Unlocking the Secret Power of Groups with Colin Fisher / PART TWO

In Part One, organizational behavior scholar Colin M. Fisher dismantles the myth of the lone genius, showing that performance is shaped less by individual talent and more by the groups people belong to. He reframes leadership around social norms, group dynamics, and collective context—arguing that leaders often misdiagnose performance problems by focusing on people instead of the group system they operate within.

Part Two builds on that foundation with practical guidance for leaders. Fisher explains why teams frequently underperform—not because of effort or ability, but because organizations are designed to reward and manage individuals, not collective work. He introduces the concept of relaunching teams, offering a roadmap for resetting goals, norms, and roles so groups can move from friction to true collaboration. The episode closes with a powerful shift in perspective: sustainable performance improves when leaders stop fixing individuals and start strengthening the group.

Episode Highlights

• Why teams often perform worse than individuals—and how leaders can     change that.
• The 60–30–10 rule that explains what really drives team performance
• How to relaunch a struggling or inherited team
• The role of shared goals, norms, and “superpowers” in building trust
• Moving from me vs. you to us vs. the problem


Guest:  Colin M. Fisher, Ph.D. author of the book,
The Collective Edge: Unlocking the Secret Power of Groups

Host, Chris Comeaux, President / CEO of TELEIOS and author of The Anatomy of Leadership.

Teleios Collaborative Network   /   https://www.teleioscn.org/tcntalkspodcast

Transcript

Starting Part Two With Colin Fisher

Jeff Haffner 0:00

Welcome back to TCN talks and Anatomy of Leadership. This is part two of our conversation with Colin M. Fisher on Unlocking the Secret Power Group. We're continuing exactly where part one ended. So if you're just joining us, you may want to listen to that episode first. And now here's Chris Comeaux and Colin M. Fisher.

Chris Comeaux 0:27

And so um I love on page 10, you cite an experiment where team members were asked what they estimate the contribution to the team. And when you add those up, they add up to like 235%, meaning we overestimate our own contribution. In fact, in the early part of your book, you cite great evidence that in many cases you get a negative effect from a team versus the individuals. I want to let that just settle upon people for a second. Like better performance as an individual versus as a team is kind of the norm, is at least what I feel like you're saying. And hospice and palliative care teams that I work with, they're interdisciplinary by design. So what the hell do we do with this quandary? How can leaders help diverse professions, like all these, you know, hospice, nurses, physicians, social workers really harness those differences and get, you know, it feels like synergy is more like a unicorn than the norm, is what I feel like you're calling out, Colin.

Architecting Work For Groups

Repeater-In-Chief And Shared Goals

Bureaucracy And Creative Disruption

Colin M. Fisher 1:31

Yeah, I mean, that is the the sad truth is that becoming more than the sum of our parts is definitely this, you know, unicorn that we're chasing, and it it is rare. Most of the time, the reason that like we think things like meetings or group projects often sound bad to people when I say, like, hey, you know, you want to have a group project or you want to have a uh you know committee or something like that, those sound inefficient to us, that we associate them with inefficiency, but that's largely because we don't design work for groups that well. That we this comes back to the beginning of our conversation, where we have designed organizations and professions and almost everything else to manage individual performance. That we hire people as individuals, we evaluate their performance as individuals, you get rewarded or punished as an individual, and that we don't put nearly as much thought into how we structure our teams. You know, how do we reward them? How do we put them together? You know, how do we hire a team in the first place? And how do we assess its performance? That like we we have much more primitive uh tools for doing those things than we do relative to individual performance. So I mean the first the first part of this is again putting your your kind of architect cap on and to make sure that you've got the structure in place that's favorable to groups interacting. And that means you've got you know collective goals that we all understand, we all understand where we're trying to get to in the same way, we uh have a clear picture of what that future looks like, we understand why it's important for for us and for the organization, and often for the patient, uh and and that that shared understanding needs to get repeated because you know, when things it's like a game of telephone, when a whole bunch of different people are trying to get the same message, it gets distorted fast, right? Like when we all whisper to the next person, oh yeah, here's what the goal is and what's supposed to be there. And that uh one of the great conversations I've had as as part of uh writing this book was with a military leader who said he was taught that the job of a leader is to be the repeater-in-chief, that you know, you your job is just to keep saying that goal over and over, keep reminding people, keep people on the same page, because we naturally come apart over time. And so I think a lot of this is just we're in these situations where as an individual, you know, we're often on multiple teams, we're often in these matrixed organizations where we've got multiple re lines of reporting, uh multiple different ways of organizing functions and projects and other kinds of things. And we get a lot of confusing messages. It's hard to stay coordinated with that core group of people. And one of the biggest things is just to, you know, make sure that we are keeping that kind of North Star, that that place that we're trying to get to, that vision of the future, front and center in everybody's mind so that we can make our decisions about how we're going to coordinate accordingly. And then, you know, all the all the other stuff that we've been talking about, about composing the team, about creating norms where people can speak up. But those are things again that are not natural for us. That we have to make a special effort. That we, you know, we we we are our our brains were not designed to be put into bureaucratic organizations. That, you know, we yes, we are social group creatures, but that, you know, we're actually not all that rational. And so it, you know, the a lot of these structures assume that everybody's, you know, gonna behave in this more, you know, hyper-rational economic fashion, and that's just not how human beings behave. And so the kind of art of leadership is navigating this gap, but that gap is there every day. And if somebody's not attending to it, being the repeater-in-chief, being the architect behind these groups, um, that eventually just the natural forces of a whole bunch of individuals who are busy people with different different values and different goals are gonna drift a little bit apart than they were yesterday, unless we make a special effort to stay together.

