Author Archives: David Burkus

About David Burkus

Dr. David Burkus is an organizational psychologist and best-selling author. Recognized as one of the world’s leading business thinkers, his forward-thinking ideas and books are helping leaders and teams do their best work ever. David is the author of five books about business and leadership and he's been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, CNN, the BBC, NPR, and more. A former business school professor turned sought-after international speaker, he’s worked with organizations of all sizes and across all industries.

The 8 Best Teamwork Books That Actually Improve Collaboration

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The 8 Best Teamwork Books That Actually Improve Collaboration

GUEST POST from David Burkus

Most leaders know teamwork matters. But few take the time to study what actually makes teams work.

We rely on instinct, gut feel, or experience from past teams—good or bad—and assume it’ll all work out. But in today’s complex, collaborative, cross-functional world, those assumptions often lead us astray.

If you want to lead high-performing teams consistently, you need better inputs. And for me, some of the best inputs have come from books—not just books about leadership, but books specifically about teamwork. The kind that change how you think about team culture, team dynamics, and the actual work of working together.

These aren’t just good reads. They’re the best teamwork books I’ve found, presented in no particular order because this isn’t a ranking… it’s a resource.

📚 Best Teamwork Books

1. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni

Probably the first one you thought of too. This is a business fable that somehow nails real team dysfunctions with precision. Lencioni’s model—from lack of trust to inattention to results—offers a practical, memorable way to diagnose and address breakdowns. I’ve referenced this book with dozens of leaders because it gets past the surface and straight to the relational heart of team performance.

2. The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle

Coyle makes the case that talent alone doesn’t create great teams—culture does. He distills team culture into three key behaviors: build safety, share vulnerability, and establish purpose. What stood out to me is how much of team excellence is invisible, built in the small moments. It’s a great reminder that culture is less about slogans and more about habits.

3. Dream Teams by Shane Snow

This one turns a lot of conventional wisdom upside down. Shane Snow argues that the best teams aren’t the most harmonious—they’re the ones that learn how to disagree productively. With examples from science, sports, and even organized crime, he shows that friction (when handled well) makes teams smarter. A great read for leaders dealing with complexity and cognitive diversity.

4. Team of Teams by Stanley McChrystal

McChrystal’s story of transforming Joint Special Operations Command is a masterclass in breaking down silos. His team couldn’t win modern battles using traditional hierarchy. So they built a “team of teams” built on shared consciousness and empowered execution. It’s a great reminder that agility isn’t just for startups—it’s a requirement in any complex environment.

5. Collaboration by Morten Hansen

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: not all collaboration is good. Hansen shows that ineffective collaboration can actually make performance worse. His concept of disciplined collaboration—knowing when and how to collaborate—helped me see the difference between helpful alignment and wasted effort. Especially valuable for leaders in large or matrixed organizations.

6. Tribal Leadership by Dave Logan, John King & Halee Fischer-Wright

This book maps out five stages of team culture, from toxic to world-changing. What makes it stand out is the focus on language—how the words people use reveal the tribe they belong to and the performance they can unlock. It gave me a new lens for diagnosing team dynamics and helping leaders upgrade their team’s shared narrative.

7. Teaming by Amy Edmondson

Unlike most books that treat teams as fixed entities, Teaming focuses on teamwork as a dynamic, ever-evolving process. Edmondson shows how people must learn to collaborate quickly across boundaries, roles, and expertise areas—especially in fast-moving environments. It reframed for me how learning and collaboration go hand in hand, especially when teams are temporary or fluid.

8. Best Team Ever by David Burkus

Yes, it’s mine. But if you noticed, a lot of these other books are pretty old. They’ve stood the test of time, but research is always evolving. And so I wanted to understand what consistently sets high-performing teams apart—based on the latest evidence. What I found were three repeatable habits: common understanding, psychological safety, and prosocial purpose. Best Team Ever is a blueprint for building teams where people do their best work—and genuinely want to.

Final Thoughts

You don’t have to read every book on teams to lead a great one. But you do need to rethink how you approach teamwork—what you reward, what you reinforce, and how you respond when things go sideways. These are the best teamwork books that helped me do that. They changed how I build, lead, and coach teams—and they might do the same for you.

Because great teams aren’t just born.

They’re built — habit by habit, choice by choice, leader by leader.

Image credit: David Burkus

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Leading to the Future of Work

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GUEST POST from David Burkus

If you led a team through 2025, you probably felt like you were trapped in a never-ending game of workplace buzzword bingo. Coffee badging. Quiet quitting. Quiet firing. Corporate catfishing. Every week came with a new term, a new “trend,” and a new reason to wonder whether you were falling behind in the future of work—or just drowning in noise.

That’s the challenge for leaders right now: not “keeping up,” but getting clear on what actually changed. Because some of what we saw in 2025 wasn’t a fad. It was a preview. And 2026 won’t be a clean break from the past; it’ll be the year those shifts harden into the new defaults.

Here’s what I mean. In hindsight, 2025 wasn’t a year of brand-new problems. It was a year when familiar tensions finally became impossible to ignore: autonomy versus control, speed versus security, loyalty versus flexibility, experience versus reinvention. The labels made it feel new. The underlying issues weren’t.

And the way most organizations responded? Predictable. Also, mostly wrong.

When leaders face uncertainty, they usually reach for what worked before. They tighten policies. They standardize schedules. They add approvals. They try to “fix” culture with perks. It’s a natural reflex—especially when performance pressure is high. But it assumes the problem is that people need more rules, more oversight, or more incentives.

In reality, the lesson of 2025 is simpler: the rules of work didn’t just bend. They rewired. And if you keep trying to manage 2026 with a 2016 playbook, your team won’t just feel frustrated—they’ll quietly build workarounds. That’s where the real risk lives.

The Future of Work Is Structured Flexibility, Not a Return to the Old Office

Take the return-to-office story. Early 2025 looked like a full-scale push back to “normal,” with big-name companies raising the stakes and making attendance a mandate instead of a suggestion. Plenty of leaders braced for a rebellion.

But the more interesting story was what happened after the headlines: most people returned. Not necessarily happily. Not necessarily five days a week. But they showed up — often because they felt they didn’t have a better option.

And then something else happened. Leaders started realizing that office time isn’t a strategy. It’s a setting. You don’t get collaboration just because you share a zip code.

In the data, the pattern has been consistent: the best outcomes show up when people have flexibility—and when that flexibility is designed with intention. Hybrid can work. Remote can work. In-office can work. What doesn’t work is forcing one model without explaining the purpose or giving people any control.

That’s why I don’t think 2026 will be the year “RTO wins” or “remote wins.” I think 2026 will be the year structured flexibility becomes the default. You’ll see more anchor days, where teams coordinate time together for the work that benefits from face-to-face interaction. You’ll see more meeting-free focus time. You’ll see more experiments that look like “summer Fridays,” only year-round.

