by Daniel Coyle
Our first weekly practice session in October drew nine students. Catherine, Carson, Ellie, Vala, Caroline, Natsumi, David, Nathan, and Zoe were an energetic group with a range of skill levels and motivations. Vala and Ellie were confident and experienced writers, while Carson and Caroline were more hesitant, just starting to stretch their creative muscles. I was hesitant, too. In years past, I’d taken a traditional (i.e., authoritative) approach to coaching the team: I did a lot of speaking, gave lecture-like talks, then provided feedback on their practice stories. In teaching parlance, I was “the sage on the stage,” and it was a comfortable place to stand. This year, however, would be different.
First, I changed the seating arrangement. In years past we had sat in loose proximity at a scattering of small tables. Now I shoved four small tables together to form one table just big enough to fit the ten of us, elbow to elbow. Then, rather than launching into a lecture about good writing, I asked the team, “What’s your favorite book right now?” We went around the circle. (Harry Potter made more than one appearance, as did Hunger Games.)
Then I asked why those books were so good.
“Because he’s an orphan,” Ellie said. “Pretty much every good story has orphans.”
“Because there’s an intense war happening,” Nathan said. “All these people are dying, and it’s brutal and you don’t want them to die.”
“Because it’s just really, really good,” Carson said.
“Why?” I asked.
Carson swallowed. He was a tall, slender kid, with large dark eyes and a formal manner. He chose his words carefully. “Because the story makes you worry about them,” he said.
“Yes,” I said. I gave him a fist bump, and he smiled.
I asked the team another question: “What do you not like about writing?”
Answers came fast: They didn’t like coming up with ideas to write about. Sometimes stories came easily, but often they didn’t, and they were left staring at a blank page, wondering what to write about.
“I just get stuck sometimes,” Catherine said, speaking for the group. “I get partway, and then I can’t think of anything.”
I told the team I had something to share with them. I reached into my backpack and, with a shamelessly dramatic flourish, produced a stack of paper—early drafts of this book. They took the sheets eagerly. They knew I was a writer, and they were expecting to find examples of faultless prose.
But as they read, they saw that the pages weren’t perfect. To the contrary, they were riddled with handwritten edits, line-outs, and fixes scribbled in the margins. Entire pages had been crossed out. It didn’t look like the work of a published writer. It looked like a school assignment that had earned a resounding F.
“This is yours?” Nathan asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Are there this many changes every time?” Vala asked.
“Every time,” I said.
I told them that nothing I ever wrote was perfect; that I often got stuck and struggled through the process of building a story. I told them I tended to make lots of mistakes and that noticing and fixing those mistakes was where the writing improved.
Then I gave the team a prompt. After they’d written for fifteen minutes, I asked them to put their pens down and explained a simple rule: Everyone was encouraged to read their story aloud, and everyone was encouraged to give feedback. Some of the students were hesitant about reading their stories aloud, and they lacked the language to critique other stories. But slowly, as weeks passed, we got better. Caroline, who hadn’t wanted to read her stories at first, started to share more openly, bringing us into the sci-fi worlds she liked to create. Natsumi, initially hesitant about offering criticism to her teammates, started weighing in with warm, pointed guidance.
We adopted a “What Worked Well/Even Better If” format for the feedback sessions: first celebrating the story’s positives, then offering ideas for improvement. Over time the exchanges strengthened into habits; the group stopped behaving like a typical class and started behaving like the kindergartners in the spaghetti-marshmallow challenge: working shoulder to shoulder, fixing problems, thinking as one.
Meanwhile I focused on supporting those interactions. When someone wrote a successful story or offered a particularly incisive comment, I didn’t say a word but rather gave a fist bump. Like Danny Meyer, I flooded the zone with catchphrases to guide them through the writing-and-fixing process. One was “Power of the Problem,” which reminded them that most effective stories consist of characters struggling with huge problems, the bigger, the better. (After all, Captain Ahab doesn’t chase minnows.) Another was “Use Your Camera,” which reminded them to control the point of view. (Do you want to take the reader inside the character’s mind, or to observe them from above?) I told them over and over: “Every story should have VOW: voice, obstacles, and wanting. The bigger the problem, the better the story. You guys are creative athletes—you have to help each other get better.”