Chris Comeaux 6:19

Have you ever read the book Cullen Orbiting the Giant Hairball? It's about the No It's about this guy who was at Hallmark. And when I got my master's in leadership, uh Dr. Lee Thayer would always talk about it. It's the the hairball was the analogy to the bureaucracy. And this one guy, Hallmark, if you know like the cards, Hallmark cards. And so, like, you'd think it'd be the most creative, um, flat organization, but it was this bureaucracy, and he called it a hairball, and he figured out how to orbit around the hairball, and and they started bringing him into meetings because he was so disruptive to the bureaucracy. It's it's a cool read, kind of getting people to think differently. Like, like if you're saying like there's organizations being designed in this hyper rational way, and you think of an organization like that that's supposed to be super creative, but yet was overly bureaucratic. And then and even the the uh whole the way the book is designed and there are like pictures inside and scribbles, it's just really awesome because it makes you think differently, and because he naturally thought differently, he was just almost like this oddball, and they kept bringing him into meetings because he just disrupted the bureaucracy and they didn't quite like he would make up his title. They're like, I don't know, make up your title. And he always thought maybe he'd get fired, but he just kind of disrupted it. So, anyway, I'm just curious if you ever bumped into that in your research.

Colin M. Fisher 7:42

Uh no, I haven't, but that's that sounds terrific. I'll definitely look that up.

Chris Comeaux 7:46

So, you talk about the power of relaunching a team, and I think that's because some people are listening going, yeah, man, but what do I do with the one that I have or I'm inheriting? So, when does a team need a relaunch and what does an effective relaunch maybe actually look like in practice?