The real debate was never about office chairs. It was always about autonomy.

And autonomy doesn’t mean chaos. It means leaders stop managing presence and start managing performance.

AI Didn’t Replace Your Team. It Joined It.

The second shift is happening just as fast, but with more confusion: AI stopped being a novelty and started becoming a coworker.

In 2025, a lot of organizations rolled out enterprise AI tools — often with the best of intentions. But leaders ran straight into a new kind of friction: security guardrails that made the tools less useful than the consumer versions people were already using.

So employees did what humans always do when systems slow them down: they routed around them. They used personal accounts. They used personal devices. They found ways to keep moving.

From a productivity standpoint, that makes sense. From a risk standpoint, it’s terrifying.

And it creates a trust problem on both sides. Leaders worry about data leakage and compliance. Employees feel like the company is handing them a power tool…then wrapping it in bubble wrap and asking why the job isn’t done faster.

Here’s what 2026 is likely to bring: less debate about whether AI belongs at work, and more expectation that everyone knows how to use it responsibly. Senior leaders will lean on it for strategic thinking and competitive analysis. Frontline employees will use it to automate the “gray work” that clogs calendars—summaries, drafts, templates, first passes—so they can spend more time doing what humans still do best: judgment, creativity, and problem-solving.

The winners won’t be the companies with the fanciest AI license. They’ll be the ones that treat AI like a teammate who needs onboarding, training, and clear norms.

Your Team Is Becoming a Network

Meanwhile, another major shift has been quietly becoming permanent: freelancing is no longer a side hustle. It’s becoming infrastructure.

Layoffs, hiring freezes, and reorganizations pushed a lot of talented people out of traditional roles. At the same time, organizations started pulling contractors in—not just for gig work, but for high-skill roles: finance, HR, operations, even fractional executives.

This blurs the line between “employee” and “teammate.” And in 2026, that line will blur even more.

That creates a leadership challenge most managers weren’t trained for. Traditional management assumes stable teams: the same people, the same roles, the same reporting lines. But the emerging reality looks more like a project-based network, where talent plugs in, contributes, and moves on—sometimes to your competitor, sometimes back to you, sometimes to three other clients at the same time.

If you keep treating contractors like “temporary labor,” you’ll get temporary commitment. But if you start treating them like part of the mission, you’ll get better work, better collaboration, and—over time—a stronger talent ecosystem around your team.

In the future of work, leadership is less about supervising a roster and more about stewarding a network.

Generational Change Isn’t a Culture War. It’s a Coordination Problem.

Finally, 2025 made one more shift impossible to ignore: the workforce mix is changing fast.

Millennials have moved into the largest share of management roles, Gen Z is stepping into leadership earlier than many expected, and boomers are retiring—but unevenly, and often later than planned. That means many teams now include people in radically different life stages, with different expectations about careers, technology, and what work is “for.”

A lot of leaders respond to this by stereotyping. “Gen Z doesn’t want to work.” “Millennials are entitled.” “Boomers won’t let go.” That framing is easy…and lazy.

The better framing is this: cross-generational teams aren’t doomed. They’re just harder to coordinate. And coordination improves with curiosity.

If you want the brilliance without the conflict, you can’t lead by assumption. You have to lead by inquiry.

What to Do Next: 5 Moves to Lead the Future of Work

The point of all these trends isn’t to predict the next buzzword. It’s to build a team that can adapt when the next shift arrives — because it will.

Start here.

First, design autonomy on purpose. Don’t “allow flexibility” as a perk; build it as a system. Get clear on which work truly benefits from synchronous time together — onboarding, creative collisions, complex problem-solving—and which work benefits from uninterrupted focus. Then build schedules around those moments. When people understand the “why,” they’ll stop treating policies like arbitrary rules and start treating them like shared commitments.

Second, upgrade accountability from monitoring to check-ins. If your instinct is to measure hours, logins, or keystrokes, you’re solving the wrong problem. Accountability works best when it’s social and meaningful: clear goals, frequent progress conversations, and regular moments where people can ask for help before they’re stuck. When teammates feel counted on—not watched—they show up differently.

Third, onboard AI like you would a new hire. Make training normal, not optional and not reserved for “the tech people.” Give your team safe ways to experiment. Define guardrails in plain language: what data can be used, what outputs must be verified, what decisions require human judgment. And partner with IT and compliance to make policies usable in real work, not just defensible in audits.

Fourth, lead your contractors like they belong. Invite them into the rhythms that create cohesion: the kickoff, the retro, the celebration, the shared language of “what good looks like.” Show them how their work connects to outcomes, not just tasks. You don’t have to pretend they’re full-time. But you do need them to feel like insiders while they’re with you—or you’ll pay the tax later in misalignment and rework.

Fifth, build reverse mentoring into the culture. Don’t wait for it to happen organically. Create opportunities where Gen Z can teach tools and trends, while more experienced employees share context, judgment, and the “why” behind how the organization works. The goal isn’t to make everyone the same. The goal is to help people value what the others bring.

If 2025 taught us anything, it’s that change isn’t a season anymore. It’s the operating environment. High-performing teams aren’t the ones that finally “figure it out.” They’re the ones that keep learning faster than the world keeps shifting.

That’s what the future of work will reward in 2026: leaders who can replace control with clarity, replace policies with purpose, and replace rigid teams with resilient networks.

Image credit: Pixabay

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How to Lead Cross-Functional Teams Without Cracking

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How to Lead Cross-Functional Teams Without Cracking

GUEST POST from David Burkus

You’ve just been asked to lead a new team. But here’s the catch: it’s not really your team. It’s a group pulled together from different departments – sales, marketing, product, maybe even someone from legal whose job seems to be vetoing everything. These aren’t people you hired. They don’t report to you. And they probably don’t report to each other either.

You’ve been handed what might be called a “project committee” or “task force,” but what you really have is a cross-functional team. And while cross-functional teams should be engines of innovation, agility, and organizational alignment, the truth is most of them don’t work very well.

But they can, if you lead them the right way.

The Promise and Problem of Cross-Functional Teams

In theory, cross-functional teams are supposed to break down silos, accelerate execution, and bring diverse perspectives to complex problems. And sometimes they do.

But more often than not, they stall out. One study found that 75% of cross-functional teams are actually dysfunctional—they miss deadlines, blow budgets, or fail to stay aligned with organizational priorities. And it’s not because the individuals aren’t talented. It’s because collaboration across departments requires a different kind of leadership. One that starts with structure, not just speed.

Too many team leaders, especially those new to cross-functional work, start with the work itself. They jump straight into assigning tasks, setting up meetings, and building timelines. That seems logical, it’s a project after all.

But if you don’t pause to clarify goals, define roles, and build new communication norms, your team will default back to the ways of working they know best—the ways of working from their own silos. And that means your team will function more like a loosely affiliated group than a truly collaborative unit.