For me, in some ways, this coaching style was more demanding. It required more reflection, thinking about ways to ignite discussion and to motivate. I also struggled with the challenge of not doing things: allowing conversations to occasionally ramble off-topic instead of leaping in to seize control. In other ways, however, the new style was easier. Instead of focusing on conveying knowledge (which demanded lots of preparation and precision), I could serve as a guide, letting the group function, watching for moments where I could step in and, with a phrase or body language, create some awareness or, better, highlight a successful choice they had made.
The district tournament took place on Valentine’s Day. That morning a blizzard descended on northeastern Ohio, delivering five inches of snow and forty-four-mile-per-hour winds. We drove to the host school through the storm, catching glimpses of cars and semis spun off the road, emergency services workers huddled by the roadside, in a roaring moonscape of white that looked like the zombie apocalypse. “We should write a story about this storm,” Zoe said, and the rest of the team started weaving narratives from the images they saw.
When we arrived at the host school, we found a table near the window. Then the kids bumped fists and disappeared into classrooms to receive their prompts and write their stories. Two hours later they emerged, wide-eyed and wrung out. At three o’clock, after scoring and ranking all the pieces, the tournament organizers ushered us, along with several hundred other competitors, into the gym to announce the winners.
Long story short: We did well. In the seventh-grade division, Zoe finished fourteenth. In the eighth-grade division, Nathan finished twelfth, Vala tenth, Natsumi fourth, and Ellie first. By day’s end, we were lifting the first-place trophy for eighth grade. A few weeks later the team performed similarly well in another district tournament, where Zoe won first place and best of round. Four students qualified for states, the most in the school’s history, and Ellie won an award for talented young writers.
But for me that was not the highlight. The highlight involved Carson, the quiet eighth-grader who had never done much writing. While he did not advance past the district tournament, he kept showing up at Tuesday practice sessions. He wasn’t so shy anymore about sharing his writing, and he was showing his creativity in other ways. (That spring, to the surprise of teachers and parents, he would perform a terrific Atticus Finch in the school’s production of To Kill a Mockingbird.)
On the team, Carson’s specialty was writing comic stories about a legendary character named Johnny McTough, a tall, handsome, titanically confident high schooler who was under the misimpression that he was the greatest football player in the world. Johnny McTough stories were wonderful partly because Johnny’s unshakable belief that he didn’t need anyone—not a coach, not a team, not his parents, not even a helmet—led him into all kinds of funny predicaments. But mostly they were wonderful because of the way Carson and the team interacted. Each week, in a swa
ggering, macho voice, Carson would relate Johnny McTough’s latest adventure, and the team would laugh uproariously. We would laugh at the spectacle of this misguided hero who thought he could take on the world alone. Then we would all start working together to make that story even better.
For my father
Writing this book was a team project, and I am lucky to have some exceptionally skilled coaches. Foremost among them are Andy Ward, my brilliant editor, and David Black, my superb agent.
My brother Maurice is an incredibly talented editor and writer, and was invaluable throughout the research and writing process, creating concepts, challenging ideas, editing manuscripts, and patiently engaging in hundreds of conversations. Those conversations, more than any others, are where this book took its shape.
At Random House, I’d like to thank Kaela Myers, Cindy Murray, Susan Corcoran, Kim Hovey, Kara Walsh, Sanyu Dillon, Debbie Aroff, Theresa Zoro, Max Minckler, Scott Shannon, Simon Sullivan, Amelia Zalcman, Paolo Pepe, and Gina Centrello. At Black Inc: Susan Raihofer, Emily Hoffman, Sarah Smith, and Jenny Herrera. At Wanashaker: Margaret Ewen, Kathryn Ewen, and Adrienne Zand. At Pixar: Ed Catmull, Michelle Radcliff, Wendy Tanzillo, and Mike Sundy. At the San Antonio Spurs: R. C. Buford, Chip Engelland, Chad Forcier, and Sean Marks. At Zappos: Maggie Hsu, Joe Mahon, Lisa Shufro, Angel Sugg, Jeanne Markel, Zubin Damania, Zach Ware, and Connie Yeh. At IDEO: Duane Bray, Nili Metuki, Njoki Gitahi, Lawrence Abrahamson, Peter Antonelli, and Nadia Walker. At KIPP: Dave Levin, Mike Feinberg, Joe Negron, Allison Willis Holley, Lauren Abramson, Angela Fascilla, Jeff Li, Carly Scott, Alexa Roche, and Glenn Davis. At the Upright Citizens Brigade: Kevin Hines and Nate Dern. At Union Square Hospitality Group: Danny Meyer, Erin Moran, Haley Carroll, Richard Coraine, Rachel Hoffheimer, Susan Reilly Salgado, Stephanie Jackson, Kim DiPalo, Allison Staad, and Tanya Edmunds. I’d also like to thank the members of the Navy SEAL community who prefer not to be named here.