Setting Goals, Norms, And Roles

Surfacing Hidden Norms

Colin M. Fisher 8:02

Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, it's so much, unfortunately, of the of this research, as you say, is saying, hey, you need to get stuff right from the start of the of this team. And that that that message is true. So we have what we call the 60 30-10 rule for thinking about what makes a difference in the team. And 60% of a team's performance is determined before they even meet. That the stuff about composing it, what their goals are gonna be, what the what tasks they're gonna do, those those things are usually determined before the team even gets together. And then the 30% is right at the start, at that launch, at this time where we're forming these norms about how we're gonna interact, where we kind of start to perceive whether this is a psychologically safe environment, whether we feel this sense of work-based trust with our colleagues. Those things take root really fast, and that they're much harder to undo than they are to put in place in the first place. And only about 10% of a team's performance is you know usually can be shaped by this sort of real-time coaching of an ongoing team. Now, 10% is still a lot. Like I don't wanna, you know, even though it's a lot less than 90, you know, if you can improve all your teams 10%, you know, you're doing pretty good. You'd you'd be you know be a leader in line for a promotion if you're improving everyone 10%. So that's not nothing. But it's not proportional to the way that we usually devote our time and attention to leading teams. That usually people are spending, you know, much more like 60% of their time and attention on trying to coach these ongoing teams and put out fires and troubleshoot and manage interpersonal conflict. And so if if you find that that's how you're spending your time, that like there it feels like I I can't take my eyes off these teams. I'm always trying to help them with some uh you know, problem that seems like it was preventable, then that's definitely a time for a relaunch. But I think relaunches are are great tools, so that anytime you have a good excuse for one, you should just go ahead and do it because you know there's always an opportunity for improvement. And so what are what I mean by a relaunch is that we are trying to create the perception that this is a new team working on a new task, and that we're doing everything we can to create that perception. Where you know we're changing our meeting route, we're changing the kind of structure of the meetings, or even maybe who's facilitating that meeting. We're doing and that when we come in, you want to make your intentions with this as explicit as you can. To say, I think this is a real opportunity for us to have a a fresh start, and this is a great time for us to do it. So here's what I you know, here's how I see our goal. This is what we're trying to accomplish. What does everybody think? And so there's this first, you know, thing that's in any launch of a team where we're trying to create a shared sense of what our goal is, and that we want it to make sure it's clear in everyone's mind, you know, what mountain is it we're trying to climb. We want to make sure everyone understands why it's important, why we're gonna do that, and that we also want to give a team the sense that it's gonna be challenged, that it's gonna require their buy-in, their engagement, and their their full set of knowledge and skills. Because when we come back to this this research that shows that teams are often less than the sum of their parts, that's often because people don't have the sense that they need to try as hard as they as they can. Where we you know, we have this natural tendency to want to conserve our own resources, our own labor, our own attention. And if we think we can get away with doing a little less, it's only human to often do that. So that we're we're really trying to create this sense, but that it needs to be shared. And that means we need to make sure everyone's understanding it, to give people an opportunity to maybe tweak what that goal is, or if it's really undefined, to, you know, have a deeper discussion about, hey, why, you know, what do we want to accomplish? What is important to us? So that that's usually the first part of this relaunch. And the the second part of it is to really try to reset these norms. And that that's usually the reason people want to relaunch is that they feel like the norms of their group need a reset. That they have this false harm, that people aren't speaking up. Or on the uh on the other end of the spectrum, we've got factions who are constantly fighting with one another and people are disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing because it's like, well, if Bob says that, then I g I can't agree with Bob. And and that when you're trying to reset those norms, it's hard. Like you really have to make a special effort to do that. And and I think getting everybody's commitment to say, I think we can be better than we've been. And here's here's how I think we can do that. But the first thing is that we're all going to feel safe to share what we really think, but at the same time we're gonna be respectful of one another, and that we're gonna try and create a situation where it's us against the problem, not me against you. And that when we and that if we get into this dynamic of me against you, we've already lost. So that, you know, when we speak to one another, you know, and that sometimes if if you've had a disrespect a group where people haven't been as respectful to one another as they they need to be, you have to, you know, kind of reset these sort of kindergarten level rules of like, you know, we we don't talk about the person, we don't insult insult one another and those kinds of things, but that's often what what you need to be doing. And then to often clarify roles. Why are why are we here? What are we trying to bring to this? And I I love your question. What's your uh at the beginning of this, what is your superpower? And often that is kind of what you know, what do you think your superpower could be for this group? What are you what can you bring to us to make the chances that we're going to be more than the sum of our parts uh a possibility? And that, you know, often leaders aren't putting people into the roles that they uh that the person thinks they're best suited for. Often we're not giving people enough chance to show the full you know, spectrum of what they're capable of and what they what they want to do and how they could grow. And so having this discussion where you can really get people reflecting on that, get people uh publicly talking about these things so everybody in the team knows. But that that way, even if you as a leader disagree with what what one of your uh team members says that they ought to be doing or there's their superpower, now you know that they think that, and that you can, you know, do a lot better job of managing them and managing the team with that knowledge than without it. So those are the the kind of three big elements of what a relaunch would look like, where there's a discussion of the goals, there's a discussion of the norms, there's a discussion of the kind of roles and tasks that people are going to do in the team, and then there are real next steps with deliverables where there's stuff that we can uh see one another actually doing and to see progress towards the streets.