Why Most Approaches Fail

Cross-functional dysfunction isn’t about poor communication, it’s about misaligned expectations. Everyone brings different priorities, pressures, and mental models into the room. The marketer thinks about brand. The engineer thinks about feasibility. The legal team thinks about risk. And no one is wrong.

But if you don’t create a shared understanding early, those different viewpoints don’t complement each other—they compete. Left unchecked, people stick to their departmental defaults, and the very diversity that was supposed to spark innovation becomes a source of friction.

How Cross-Functional Teams Win

To lead a cross-functional team effectively, you don’t just manage the project, you design the team.

Here’s how.

1. Clarify Goals and Roles

Before anyone touches a task list, you need to get the team aligned on two foundational questions: What are we trying to achieve? Who is doing what to get us there?

That may sound obvious. But in cross-functional teams, ambiguity reigns. Everyone assumes someone else is handling a task. Or worse, two people assume they’re both in charge.

Start by mapping out the scope of the project together. Identify major deliverables. Then ask the group: “Who here feels best equipped to own this?” Let people step forward. If there’s debate, facilitate it. If someone volunteers for a stretch assignment, support them, perhaps by pairing them with a more experienced teammate.

This approach does more than assign work. It sends a message: this is a team, not a collection of departments. And you’re here not just to execute—but to develop.

2. Set Communication Norms

Every department has its own way of working. Some teams live in Slack. Others still rely on email. Some expect immediate responses. Others have a “48-hour rule.” If you don’t align early, miscommunication is inevitable.

At your kickoff meeting, have the team co-create its communication norms. Ask questions like:

How will we keep each other updated on progress?
What tools should we use, and for what?
How do we request help?
How often should we meet?
How will we make decisions?
How will we give and receive feedback?

Document the answers. Make them visible and accessible. Then refer back to them, especially when things get bumpy.

These shared norms help your team navigate differences in communication style and prevent misunderstandings from becoming major roadblocks.

3. Build Empathy Through Common Understanding

Communication norms help people speak to each other. Empathy helps them listen with each other.

People on a cross-functional team aren’t just bringing different skills—they’re bringing different definitions of success. One team member might be evaluated on speed, another on accuracy, another on cost control. If you don’t understand the pressures your teammates are under, you’ll misunderstand their decisions—and maybe their intentions.

One powerful exercise: ask each team member to explain how their performance is measured back in their “home” department. What does success look like? What’s their boss expecting from them? What’s at stake?

You can even create simple “user manuals” for each team member that explain how they like to work, how they make decisions, and what stresses them out.

The more your team understands each other, the easier it becomes to collaborate, and to resolve conflicts when they arise.

4. Foster Psychological Safety

Here’s something most people miss: a lack of disagreement on a cross-functional team isn’t a sign of alignment. It’s a sign of silence.

In the early days of a new team, people tend to be polite. They nod along. They bite their tongues. They say things like, “That’s interesting,” when they really mean, “That will never work.”

But innovation doesn’t happen through politeness. It happens through candor. And candor requires psychological safety—the belief that you can speak up without fear of rejection or ridicule.

To build that safety, model vulnerability as a leader. Say things like, “What am I missing?” or “This is a rough idea—feel free to poke holes.” When people challenge you, thank them. When disagreements emerge, guide the group to evaluate ideas based on assumptions, not egos. Ask, “What assumptions are we each making?” rather than “Who’s right?”

Psychological safety isn’t about eliminating conflict. It’s about making conflict productive.

5. Celebrate Small Wins

Cross-functional projects often span months or even years. And when the deadline feels distant, motivation can wane, especially when team members are juggling other priorities.

That’s why milestones matter. Break the project into phases. Define what success looks like for each one. Then, when your team hits a milestone, celebrate it. A shout-out in a meeting. A thank-you email. A Slack emoji reaction.

Research shows that even small wins, when recognized, can boost morale and performance. Just make sure your recognition is authentic and specific. People know when you’re faking it.

Final Thought: It’s Never Too Late to Reset

Maybe you’re reading this and thinking, “Great… but I’m already halfway through leading a cross-functional team that’s barely functioning.”

Good news: it’s never too late to pause and reset. Call a meeting. Clarify goals. Align on roles. Set communication norms. Celebrate any progress you’ve made. Then start fresh from there.

Cross-functional teams can be challenging. But when they’re led well, they become more than the sum of their parts. They become engines of innovation and drivers of real change across your organization.

And you? You become the kind of leader who makes collaboration work, even when no one reports to you.

Image credit: Unsplash

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Managing Your Work Friends

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Managing Your Work Friends

GUEST POST from David Burkus

You just got promoted. Congratulations! But now you’re managing your friends. The people you used to grab lunch with, the ones you vented to about the boss, and the folks who knew every inside joke from your team Slack channel — they’re your team. And you’re their boss.

Work friendships are powerful. They boost morale, improve collaboration, and make the workday more enjoyable. I don’t have to convince you that having friends at work is valuable. But when the power dynamic shifts, when you go from being “work friend” to “work boss,” things inevitably change. Suddenly your decisions carry weight — promotions, raises, performance reviews, and tough calls that impact livelihoods. At the same time, your team knows a lot about you. Maybe they’ve seen your Instagram stories or been with you at happy hours. That blurred line between friendship and authority can get messy fast.

And this is the dilemma of managing your friends: how do you maintain meaningful relationships without undermining your credibility as a leader? How do you stay approachable and authentic while also being consistent and fair?

The answer isn’t easy, but it is possible. It starts with understanding what doesn’t work, and then rebuilding those friendships into a new kind of relationship.

Why Most New Managers Struggle

Most new managers stumble into one of two extremes when they start managing their friends. They either pretend nothing has changed, or they change everything.

Some ignore the shift. They keep gossiping, keep oversharing, keep hanging out exactly the same way — hoping the friendship will buffer any awkwardness. But it doesn’t. That kind of behavior undermines authority when it’s time to make a hard call. A joke about a teammate suddenly looks like favoritism. A venting session about a senior leader sounds like open dissent. And the manager’s credibility takes the hit.

Others overcorrect. They pull back completely. They stop socializing. They stop texting. They stop grabbing coffee or lunch. They put up walls and operate only in “professional mode.” That comes across as cold — because it is. And the sudden distance damages trust and morale.

Both extremes backfire. Pretending nothing has changed creates resentment and perceptions of favoritism. Overcorrecting destroys connection and trust. Neither approach works long term. What new managers really need is a third path: redefining the friendship for the new reality.

Why The Old Dynamic Doesn’t Work Anymore

It helps to remember why friendships at work felt easy before. They were built on equality. You were in the trenches together — venting about the same boss, rolling your eyes in the same meetings, maybe even sneaking out early together on a Friday. But the key word there is were. You were equals. Now you’re not.

