Amy Edmondson’s Required Reading
Amy C. Edmondson’s abiding
interest in teaming may well be rooted in her intriguing stint as chief
engineer to the iconoclastic R. Buckminster Fuller in the early 1980s. It was Fuller, after all, who
plucked the word synergy from the lexicon of chemistry and
expanded its use to include the way in which a holistic approach can help any
interactive system — whether a geometric structure or a business — add up
to more than the sum of its parts.
After Fuller’s death in 1983, Edmondson served as director of
research at Pecos River Learning Centers, a training and development firm,
where she designed and implemented transformational change programs for large
companies. In 1996, after adding advanced degrees in organizational behavior
and psychology to her undergraduate degree in engineering and design (all from
Harvard), she joined the faculty at the Harvard Business School; 10 years
later, she was named its Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management.
Since then, Edmondson has
been teaching, consulting, and writing about the organizational synergies that
can be created via teamwork, with a particular focus on the role leaders play
in producing them. In Teaming: How Organizations Learn, Innovate, and Compete in the
Knowledge Economy(Jossey-Bass, 2012) and Teaming to Innovate (Jossey-Bass, 2013),
she explored teamwork in dynamic, unpredictable work environments. Most
recently, in Building the Future: Big Teaming for Audacious Innovation (Berrett-Koehler,
2016), Edmondson and coauthor Susan
Salter Reynolds examined the challenges and opportunities of teaming across
sectors through the case of Living
PlanIT, a startup that designs operating systems for urban
infrastructure.
When I asked Edmondson about the books that executives should read
to become more effective team leaders and to capture the benefits of synergy
for their companies, she shared the following three titles.
Humble
Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling, by
Edgar H. Schein (Berrett-Koehler, 2013). “I believe that
humility and curiosity are the 21st-century leader’s most important attributes,
and this surprisingly engaging book, by a pioneering organizational researcher,
speaks to both of them. What is humble inquiry? Schein says it’s ‘the fine art
of drawing someone out, of asking questions to which you do not know the
answer, of building a relationship based on curiosity and interest in the other
person.’ Why should this deeply interpersonal process be of interest to
business leaders? Because leaders today cannot begin to accomplish, or specify
to others how to accomplish, the organization’s work. Their true role is to
unleash the efforts of others to achieve greatness and this cannot be done
without humility — recognizing one’s own limits as well as the limits of
the organization’s current capability, together with a genuine desire to learn.
Humility in the face of the complex, dynamic, uncertain world in which we all
live and work is simply realism.”
Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box, by the
Arbinger Institute (Berrett-Koehler, 2000). “The provocative and
deceptively academic title of this book obscures its beauty and powerful
humanity. It describes a model of leadership based on certain cognitive and
emotional interpersonal dynamics through the story of a man who is facing challenges
at work and home that should be painfully familiar to any high achiever. It
explores how we blind ourselves to the harmful effects that some of our
well-intentioned actions have on others, and how, by letting ourselves off the
hook for those actions, we also seal ourselves off from learning. Why should
leaders care? Because their interpersonal strategies, despite good intentions,
can unwittingly sabotage their effectiveness — limiting personal and
organizational success. Any leader who reads this book and takes it seriously
will be poised for a transformational journey.”
Why Great Leaders Don't Take Yes
for an Answer: Managing for Conflict and Consensus, by
Michael A. Roberto (Pearson Education, 2005). “One of my favorite
management cartoons shows a smiling boss asking his team, ‘All in favor?’
Dutifully, each team member says, ‘Aye.’ But, of course, the thought bubbles
emanating from each head reveal the real responses, which range from ‘Heaven
forbid!’ to ‘No, no, a thousand times no!’ OK, we all know it’s hard to speak
up. But it’s the smile on the boss’s face that gets me every time. Like most
leaders, he isn’t even considering what he must do to reverse these predictable
dynamics. That’s where Mike Roberto’s book comes in. It uses a handful of vivid
cases drawn from various organizations and sectors to show leaders how to
promote the honest, constructive dissent and skepticism that is required to
improve the decisions they make vis-à-vis the most important issues facing
their organizations.”
Theodore
Kinni
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