Building A Collective Identity

Chris Comeaux 15:57

You know, um, this is so good. Everything you just listed, maybe it was good intuition, maybe it was just dumb luck. But I had to coach my kids' soccer team, and where I grew up, we didn't have soccer. There was only three sports basketball, baseball, and football. So because I knew nothing about soccer, um, a friend told me, hey, just ask the kids their superpower at the first practice, and then kind of compose the team around that. And because I didn't know the normal positions, I literally composed the team around their superpowers. And I tell that story frequently because yeah, it's because of my lack of experience. I I approached it with much more of a learning approach and and then stumbled upon this thing about superpowers and how to compose the team. And it was a fun year. We all had a blast. And yet, quite often I think that, you know, because I think I know what I know, and while we've got to have this person, you've got to have a director of finance, you got a director HR, we miss that creation process of composing a team. And what I love about your book, and you're also a great teacher, Colin, because I love how you keep bringing it back to key points. Um, the other thing I've just listening to what you just said, you know, your book highlights that there are hidden norms that just shape group behavior. And so how do leaders maybe surface those, like bring them to the surface? And you know, right now we live at a time where there's just you know, people are so much in their corners, especially in in the States. We live in this polarized society. So after they unearth them, how can leaders cultivate this collective identity that transcends these differences and these because we're inheriting people that again, everybody's like, what team are you on? Are you on the red team or the blue team? Oh, well, you're you're not on my team, and then we bring that into the workplace. So, yeah, how do they unearth that and then how do we eventually get to that really collective identity?

The One Practice That Changes Teams

Colin M. Fisher 17:46

Yeah, it's uh it's such a challenge, you know, when we're trying to get people to cooperate across these really deeply held identities and deeply held divides. I mean, that's you know, been one of the biggest challenges that humanities have faced throughout history, right? That we're we're try when we want to have a more peaceful society, a more you know, a world where we treat each other better, getting people across these group boundaries is right at the at the top of the list of things that we need to do. Now, unfortunately there's no one easy solution to to that question, you know, because whoever whoever solves that problem's gonna you know be doing very well in life, that that's a a Nobel Prize winning kind of discovery. And that the but that I think the way the way I would think about it is when you're at work, you do have the advantage of we do have some shared goals that often don't have anything to do with those other identities. And that gives us a chance to create a a sense of we that doesn't have that much to do with, you know, your politics or or things like that. And that the best way that we've seen kind of you know, people who were fighting across groups start to cooperate is by giving them common goals. And that work actually is a place where we have common goals that transcend a lot of these political divides. That, you know, if you're in hospice, we're all still trying to help, you know, the this client, this patient, um even if we disagree about other things, that that's still something that we collectively want. And that's really doubling down on what is it that we have in common? What is our common goal? And that you know, researchers call this a a superordinate goal. Like what is the thing that transcends our group boundaries that we can agree that we want to uh head towards? But the second Ingredient there is interdependence. That I really have to depend on you to do your job for me to do my job. And the more that we have this really deep interdependence where you're going to, you know, give me your part of moving towards that goal, and I'm gonna use what you gave me to do my part of moving toward towards that goal. Now we have a relationship that's not about this group divide anymore. We have a relationship that's based on our progress towards our common goal. And and so really focusing in on those things and focus and and drawing attention as a leader when we're making these kind of small wins, these small acts of progress towards those goals is important to creating that common identity. The the kind of showing hey, I'm gonna lift up this moment that maybe everyone else didn't know this. But to me it's symbolic of what I want our team to be about, what I want our our shared identity to be. And so I'm going to make sure that I everybody knows about that and that they understand that I think that's important. And that that's going to start to create this culture of highlighting that kind of thing, of paying more attention to it, and thus developing uh a more kind of productive shared identity. Now, norms I think we've been talking about, and that they are the same the the basics of them is that we want to hear the everybody's you know questions, we want to hear their ideas, we wanna get their authentic perspectives on different issues, but that we can approach them from uh this us against the problem perspective rather than experiencing this is a threat to my identity when you say something I don't agree with, that you know um that I can go, oh, well, you know, you're just tr Chris is just trying to solve the same problem I'm trying to um solve. So that that's okay. It's not about me, it's about you know, that's really what he thinks we should do to solve this problem. That kind of focus can help, but that you know, these group fault lines it doesn't take much for them to re-emerge. And that that's kind and I think the problem that we're seeing in the US more and more is that everything all these different issues have gotten bundled around these political teams. That in the in the book I talk about, you know, the the kind of silliness that politicians were debating, you know, an MM's commercial and what the MMs are wearing. But that like your perspective on that was a proxy for your your political beliefs on a whole range of other other issues. And that that's not something uh y that's normal in in other countries, where that we get this bundling of you have to agree with your team about not just one thing, but about this whole range of diverse kinds of issues and and perspectives. And it keeps, you know, creeping up to, you know, which you know, what music do you listen to, which movies do you like, and and things like that, which shouldn't naturally be political, you know, or or you know, which fast food restaurant you go to. Like those aren't inherently political issues. But they've all kind of gotten eaten up by this kind of us against them mentality that's that's taken hold in in the US. And it is more polarized than than other countries, uh very measurably so. And uh it should be concerning to people that I think, you know, uh in a way that should be our t our top concern is when we can't talk to each other, when we can't cooperate even on things we agree are important common goals, that's when we really have this kind of dysfunctional uh structure that again does come back to the basic things about our political system and our two-party system and the way everything's kind of baked in in the US that's not not ideal. Um and that that's really hard. And I hope people pay attention to it, but in a way, if you're just a manager in an organization and you can get people rallied around a common goal, whatever that is at work, and you can get them collaborating, you're doing a little something. Right? And and and so I think that that in a way that's the best small thing we can do, rather than being, oh hey, here's how you lead a discussion about our political differences at work. You know, well, let's work on something we agree on, let's cooperate on it. And in the process of doing that, in the process of valuing others' perspectives and contributions, there's going to be little acts of understanding where maybe we get a little bit less polarized.