Power dynamics are like gravity. You don’t always see them, but they’re always pulling. Once you’re in charge, every interaction gets filtered through that shift. You may think you’re just being candid with an old friend, but now it sounds like the boss has picked a side. You may think you’re just cutting them some slack, but others see favoritism. And once your team suspects favoritism, everything else you do gets questioned — your motives, your decisions, even your integrity.

That’s why the old friendship dynamic doesn’t work anymore. It’s not because the friendship isn’t real — it’s because the context has changed. So if you want to keep both your friendships and your credibility, you’ll need to redefine the relationship.

Five Tips For Managing Your Friends

1. Address the Shift Directly

Pretending nothing has changed is like pretending you didn’t just get promoted. Everyone knows. They feel it already. And if you don’t address it, the tension just lingers like an awkward silence no one names.

The fix is surprisingly simple: talk about it. You don’t need to make a big speech or hold a formal meeting. Just have an honest one-on-one conversation with each friend. Something as short as:

“Hey, I know this feels a little different now that I’m in this role. I really value our friendship, and I want to make sure I’m being fair and consistent with the whole team. What boundaries make sense for us?”

That’s it. Short, honest, specific. And it shows you care enough to be proactive. Trust me, your friend is already wondering how things are going to change. By being the first to bring it up, you take away the uncertainty and replace it with clarity.

2. Embrace Your New Role

You can still be friendly, but you can’t be “one of the gang” anymore. Accepting that reality is part of stepping into leadership.

This is where many new managers trip up. They cling to the old dynamic. They keep venting frustrations, gossiping, and oversharing with their closest colleagues. But once you’re the boss, those conversations hit differently. A joke about a coworker is no longer harmless — it’s favoritism. Complaining about company policy isn’t just blowing off steam — it’s sowing dissent.

And those side conversations? They never stay side conversations. They spread. They change perceptions. They chip away at your authority.

That doesn’t mean you need to become robotic. You can still laugh with your team. You can still celebrate wins. You can still be approachable. But you’re “leader first, friend second” now. And when you need to vent, find a new outlet—a mentor, another manager, or someone outside the company. Your team isn’t your sounding board anymore.

3. Stay Consistent to Avoid Favoritism

Fairness isn’t just a leadership principle—it’s a credibility shield. The quickest way to lose trust is to treat your friends differently than the rest of the team.

That doesn’t mean you’ll intend to play favorites. It’s usually subtle. Giving your old buddy more slack on a deadline. Asking them for input first in meetings. Grabbing lunch with them a little more often than with others. None of those things seem like a big deal, but your team notices. They always notice. And once they suspect favoritism, the dynamic of the whole team changes.

So be deliberate about how you lead. Rotate lunch invites. Keep feedback tied to measurable goals so everyone sees the standard is the same. Spread recognition evenly and shine the spotlight on the whole team, not just the familiar faces. Consistency protects your credibility and reinforces trust across the group.

4. Reevaluate Social Media Boundaries

Before you were the boss, your social media interactions were harmless — liking memes, posting weekend selfies, swapping DMs. But now? Those same interactions can be seen as bias or favoritism, and worse, they come with receipts.

A casual photo at a backyard barbecue? Favoritism. Liking a slightly edgy meme your friend shared? Bias. Responding privately to a rant about another teammate? Favoritism again — this time with screenshots. You don’t have to ghost your entire digital life, but you do need to tighten boundaries. Adjust privacy settings. Consider unfollowing or at least limiting interactions. Keep work and social media in separate lanes. And follow this rule of thumb: if you wouldn’t put it in a company email, don’t put it in a DM.

5. Focus on Connection Through the Work

One of the best parts about working with friends is the sense of connection. The risk, when you become their boss, is thinking you need to pull away completely to preserve fairness. But you don’t. You just need to redirect that connection into the work itself.

Research on prosocial motivation—our drive to protect and promote the well-being of others—shows that teams thrive when they’re bonded around shared purpose. That’s your new role: to cultivate connection not through gossip or side chats, but through collaboration, recognition, and shared wins.

Keep the relationships, but root them in the team’s mission. That way you’re not just holding on to friendships—you’re strengthening the team.

The Bottom Line

Managing your friends after a promotion is one of the trickiest leadership challenges you’ll face. If you pretend nothing’s changed, you’ll lose credibility. If you overcorrect, you’ll lose connection. The path forward is acknowledging the shift, embracing your new role, staying consistent, setting boundaries, and channeling friendship into shared purpose.

You don’t have to lose your friends when you become their boss. But you do have to lead them differently. And if you do it well, you won’t just keep your friendships — you’ll earn their respect.

Image credit: Gemini

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How to Keep Learning as a Leader

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How to Keep Learning as a Leader

GUEST POST from David Burkus

Leaders are learners.

That’s not really disputed. You have to be a pretty strong learner to even get into a leadership role. And most people agree that you have to be continuously learning as a leader as well.

The problem is that what is common knowledge is not always common practice. As the demands of the leadership role pile up, and the freely available time on the calendar shrink, it can become easy to cut learning from the schedule.

But what leaders who consistently excel know is that continuously learning has to be a priority. They know that resting on their past knowledge and foolishly believing they’ve learned enough is inviting disaster. Because as the world changes, leaders who rest on how much they know will find they know an awful lot about a world that doesn’t exist anymore.

Learning doesn’t have to dominate a leader’s calendar, but it cannot be removed from it. And a few simple habits, practiced regularly, can dramatically increase how much learning leaders can find time for.

So, in this article, we’ll outline four ways you can keep learning as a leader.

Linger On Failure

The first way to keep learning as a leader is to linger on failure. Failure is feedback. It’s uncomfortable feedback, but it’s the most potent form of feedback when it comes to learning. In addition, failure is inevitable. Projects will fall apart or go over budget. Clients will move to competitors. People will quit. But how you respond matters. You can shift blame and try to convince others it wasn’t your failure. Or you can linger on the failure long enough to analyze what happened and improve as a result.

Perhaps one of the best examples of modern-day learning from failure is Navy Seal turned leadership consultant, Jocko Willink. The worst day of Willink’s Navy service was also the one he learned the most from. He was leading a mission that turned into a friendly fire incident—with teams shooting at each other in the mistaken belief they were the enemy. Afterwards, Willink was told to prepare for a debrief and, instead of compiling reasons he was blameless, Willink reflected on the failure and decided to take ownership of it. And his choosing to take on the blame helped the rest of his battalion be honest and transparent about the incident—so they could learn how to keep it from happening again.

Stay Curious

The second way to keep learning as a leader is to stay curious. Be willing to ask others about their expertise. This sounds easy, but often we’re tempted to do the opposite and pretend we have the answers. In fact, research shows that faking certainty and displaying confidence may be what brought most people into a leadership role in the first place. But it’s not an effective way to keep learning. Something amazing happens when leaders admit they don’t know and start asking questions: people start teaching them.

