Good Team, Bad Team

Know yourself, know your team, solve your challenge.

When team leaders meet a challenge, they often spend more time dealing with their people than dealing with the challenge. They can't get their team to row in the same direction--or row at all. In Good Team, Bad Team, a ground-breaking primer for leaders, Sarah Thurber and Blair Miller share their decades of experience building, facilitating, and leading thriving teams alongside pioneering research from the fields of cognitive diversity and creative problem-solving. Effective team leadership isn't mind-reading--it's good science.

Built on research from their popular FourSight System--used by Disney, Nike, and NASA--Good Team, Bad Team examines over 6 million data points on problem-solving styles that impact collaboration, innovation, and leadership. By integrating these scientific insights with creative strategies, Good Team, Bad Team presents a transformative model that empowers leaders to harness the diverse energies of their teams and generate powerful results.

A good team isn't perfect, but its people know their purpose and trust each other. You might think bad teams are led by bad people. Actually, bad teams are often led by good people, who simply don't have what they need to lead. With practical exercises, relatable stories, and contrasting examples, Thurber and Miller clarify the complexities of how good and bad teams approach challenges and why they succeed or struggle to solve them. Good Team, Bad Team is the must-read leadership toolkit to navigate the ever-evolving landscape of collaboration and achieve extraordinary results--together.

About the Authors

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.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. 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.