Chris Comeaux 25:08

Man, high five, that is so well said. Um, we could take that one thing, in fact, I always close and remind folks about that Gandhi quote be the change you wish to see in the world, start in your sphere of influence there. And if everybody did that, all of a sudden maybe we would heal that divide. So well, let's go ahead and land the plane here, Colin. So if leaders could implement only one idea, which I hate saying that, um, because there's so many incredible ideas in this book. And again, everyone needs to get this book. It's probably the best book I've ever read about teamwork. But if they had one idea, maybe one of the most important ideas to dramatically improve their teams, what would that idea be? And then any other final thoughts you want to share?

Closing Reflections And Listener CTA

Colin M. Fisher 25:47

I think the it's it's almost this idea that I start out with that the our natural tendency is to analyze the world in terms of individuals. And if all you do is take a collective perspective, is put on your glasses where you're thinking, hmm, not what would make these individuals better, but what would make this group better, I trust you to be smart and reflective, and just like uh you were saying, Chris, to figure some of the stuff out just by paying attention to the group and thinking about that rather than thinking about individuals. So the if if every day you say, well, I'm when you're thinking, hmm, here's this individual problem or here's this problem I have, and instead turn that into a we problem. What what can I do to make us better? What can I do to make these groups better? So I would say the f just taking that collective perspective can be so powerful and enact so many of these changes that just kind of come from us overlooking the importance and the role of groups in in our lives.

Chris Comeaux 26:58

That's incredibly well said. Well, Colin, thank you. I'm actually thinking of several ways. Um, we'll stay on after we're done here. I've got some ideas of how to bring you into this work that we're doing because I think this is very powerful. And teamwork, um, my mentor, Dr. Thayer, wouldn't allow us to use the word teamwork, and we go, what is this deal? And actually, I think that you know, he was part of probably he probably even knew your mentor, and they saw that teamwork really was not the norm. We use the word freely, like, oh, go team, we are a team. But the reality is very rarely do you truly see teamwork or experience it. Um, and I think that you have put together a body of work that can actually change that. And I have a sense that the timing of your book isn't like the time that we live right now. This is really important stuff. It's certainly important in healthcare at all times, but it feels like there's just a lot coalescing right now. There's so many industries that are in a state of flux, and about every hundred years or so you get these like huge kind of changes, and all of that's culminating now. So, again, just kudos to the great job that you've done to this. So, to our listeners, we want to thank you. At the end of each episode, we share a quote, a visual. The idea is to create a brain bookmark, a thought prodder about our podcast subject to further your learning and growth, and thereby your leadership. And we want it to stay. Be sure you subscribe to Anatomy of Leadership. We don't want you to miss an episode. We're really upping our game this year and breaking these into parts so you can digest them more easily. Tell your friends and and co-workers about Colin's book. We're gonna have an uh actual link to it. Also, The Anatomy of Leadership. You know, it's easy for us to reel against the world and be frustrated by things. Let's be the change we wish to see in the world. So thanks for listening to Anatomy of Leadership. And here's our brain bookmark to close today's show.

Jeff Haffner 28:44

One of the situations we really overlook the most is the group. The reason people behave the way they do is often because of the groups they're a part of, the social norms around them, and the bigger collective, their individual performance sits inside, by Colin M. Fisher.