One leader whose life is a testament to the power of curiosity is Brain Grazer. Grazer is the founder of Imagine Entertainment and a Hollywood executive responsible for dozens of hit television shows and movies. But inside Hollywood, he’s also known for his “curiosity conversations.” Starting early in his career, Grazer made it a goal to have at least one conversation per week with someone about a topic or industry he knew nothing about. This wasn’t a networking exercise where he was just trying to expand his contact list, although that happened. It was a regular habit of trying to expand his mind and a realization that the best way to do that was to stay curious and be genuinely interested in other people.

Experiment

The third way to keep learning as a leader is to experiment. When everything is working, it’s easy to forget the importance of trying new things to keep learning. But smart leaders know they must challenge the status quo when times are good in order to keep bad times from happening. In addition, being willing to let your team experiment can scale up everyone’s learning. You won’t always have successful experiments. There will be failures, but as we’ve already covered, those are learning opportunities as well

One overlooked form of experiments leaders make often is decisions. Admit it. Decisions don’t look like experiments. It was Peter Drucker who is often credited with pointing this out. Drucker knew that, at their core, every decision is a miniature experiment in what you think will happen as a result of your actions. In fact, he went so far as encouraging leaders to keep a “decision journal”—a record of what decision you made and what the intended result was—so that you can check back in a few months or years and learn the results of your decision experiment and actually learn from your decisions instead of just continuing to blindly act.

Cultivate Conflict

The final way to keep learning as a leader is to cultivate conflict. One unfortunate result of being in a leadership position is that people often self-censor ideas that conflict with the leader’s. They fear being see as a troublemaker or worse, and so they keep their ideas to themselves. But leaders need the benefit of those ideas and, as such, they need to embrace existing conflict and cultivate more. Obviously, this refers to task-focused conflict and not interpersonal conflict. But that task-focused conflict still needs to be respectful in tone and with a sense of team-wide trust. And it’s the leader’s job to model the way on how to have the respectful conflict to learn from diverse ideas.

Often that can mean openly calling for conflict over an idea or proposal. There’s a possibly apocryphal story about General Motors’ legendary CEO Alfred P Sloan that captures the idea behind cultivating conflict. During a meeting in which GM’s top management team was considering a weighty decision, Sloan closed the meeting by asking.” “Gentlemen, I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision here?” Sloan then waited as each member of the assembled committee nodded in agreement. Sloan continued, “Then, I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what this decision is about.”

While these habits are simple to practice, they are not exactly comfortable—especially at first. It’s comfortable to be curious because curiosity comes with an admission that you don’t know something. It’s uncomfortable lingering on failure. It’s uncomfortable to hold yourself accountable for decisions or to cultivate conflict. But learning happens in discomfort. Discomfort is a sign that you’re growing. So, if you want to stay committed to keep learning as a leader, you’re unfortunately going to have to stay committed to being uncomfortable as a leader as well. And if you do, you’ll keep growing into new and better ways to lead your team and you’ll keep creating an environment where everyone can do their best work ever.

Originally published at https://davidburkus.com on January 31, 2022.

Image credit: Pexels

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Five Keys to Building Trust on Teams

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Five Keys to Building Trust on Teams

GUEST POST from David Burkus

One of the easiest ways to predict how successful or not a given team will be, is to first measure how much trust exists on the team as a whole. When members of the team trust each other, they’re more likely to succeed because they’re more likely to share information.

They’re more likely to share feedback.

They’re more likely to take risks.

They’re more likely to support each other.

They’re more likely to express crazy ideas that lead to the brilliant ideas they need.

They’re more likely to admit failures and get the help that they need.

And they’re more likely to grow together and reach new levels of performance.

But how do you build trust on a team? How do you get people to trust each other? And how do you get people to trust the team and you as a leader?

In this article, we’ll outline five ways to build trust on teams. Trust is not built overnight, but these five simple actions will start the process of trust-building on your team.

Build Real Bonds

The first way to build trust on teams is to build real bonds. Specifically, build bonds between teammates that form for reasons beyond shared work or collaborative roles. In other words, build friendships. Research suggests those who report having friends at work are more productive, more committed, and yes more trusting (and trustworthy). And while you can’t force two people on your team to be friends, you can create opportunities for your team to have socialization and non-work conversations that will lead to the discovery of mutual interests. These “uncommon commonalities” make people more likely to become friends—and make it more likely they develop mutual trust.

Encourage Candor

The second way to build trust on teams is to encourage candor. Encourage the team to speak freely and even to disagree. While that might seem counterintuitive, respectful dissent and collaborative disagreement are signs of trust on a team. It’s inevitable that members of your team will disagree, if no one is speaking up that’s a sign that there is not yet enough trust built up. As a leader, you can fix this by encouraging dissent and disagreement with you, and then modelling what respectful behavior and civil disagreement look like. This not only demonstrates to the team how to behave when they disagree, it also demonstrates that they can trust that their ideas are heard.

Spotlight Wins

The third way to build trust on teams is to spotlight wins. Whenever members of the team have small wins—work related or not—make sure you take the time to let the whole team know. This is good for the overall culture and camaraderie of the team, but it also tells the individual members that you care and that you notice what matters to them. In addition, it makes it more likely they’ll trust you and come to you with successes and failures—and come to the whole team with successes and failures—because they know that you care.

Accept Failures

The fourth way to build trust on teams is to accept failures—and in some ways this is the opposite side of spotlighting wins. Failures happen. No one wins all of the time and no team is able to deliver on time and under budget every time. Mistakes get made. And situations outside of the team’s control happen. But how leaders and teams respond to those failures is what determines future success, and future trust. Leaders who seek to find blame, and teammates who offer quick excuses, undermine trust, and prevent the team from improving. But leaders who seek to find learning opportunities inside of failure make the team more trusting and, in the long run, much more successful.

Model Vulnerability

The final way to build trust on teams is to model vulnerability. Sometimes, all it takes for a team to start trusting each other is for the team leader to stop pretending to be perfect. When leaders admit their mistakes and own up to their biases, they send a strong message to the rest of the team that they can be trusted. And often that vulnerability is met with vulnerability from others. It’s impossible to build trust on a team without creating the opportunity to be trusted—and that opportunity comes from vulnerability.

While these five methods are not an exhaustive list of the ways trust develops on teams, they all have something in common. Each of these methods is a leader-initiated action that kick starts a cycle of trust. Each method creates space for team members to act on trust and feel trusted. And we know from research that trust is not given, and trust is not earned, trust is reciprocated. It’s a virtuous cycle that starts with one person — usually the leader—demonstrating trust and modeling what trustworthiness looks like. Over time that trust compounds and creates an environment where everyone on the team can do their best work ever.

Image credit: Gemini

This article originally appeared on DavidBurkus.com

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Making Employees Feel Appreciated

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Making Employees Feel Appreciated

GUEST POST from David Burkus

Appreciation is an underutilized part of organizational life.