Many within the scientific community gave of their time and expertise. I’d like to especially thank Jay Van Bavel, Amy Edmondson, Sigal Barsade, Gregory Walton, Geoff Cohen, Jeff Polzer, Carl Marci, Will Felps, Tom Allen, Jeffry Simpson, Clifford Stott, Andy Molinsky, Bradley Staats, Oren Lederman, Alex Pentland, Reb Rebele, Constantinos Coutifaris, Matthew Corritore, and Ben Waber.
Many colleagues and friends generously shared insights about group performance and culture—in many cases because they happened to be members of terrific organizations. I’d especially like to thank Chris Antonetti, Mike Chernoff, Terry Francona, Paul and Karen Dolan, Derek Falvey, Carter Hawkins, James Harris, Ceci Clark, Brian Miles, Oscar Gutierrez Ramirez, Alex Eckelman, Eric Binder, Matt Forman, Tom Wiedenbauer, Sky Andrecheck, Victor Wang, Alex Merberg, Matt Blake, Johnny Goryl, Marlene Lehky, Nilda Tafanelli, Ross Atkins, Mark Shapiro, Adam Grant, Peter Vint, John Kessel, Chris Grant, Jerry Azzinaro, Josh Gibson, Steve Gera, Rich Diviney, Sam Presti, Billy Donovan, Mark Daigneault, Oliver Winterbone, Dustin Seale, Scott McLachlan, Mike Forde, Henry Abbott, David Epstein, Alex Gibney, Laszlo Bock, Tom Wujec, Bob Bowman, David Marsh, Finn Gunderson, Richie Graham, Anne Buford, Troy Flanagan, Shawn Hunter, Dennis Jaffe, Rand Pecknold, Brett Ledbetter, Pete Carroll, Cindy Bristow, Michael Ruhlman, Bill Pabst, Jay Berhalter, Nico Romeijn, Wim van Zwam, Scott Flood, Dan Russell, and Doug Lemov.
On the personal side, I’d like to thank Jon Coyle, Marian Jones, John Giuggio, Rob Fisher, Fred and Beeb Fisher, Tom Kizzia, Todd Balf, Jeff and Cindy Keller, Laura Hohnhold, Mike Paterniti, Sara Corbett, Mark Bryant, Marshall Sella, Kathie Freer, Tom and Catie Bursch, Paul Cox, Kirsten Docter, Rob and Emily Pollard, Dave Lucas, George Bilgere, Doug and Lisa Vahey, Carri Thurman, John Rohr, Geo Beach, Sydney Webb, and Lisa Damour for her sharp editor’s eye.
Finally, I’d like to thank my parents, Maurice and Agnes Coyle, who have been north stars of inspiration and support from the very start. I’d like to thank my children, Aidan, Katie, Lia, and Zoe, who are the greatest sources of joy and meaning in my life, and who make me incredibly proud. And most of all I’d like to thank my wife, Jen, whose warmth, smarts, and kindness light up every day with love. This book only exists because of you.
Introduction · When Two Plus Two Equals Ten
For more on culture’s effect on the bottom line, see John Kotter and James Heskett’s Corporate Culture and Performance (New York: The Free Press, 1992); D. Denison and A. Mishra, “Toward a Theory of Organizational Culture and Effectiveness,” Organization Science 6 (1995), 204–23; and G. Gordon and N. DiTomaso, “Predicting Corporate Performance from Organizational Culture,” Journal of Management Studies 29 (1992), 783–98.
1 · The Good Apples
For more on belonging cues, see W. Felps, T. Mitchell, and E. Byington, “How, When, and Why Bad Apples Spoil the Barrel: Negative Group Member and Dysfunctional Groups,” Research in Organizational Behavior 27 (2006), 175–222; J. Curhan and A. Pentland, “Thin Slices of Negotiation: Predicting Outcomes from Conversational Dynamics Within the First Five Minutes,” Journal of Applied Psychology 92 (2007), 802–11; and William Stoltzman’s “Toward a Social Signaling Framework: Activity and Emphasis in Speech,” master’s thesis, MIT (2006). For an exploration of sociometrics, see Alex Pentland’s Honest Signals (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008) and Social Physics (New York: The Penguin Press, 2014) as well as Ben Waber’s People Analytics (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson FT Press, 2013).
