Great Business Teams by Howard Guttman is an informative book to a set of principles Howard and his team have documented over the years that lead to forming high performing teams. Most of the tenets are based on leadership skills and individual accountability that equate to honest unfiltered feedback to teams and leadership within an organization. Guttman’s quote of “getting comfortable with discomfort” is the basis for making teams great.

He argues that teams performance deteriorates when conflict festers and disagreements are brought out into the open in an unemotional factitious approach (easier said than done).

Thinking about my own experiences I would have to agree that once the emotional uncomfortable nature of a conflict is broken down and you are able to let someone know what your thoughts are, there tends to be better results moving forward.

The alternative is having people talk about others and not to them and we all know how damaging that can be to teams.

I would recommend the book as a guide to help with team interaction. My only criticism is the examples and studies tend to be a little too straight forward and clear cut, where little attention is paid to the politics and company culture. But overall a good read.