The Resonant Team Leader

It's depressing to realize how few of the teams in our lives use their human capital and opportunities well, when it comes to sustaining performance, innovating, or adapting. That's true whether we're talking about families, sports, projects, management, or research. At the root of such dismal performance is a set of seemingly contradictory tensions. For instance:

1.) Teams need a shared sense of purpose or shared vision. Without it, they narrowly focus on specific measurable goals or task completion without context or meaning.

2.) Teams typically define their focus as performance or learning, but most teams need both.

3.) Teams can focus on themselves, but they exist within overlapping layers of relationships. They need a system view of the levels within which the team functions, to avoid a preoccupation with one leader versus the multiple layers of leaders who affect their future.

4.) Teams can define themselves as the collection of their members. But to become more than the sum of their members, they need a shared identity.

Balancing these tensions requires resonant leadership. Teams need leaders, both formal and informal. They need leaders within the team to create purpose and excitement, and provide social glue, what Harvard professor Richard Hackman calls "bracketing." Resonant leaders are able to build trusting, engaged, and energizing relationships with others around them. To illustrate, let's look at the world of sports. Fans become strongly connected to a favorite team. They derive a social identity from that team — but often miss the multiple layers of leadership needed for any team to develop and sustain performance. Sustained performance requires a resonant leader within the team — the "real" team captain (not necessarily the formal one), who provides the emotional glue and fosters attachments. The coach is the person who links the team and organization. The team owner or general manager has to move between the organization and the community, managing public relations, fans, and the political community. The impact of these relationships in football was clear in the story of the New England Patriots and Cleveland Browns. They had the same head coach, Bill Belichick, during two consecutive periods. Under Belichick, the Cleveland Browns were a disappointment. Belichick then joined the Patriots and won three Super Bowls. Art Modell, the Cleveland Brown's owner, has been quoted to have said (for one, on a now-defunct website called www.allthingsbelichick.com), "[Belichick] was the most difficult man I've ever known in a PR sense... If I would have put up with some of his nonsense and other crap off the field that led to his parting company, I think he'd still be my coach." After Belichick joined the Patriots, his new team owner, Robert Kraft said, "One of the reasons I like him as a coach and human being is that he is never boastful and self-important... I think Bill's main focus after football matters are his children, and I have a great deal of respect for that."

A resonant relationship between the head coach and the owner in turn feeds relationships at the community and organization levels. Robert Kraft, for instance, enjoyed the media and worked with the press — getting the community behind the team. Modell, in contrast, ran into conflicts and eventually earned the hatred of the community when he decided to move the team to Baltimore. Many say it was a decision based, in part, on Modell's lack of connection to the community.

Now to the world of business. The drug development team leader at a major pharmaceutical company saw his role as the world-wide leader, not just within his country or therapeutic area. He built relationships with counterparts and included them in team discussions early in the process following the NCE approval. When, during one of the clinical trials, a batch of the new drug was contaminated in their U.S. plant, he called the U.K. plant, which had been "cooking" the needed bacteria in parallel. This saved 6 months in delays. He also decided, contrary to company culture and tradition, that he would build a consultative relationship with the assigned FDA officer, and saved a year and a half of arguments and refiling by anticipating the FDA's needs and desires. By the time his team's drug won NDA approval, it had saved almost 7 years from this company's typical drug development cycle, thereby extending the life of their drug under patent protection.

The VP of research at a major medical device company wanted everyone who worked at their labs around the world to see themselves as part of the company's research team. To avoid the likelihood of scientists identifying with their specific lab, country or division, he would spend one third of his time visiting labs around the world and talking to bench scientists informally — not just in formal up-dates and presentations. During one of his visits to India, he asked a junior scientist what she thought might help fix a problem with a device that was causing tissue rejection. She suggested a type of coating that no one else had considered, which resolved the problem and helped the company avoid a major product liability issue. The VP wanted to create a climate throughout the world in which every technician and scientist and engineer felt that they were part of the same team — shared an identity — and helped one another solve problems or take advantage of opportunities.

For sustained, desired change to occur in a team, something has to carry the contagion of emotion and information back and forth among the levels within which they exist. Resonant leadership and social identity groups do this.

This post is part of the HBR Insight Center on The Secrets of Great Teams.