It’s not that leaders think they don’t need to make employees feel appreciated. Most are in agreement that showing appreciation for great work is key to a positive organizational culture. And the research supports that belief. For example, Professors Adam Grant and Francesca Gino found that “a little thanks goes a long way” and experiencing even small moments of gratitude from managers significantly increases employee motivation. The same is true for teams. Researcher Perry Geue found that teams perform tasks better when their members believe that their colleagues respect and appreciate them.

But this research also points to why appreciation is underutilized.

Most organizations equate appreciation with rewards. They create bonus structures and gift-giving programs. But most research shows its expressions of gratitude that move the needle on feeling appreciated. And while saying something heartfelt while giving your team new coffee mugs might have some effect, it’s the day-to-day ways leaders express gratitude that really matter.

So, in this article, we’ll review four ways leaders can help make employees feel appreciated — we’ll cover the research and some practical ways to get started.

Touch Base Early And Often

The first way to help make employees feel appreciated is to touch base early and often. Especially in an era of hybrid and remote work, it can be easy to let a day or two (or more) go by without having a social conversation with your people. So, make a point to check-in often, and preferably early in the day. These check-ins don’t have to be formal, performance check-ins. They’re much more about making time to socialize and let them know you care.

Research from Jessica Methot suggests quick hellos and casual conversations mean more than you think. Small talk at work (or in Slack) is how people find the mutual interests or common background experiences that create bonds. These bonds lead to friendships and feelings of connection and appreciation on teams. So, make time for small talk and it’ll have a big effect on how appreciated your people feel.

Give Unscheduled Feedback

The second way to help make employees feel appreciated is to give unscheduled feedback. Many team leaders wait until formal performance reviews or regularly scheduled check-ins to give any feedback at all. But feedback that feels obligatory is not only less potent, it is less appreciated. Unscheduled feedback means taking the time after small wins or even just random moments to praise people for things they’re doing well. It also means finding time at the end of projects or when things go wrong to give constructive feedback as well.

When feedback is given more closely to the actions observed, it sends people the message that they’re so important the feedback can’t wait. And it’s not just about manager-employee feedback. Developing a culture on the team of unscheduled praise can go a long way toward helping employees feel appreciated. Research from Ron Friedman shows that high-performing teams reported receiving more frequent appreciation at work — from their manager and their colleagues.

Be Flexible And Trust

The third way to help make employees feel appreciated is to be flexible and trust your people. We know from decades of research into human behavior that having autonomy at work is a powerful motivator. But giving people autonomy also signals trust. Leaders who let their people determine how they’ll work, when they’ll work, and even where they’ll work send a clear and compelling signal that they trust their people. And research from Paul Zak shows that feeling trusted can improve not just motivation but outcome performance as well.

Of course, most important is that when we feel trusted, we feel appreciated by our leaders and our team. And Zak’s research suggests that those initial feelings set off a virtuous cycle: we respond to feelings of trust and appreciation with more trustworthy behavior, which triggers more appreciation, which triggers more positive behavior. And so on. And so on. So, get the cycle going by using any discussions about flexibility to also convey trust and appreciation.

Talk Growth

The final way to help make employees feel appreciated is to talk growth — their growth, not yours or the company’s. This means having regular conversations about people’s goals, career plans, and desires for their development. Professor Teresa Amabile has compiled the largest body of evidence to show that, of all the things that intrinsically motivate us, feeling that we’re making progress is one of the most powerful. But you can only help people show progress in their careers if you know about their career goals.

Unfortunately, a lot of leaders refrain from talking growth and career development outside of an annual review process. But plans change often, and the formalized process isn’t the most effective way to appear interested in someone’s desires — and hence not an effective way to signal to them that they’re appreciated. So, talk growth early and often, let people know you’re there to help them with their whole career and create opportunities that will help them grow.

Unlike gifts or awards, these four methods are not one-time offerings to people. They’re habits. Their effects may feel minimal at first, but they will grow in potency over time. Leaders who make their employees feel appreciated do so over the long-haul. Because the way to let employees know you care and that you support them, is to show them a track record of care and support. And overtime, that will prove how much they’re appreciated. And over even more time, that appreciation will help employees do their best work ever.

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Motivating the Unmotivated

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Motivating the Unmotivated

GUEST POST from David Burkus

Motivation can vary wildly on a team. At any given time, a few people might be highly motivated, while others are totally unmotivated. Ideally, there are times where everyone is motivated at once, but sadly there may be times when everyone is demotivated or burnt out. All this means that an inescapable part of a leader’s job is to motivate the unmotivated.

The good news is that leaders don’t have to rely on raw charisma or the inspirational words of a halftime speech from insert-your-favorite-sports-movie-here. Instead, motivation is less about the qualities of the leader and more about understanding the needs of the team and of each individual on the team.

In this article, we’ll outline five ways to motivate the unmotivated.

Change Up Tasks

The first way to motivate the unmotivated is to change up tasks. Novelty can be a powerful motivator, and the lack of novelty in a job can be demotivating. Few people get excited about coming to work and repeating the same few tasks over and over again. People want new experiences and new challenges. They want to feel that they’re making progress and they often judge that progress based on the projects they’re being given and whether those projects require them to learn new skills or merely execute the same routine functions.

As a leader, this means examining the task list of your motivated team members. Are they doing the same old over again or are they being given new, growth-inducing tasks and projects to work on. You may not be able to change their job description, but you can help them find new learning opportunities or ask them to sit in on meetings they’re not regularly a part of. Even a little novelty can go a long way toward restoring motivation.

Build New Bonds

The second way to motivate the unmotivated is to build new bonds. Over four decades of research have made a compelling case that relatedness is an essential element of intrinsic motivation. People want to feel cared for and feel that their work cares for others. They want to feel connected to the people their work serves and the people they work alongside. And if they feel disconnected or isolated from the team or the customers/stakeholders of an organization, they can become unmotivated.

As a leader, there are two ways to utilize relatedness to motivate the unmotivated. The first is to make sure team members feel connected to each other, most often by making time for socialization and connection through non-work discussions. (The second we’ll cover in a moment.) It may seem like a waste of time, but social functions, icebreakers, or any other activities where people talk about their lives outside of work create opportunities for stronger connections to form. And there’s a strong connection between social connection and motivation.

Re-frame The Work

The third way to motivate the unmotivated is to re-frame the work. As discussed above, knowing how your work serves others can be a powerful motivator. But for many jobs, teams are so far removed from the end customers or even from other teams who benefit from their work that they lose sight of how their work makes a difference. Their work loses task significance, and their motivation quickly follows. And the larger the organization, the harder it is to keep task significance.