The concept of psychological safety was pioneered by William Kahn in “Psychological Conditions of Personal Engagement and Disengagement at Work,” Academy of Management Journal 11 (1990), 692–724. Amy Edmondson’s work in this area is outstanding; you can find much of it in Teaming: How Organizations Learn, Innovate, and Compete in the Knowledge Economy (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Pfeiffer, 2012).
2 · The Billion-Dollar Day When Nothing Happened
For a deeper look at Google’s development of the AdWords engine, see Steven Levy’s In the Plex (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011). For more on the success rates of different organizational models, see J. Baron and M. Hannan, “Organizational Blueprints for Success in High-Tech Startups: Lessons from the Stanford Project on Emerging Companies,” California Management Review 44 (2002), 8–36; and M. Hannan, J. Baron, G. Hsu, and O. Kocak, “Organizational Identities and the Hazard of Change,” Industrial and Corporate Change 15 (2006), 755–84.
For more on belonging cues and behavior change, see G. Walton, G. Cohen, D. Cwir, and S. Spencer, “Mere Belonging: The Power of Social Connections,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 102 (2012), 513–32; G. Walton and P. Carr, “Social Belonging and the Motivation and Intellectual Achievement of Negatively Stereotyped Students,” in Stereotype Threat: Theory, Processes, and Application, M. Inzlicht and T. Schmader (eds.) (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); A. Brooks, H. Dai, and M. Schweitzer, “I’m Sorry About the Rain! Superfluous Apologies Demonstrate Empathic Concern and Increase Trust,” Social Psychological and Personality Science 5 (2014), 467–74; G. Carter, K. Clover, I. Whyte, A. Dawson, and C. D’Este, “Postcards from the Edge Project: Randomised Controlled Trial of an Intervention Using Postcards to Reduce Repetition of Hospital Treated Deliberate Self Poisoning,” BMJ (2005); and P. Fischer, A. Sauer, C. Vogrincic, and S. Weisweiler, “The Ancestor Effect: Thinking about Our Genetic Origin Enhances Intellectual Performance,” European Journal of Social Psychology 41 (2010), 11–16.
For more on how belonging and identity work inside the brain, see J. Van Bavel, L. Hackel, and Y. Xiao, “The Group Mind: The Pervasive Influence of Social Identity on Cognition,” Research and Perspectives in Neurosciences 21 (2013), 41–56; D. Packer and J. Van Bavel, “The Dynamic Nature of Identity: From the Brain to Behavior,” The Psychology of Change: Life Contexts, Experiences, and Identities, N. Branscombe and K. Reynolds (eds.) (Hove, United Kingdom: Psychology Press, 2015); and D. de Cremer and M. van Vugt, “Social Identification Effects in Social Dilemmas,” European Journal of Social Psychology 29 (199
9), 871–93.
3 · The Christmas Truce, the One-Hour Experiment, and the Missileers
The Christmas Truce story has been told in many places; the most in-depth versions can be found in Tony Ashworth’s Trench Warfare 1914–1918: The Live and Let-Live System (London: Pan Books, 2000) and Stanley Weintraub’s Silent Night (New York: Plume, 2002). For a wide-angle look at how altruism works, see Robert Axelrod’s The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984) and Michael Tomasello’s Why We Cooperate (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009).
For more on the WIPRO experiment, see D. Cable, F. Gino, and B. Staats, “Breaking Them In or Revealing Their Best? Reframing Socialization Around Newcomer Self-Expression,” Administrative Science Quarterly 58 (2013), 1–36. For more on the nuclear-launch crews, I’d recommend Eric Schlosser’s Command and Control (New York: The Penguin Press, 2013).
4 · How to Build Belonging
For Neil Paine’s study of Popovich’s coaching dominance, see fivethirtyeight.com/features/2014-nba-preview-the-rise-of-the-warriors/. For more on the study of why NBA players tend to behave selfishly, see E. Uhlmann and C. Barnes, “Selfish Play Increases During High-Stakes NBA Games and Is Rewarded with More Lucrative Contracts,” PLoS ONE 9 (2014).
For more on the magical-feedback study, see D. Yeager, V. Purdie-Vaughns, J. Garcia, N. Apfel, P. Brzustoski, A. Master, W. Hessert, M. Williams, and G. Cohen, “Breaking the Cycle of Mistrust: Wise Interventions to Provide Critical Feedback Across the Racial Divide,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 143 (2013), 804–24.
