthy team, and The Advantage to build a healthy organization. If you're on a team, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team is foundational. However, the Six Types of Working Genius might even be a better place to start, because it helps you understand yourself and others. If you work in customer service, consulting, or really any business where you have clients, go read Getting Naked. Read any of these? Share what stuck with you below so others can learn from it too.

I’ve bought a lot of business books I never finished. That’s why every one of mine uses a fable to convey the ideas. I believe that for a leader, a finished, interesting book beats a comprehensive one every time.