As a leader, restoring task significance and relatedness requires re-framing the work or rebuilding connections to those who benefit directly from your team’s work. This could be by bringing customers in to meet your team, or by sharing thank you notes or stories of how the team’s tasks enabled others to work or live better. The test for whether your team needs a re-frame is how quickly they can answer the question “Who is served by the work that we do?” And if they can’t find an answer fast, they likely can’t find their motivation either.

Provide More Feedback

The fourth way to motivate the unmotivated is to provide more feedback. Ken Blanchard was right, “feedback is the breakfast of champions.” We already covered how a feeling of growth and development contributes to motivation. But without regular feedback, your people don’t know what to improve upon—or if they’re improving. As well-intentioned as annual reviews are, they are not a sufficient source of feedback to keep people motivated to improve. Instead, try regular check-ins and feedback sessions both individually and as a team.

As a leader, it’s important to note the distinction between providing sufficient feedback and becoming a micromanager. As people grow and develop in their role, feedback should shift from telling people how to do specific tasks and towards coaching them to solve problems they’re already equipped to solve. In the beginning, provide feedback to help them grow. But as they develop, provide feedback that helps them notice their growth.

Watch The Stress

The fifth way to motivate the unmotivated is to watch the stress. Most leaders know that too much stress can demotivate anyone. But too little stress can be demotivating as well. Psychologist have long known about a concept called eustress—the sweet spot of stress where the demands of the moment match their ability and capacity. Too much demand leads to distress and burnout, but too little demand leads to boredom and…burnout.

As a leader, watching the stress means monitoring your team’s capacity so that they don’t get overloaded. In which case, you’ll want to find ways to offload certain projects or otherwise reduce the workload. But it also means watching each individual on your team for signs that they’re not being challenged enough. In which case, you’ll want to consider other methods in this article for ways to help them feel more growth and challenge in their work. In either case, the goal is to continue to make adjustments and continue to watch the stress, to bring it back to that eustress level.

And monitoring and making adjustments is really the ideal for each of these methods to motivate the unmotivated. Because motivation is individual. It’s felt on an individual level. Which means increasing motivation requires knowing each person individually and continuing to monitor their motivation levels for individual adjustments that need to be made. But when you do, it will raise the overall motivation on your team, and raise the level of performance until everyone on the team can do their best work ever.

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Originally published at https://davidburkus.com on January 2, 2023.

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Managing Across Cultures

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Managing Across Cultures

GUEST POST from David Burkus

If you’re leading multicultural teams, you already know that the hard part isn’t managing projects—it’s managing people. People who see work, time, leadership, and even your well-intentioned Zoom calls very differently. when your team isn’t just spread across departments or cities, but countries and cultures, those small issues can quickly snowball into trust breakdowns, missed deadlines, and a whole lot of stress.

The good news? That’s exactly where cultural intelligence comes in.

Why Most Leadership Advice Doesn’t Cut It Globally

Most leadership best practices are built on Western ideals: autonomy, authenticity, egalitarianism. And for many teams in the U.S., Canada, or Northern Europe, those principles work fine. But here’s the disconnect: over 70% of the global workforce doesn’t come from those cultures. Instead, they come from collectivist, hierarchical contexts where values like harmony, deference, and indirect communication are more important than speaking up or standing out. So, when leaders apply those Western norms across a multicultural team, problems arise. Trust breaks down. Communication stalls. Performance lags. And it’s not because the team isn’t capable—it’s because the leadership approach isn’t compatible.

That’s why cultural intelligence (CQ) is essential. According to social scientist David Livermore, cultural intelligence is a leader’s ability to recognize different cultural norms, expand their own understanding, and adapt their behavior to work effectively across those differences.

In other words, it’s not about memorizing facts like what holidays people celebrate or who bows versus shakes hands. It’s about learning to lead with flexibility, humility, and a willingness to adjust.

The Common Pitfalls of Leading Multicultural Teams

When leaders first encounter cultural differences, they often default to one of two flawed approaches: overcorrecting or oversimplifying.

Some leaders think, “Let’s celebrate every culture! Let’s learn fun facts! Let’s avoid conflict and just let people be people.” While well-intentioned, this can lead to a surface-level focus that ignores deeper dynamics.

Others take a hands-off approach: “We hired great people. Let’s let them figure it out.” But that abdication often results in misunderstandings festering until they explode—or worse, quietly eroding trust.

Then there’s the psychological safety trap. In Western teams, psychological safety often looks like open debate and direct feedback. But in many cultures, especially those where saving face is critical, this approach can feel aggressive or disrespectful.

Take Google, for example. They were early champions of psychological safety, encouraging teams to challenge ideas openly. But when they rolled out that concept globally, it backfired. Some teams became overly cautious, avoiding honesty to protect harmony. Others interpreted directness as disrespect.

The lesson? Psychological safety isn’t a universal behavior. It’s a universal need expressed in culturally different behaviors.

What Really Gets in the Way: The Hidden Barriers

To lead multicultural teams effectively, you need to recognize the specific barriers that can derail collaboration:

Direct vs. Indirect Communication: In some cultures, clarity means saying exactly what you mean. In others, it means saying just enough for someone to infer your meaning. That “yes” from a team member might just mean “I hear you,” not “I agree.”
Language and Fluency Gaps: When some team members aren’t fluent in the working language, it creates power imbalances. They might hold back, not because they lack ideas, but because they’re unsure how to express them. Others may interpret that silence as disengagement.
Different Views of Hierarchy: In flat organizations, people are expected to challenge ideas regardless of seniority. But for team members from hierarchical cultures, speaking up—especially in front of a boss—can feel deeply uncomfortable.
Conflicting Norms Around Decision-Making: Some cultures value fast, intuitive decisions. Others prefer slow, consensus-driven processes. Without clarity, this mismatch breeds frustration.

Build Cultural Intelligence with the SPLIT Framework

One of the most practical tools for building cultural intelligence comes from Harvard professor Tsedal Neeley: the SPLIT framework. It’s designed to address the core challenges of global teams—Structure, Process, Language, Identity, and Technology—and it’s especially helpful for leaders looking to lead with intention.

Structure

Structure isn’t just about org charts. It’s about perceived power. If your headquarters is in New York but your designers are in São Paulo and your engineers in Bangalore, there’s already an unspoken hierarchy. Leaders need to be intentional about flattening that perception. Reinforce that everyone’s on the same mission—different roles, same goals.

Process

Process is how you create empathy. Build in small, deliberate moments for connection. Five minutes of personal talk at the start of a Zoom call. Spontaneous Slack check-ins. And in meetings, draw out quieter voices first. Start with junior team members or those from deferential cultures. When they speak up early, it sets the tone for inclusion.

Language

Language isn’t just about translation—it’s about clarity. If some team members struggle with fluency, that’s a structural disadvantage. Set ground rules. Encourage fluent speakers to slow down and drop the idioms. Encourage non-native speakers to ask for clarification without fear. Normalize that everyone is responsible for making the conversation work.

