We listened to my favorite wisdom on teamwork, from This American Life, and then the teams all met for the first time.

The TAL episode focused on the work of Will Felps, now a professor of business at the University of New South Wales. During his PhD thesis in 2006 or so, he found ‘bad apple’ behavior (being a slacker, jerk or depressive) could degrade the performance of a team. He then started research on how leadership traits such as soliciting input from everybody via questions could neutralize the bad apple. Here is a current paper of his:

N. Van Quaquebeke, and W. Felps. “Respectful Inquiry: A Motivational Account of Leading through Asking Open Questions and Listening.” Academy of Management Review 43, no. 1 (n.d.): 5–27. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2014.0537