Identity

Identity is where curiosity matters most. Don’t assume you understand what a behavior means. Ask. Learn. Invite your team to teach you about their norms—and be open about your own. The moment you switch from “leader as expert” to “leader as learner,” you earn credibility and foster mutual respect.

Technology

Technology is your connection toolkit. Use it intentionally. For trust-building, choose live video. For info-sharing, stick to well-crafted emails. And model the behavior you expect. If you ask for cameras on, turn yours on first. If you want prompt responses, respond promptly.

Cultural Intelligence Is a Leadership Discipline

Let’s be clear: cultural intelligence isn’t a checklist. You don’t become “certified” after watching one video or reading one book. It’s a leadership discipline. It’s about staying curious, adjusting your approach, and building connection—even across borders and bandwidth issues.

You’ll make mistakes. That’s inevitable. But the goal isn’t perfection—it’s progress. It’s about learning what candor means in one culture and how respect is shown in another. It’s about tweaking your leadership style not to appease, but to align.

And the result? Multicultural teams that don’t just function—but flourish. Teams where diversity isn’t a liability but a strategic advantage. Teams where trust isn’t accidental—it’s intentional.

So, if you’re leading multicultural teams and feeling a little overwhelmed, take a breath. Start small. Ask better questions. Listen a little longer. And lead a little differently.

Because cultural intelligence isn’t just the key to global collaboration. It’s the new core competency for leadership.

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Making Change Stick

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GUEST POST from David Burkus

You’ve poured hours into developing a brilliant new strategy. Maybe it’s a streamlined process, a novel team ritual, or a bold cultural shift you know will improve how your team works. You present it to the team. Heads nod. There’s excitement. Applause, even.

And then…nothing.

A few weeks go by and everything’s back to the old way. People are still using the outdated process. The team ignores the new meeting cadence. That cultural initiative? Forgotten. It’s as if your big idea evaporated the moment the meeting ended.

So what happened?

As frustrating as it is, this scenario is all too common. And it reveals an important truth about making change stick: it’s not the brilliance of your idea that matters most. It’s how well that idea is presented and remembered. And for most leaders, that’s where the real challenge begins.

The Flawed Approach to Leading Change

For decades, leaders have looked to process improvement and efficiency as the holy grail of organizational success. From Frederick Taylor’s scientific management to modern methodologies like Six Sigma or Agile, there’s no shortage of change initiatives aimed at helping teams get better.

And in theory, many of them work.

But research from UNC’s Brad Staats and Oxford’s Matthias Holweg and David Upton tells a different story about what happens after rollout. According to their study of over 200 process improvement initiatives across a major European bank, roughly 50% of those projects were abandoned within the first year. And after two years? Only one in three remained.

They call it the improvement paradox—the fact that even successful initiatives often fade over time. And the reason isn’t because the ideas were bad. It’s because of how those ideas were introduced and sustained—or, more accurately, how they weren’t.

Why Good Ideas Don’t Stick

The researchers identified several culprits behind why making change stick is so difficult. And if you’ve ever led a change that didn’t last, these may sound familiar.

Initiative Fatigue
When every quarter brings a new mandate or buzzword, people stop getting excited and start getting cynical. It becomes easier to nod along in the meeting and quietly keep doing things the old way.

Lack of Personal Benefit

When change feels like it’s for the company but not for the individual, motivation suffers. People ask, “What’s in it for me?” And if they can’t find a compelling answer, they’re unlikely to put in the effort required to make the change real.

Loss of Ownership

Many initiatives are handed down from above—or worse, handed over from highly paid consultants—as rigid prescriptions rather than collaborative efforts. When people feel forced to comply instead of invited to contribute, they disengage.

Curse of Knowledge

But perhaps the most overlooked obstacle is this: we fall in love with our own ideas and forget what it’s like not to understand them.

Psychologists call this the curse of knowledge. Once you know something well, it becomes almost impossible to imagine what it’s like not to know it. Which means that when we communicate our change initiatives, we often assume too much.

A classic study by Stanford Ph.D. student Elizabeth Newton illustrates this. Participants were asked to tap out the rhythm of a popular song while another person tried to guess what it was. Tappers thought their partners would guess the song about 50% of the time. In reality? Only 2.5% of the time.

Why? Because the tappers could hear the melody in their head. But to the listener, it was just tapping. They didn’t have the context.

The same thing happens with change efforts. Leaders have been thinking about their new strategy for weeks or months. They’ve connected the dots. They see how it all fits. But their teams haven’t been part of that process—and as a result, they don’t hear the melody. Just the tapping.

Making Change Stick

So how do you overcome the curse of knowledge, and the other traps that make change initiatives fade?

You don’t need to be more charismatic. You don’t need a better slide deck. You need a better design for your message. Authors Chip and Dan Heath argue that “sticky” ideas share a few key principles. And when it comes to making change stick, these three are especially powerful.

1. Be Simple: Find the Core Message

Don’t oversimplify. But do clarify. Strip away the jargon, the background noise, the long-winded rationale—and identify the one idea you want your team to remember.

What’s the slogan behind your initiative? What’s the one phrase they can use to guide their decisions?

If your team walks away from your message and forgets everything else, what’s the one thing they must retain? Then say that. A lot.

2. Make It Concrete: Use Sensory and Tangible Language

People don’t latch onto abstract mission statements. They remember vivid images. One of the best examples of this comes from Jeff Hawkins, lead designer of the original Palm Pilot.

To keep the device simple and user-friendly, he carried around a block of wood shaped like the Palm Pilot. Any time someone proposed a new feature, he’d pull it out and ask, “Where are we going to put it?”

It was a tangible symbol of the constraints—and priorities—of the team. And it worked.

You can do the same by anchoring your message in real-world actions, visuals, or metaphors. Don’t say “streamline communication.” Say, “We’re cutting weekly meetings in half so you can get your Wednesdays back.”

3. Use Stories: Help People Feel the Message

Data informs. Stories stick.

The oldest tool for spreading ideas is still the most effective. When you tell a story—about a time the team nailed collaboration, or a moment when things fell apart because the process wasn’t followed—you help people emotionally experience the change you’re trying to create.

Stories give people something to believe in. Something to remember. And something to model their behavior after. Before your next rollout, ask: What stories do I have that illustrate what good looks like? Or what happens when we get it wrong?

You don’t need a slide deck for this. You just need a story.

The Bottom Line

Making change stick isn’t about shouting louder or using fancier words. It’s about designing your message in a way that overcomes fatigue, sparks ownership, and connects emotionally.

That means asking yourself:

Is my idea simple enough to remember?
Is it concrete enough to visualize?
Is it wrapped in a story people want to be part of?

Because ultimately, people don’t follow mandates. They follow meaning. And your job as a leader is to help them see themselves in the better future your change is meant to bring.

Want to make your next change effort stick? Start by telling a better story.

Image credit: Google Gemini

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