“Don’t Try to Change Who People Are. Synchronize How They Think Together.”

Sarah and Blair, in Good Team, Bad Team, you argue that many “bad team” dynamics stem from clashes between thinking preferences rather than personality flaws. From your experience, what are the most common friction patterns you see, and could you ground those patterns in everyday work examples?

Sarah Thurber: We wrote Good Team, Bad Team for leaders with big goals and good people who still struggle to reach those goals. Good teams achieve goals; that is true in sports and in business. The secret is a team’s ability to overcome the challenges that get in the way, and that is the core competency: solving challenges together. Most of us did not learn collaborative problem solving in school, unless you are me or Blair. We both did graduate studies in creative and collaborative problem-solving. (Laughs.) We spent years researching this so others do not have to.

Book Summary

Good Team, Bad Team

Leaders make their teams effective.

Sarah Thurber and Blair Miller Page Two Publishers

Read Summary

To solve a complex challenge, you need four different kinds of thinking. First, you clarify and understand what is going on and where to focus. Once you have clarified the right problem to solve, you ideate, generate possibilities, and go beyond the obvious to find promising ideas that could crack it open. Then you develop, you take the best ideas forward and shape them into a practical, workable plan. Finally, you implement and make it happen. When you combine clarify, ideate, develop, and implement, you get a universal problem-solving process. It is simple, science-based, and it works well.

But, as you write in the book, there is one problem with it: the users.

Sarah: Yes. When people try to move through the stages of clarify, ideate, develop, and implement, our brains unconsciously play favorites, and that is where conflict arises. Imagine a team with a big challenge. Blair, for instance, likes to clarify, so he grabs the problem and starts asking questions, doing research, trying to understand the situation, and pinpointing the problem. He knows clarifying will save time in the end. I am different because I like to ideate: I take one look and say I have an idea, and then another idea. And Blair says, “Wait, we are still clarifying,” while you, Michael, are already into development and argue that you can shape those ideas into a workable solution. Blair looks over again and says, “Michael, stop, it is not the time to develop.” In all that turmoil, our team leader now jumps in. He may prefer to implement, as many leaders do, hearing the talk of a solution and already runs to put it in motion. Now we have a half-baked solution, and everyone wonders what just happened.

That is a typical team dynamic: everyone wants to help, but they do it in the way they instinctively want to do it. And without a shared language for thinking preferences, we run into conflict and frustration that compromise collaboration and outcomes.

Just to be clear, this is not about putting people in strict boxes. How should leaders use preferences without pigeonholing people?

Blair Miller: Exactly. Having a preference does not mean that is all you can do. Under pressure, or when I have endless time, I may default to clarify because that is my comfort zone. On a team, the manager’s role is to ensure we cover all types of thinking and do each well. So, act like a ringmaster: First, we clarify, then we ideate, then we develop, then we implement. Invite everybody to engage in each type, and be aware of your own impatience. If I get antsy because Sarah goes to ideas too fast for me, I remind myself that we will get there.

So, this is not about staying in your lane; it is about aligning the team around which type of thinking we are in right now.

Even if you prefer to implement, you can clarify when that is the task. When you reach your preferred mode, you bring extra energy, which helps the team, especially when others have a low preference.

So does the leader need to figure out everyone’s thinking preferences, and how do you do that without labeling people?

Sarah: FourSight’s research focuses on cognitive diversity and uses a science-based instrument that measures thinking preference – a 36-question, self-report assessment. In the book, there is a condensed version, but with clients, we use the full instrument because this is subtle; you cannot just guess someone’s preferences. Having that data helps, as it makes sense of behaviors and allows you to extend graciousness. For instance, if you don’t naturally enjoy clarifying, you might think that someone on your team asking “so many questions” is a slowdown. Knowing that this person likes to clarify, while you prefer something else in the process, lets you appreciate that she is doing work your team needs. With the language and framework, you read people differently, and that is a source of psychological safety.

Hybrid versus in-person: does mapping or working with preferences change when people rarely meet face to face?

Blair: That’s a real challenge. Nowadays, you may have people in India, Australia, and across Europe on your team, and never meet in person. Those interstitial moments, such as walking to get coffee or chatting by the drinking fountain, add nuance that online team building cannot fully replicate. You might have known colleagues for years and still not understand why their eyes glaze over in specific moments or why there are gaps in their contributions. But FourSight can also assist a manager who is operating in a two-dimensional interaction. The assessment provides reliable insight into thinking preferences and adds self-knowledge about how you approach problem-solving.

Sarah: A story brings this to life. A fully remote team of nurses at a large medical insurance company contacted us. Their job was to determine whether patients qualified for specific treatments, a task that required considerable clarification: Who are the patients? What are the symptoms? Which treatments and protocols apply? As you might expect, most preferred to clarify. The team was high-functioning, but there were two people seen as “problems.”

We had everyone take the assessment and then met in person for the first time. You could see that some people were not talking to others. They were the ‘problem people.’

According to the assessment, one preferred ideate and one preferred implement. No wonder the high ideator was considered “disruptive,” always “coming up with something new” and “making people start over.” The implementer was labeled “bossy” because she kept trying to push the group into action while others were still thinking things through. After the debrief, the mood shifted completely.

How?

Sarah: People leaned in and talked openly. The ideator realized that because she held a leadership role, her ideas sounded like mandates. She learned to preface with “This is just an idea. We do not have to do it, but can I share it and see if it resonates? We can table it, do it later, or drop it, etc.” That created a different relationship with the team. The implementer’s push, on the other hand, was reframed as valuable momentum rather than bulldozing.

But if 90 percent of the work is to clarify, and 90 percent of the team prefers to clarify, what do you do with the two who prefer to ideate or implement? Do they not end up sidelined?

Blair: They often feel sidelined and different. But teams need to provide value and improve over time, which requires new ways to deliver that value. My PhD research looked at whether people cluster by preference in different functions. The shorthand is yes, people are attracted to certain kinds of problems, and you called it, people doing clarifying work look a lot like clarifiers. But remember, preference is separate from ability. That is where prejudice creeps in: You prefer X, therefore you cannot do Y? No! You might have someone in accounting who is excellent at the job and prefers implementing. Their drive is to figure out how to do this quicker, better, and more effectively. As a manager, that is a golden opportunity. They understand the work and bring a different perspective. If you utilize that and get the team together around it, you have someone injecting new ways of thinking.

Thereby, we flip the narrative from problem child to valuable perspective.

Sarah: In the nurses’ example, the high ideator headed the research. Her job was to come up with new ways of doing things. To her team, her behavior felt disruptive to standard operating procedure, which is the nature of ideation. However, if you don’t personify the disruption as “She is disruptive!”, the team can still capture the value. The big learning was signaling: Because she was unconscious of her ideation preference, she assumed the value was obvious. By prefacing her ideas as “just ideas,” the team could hear her.

Our audience is L&D and HR leaders. They are asked for hard metrics. Some benefits you described, like psychological safety, show up over time. If someone asks for hard evidence that this works, what do you point to?

Blair: Trained groups in creative problem solving outperform untrained groups in key areas. They identify and select problems more effectively, generate a broader range of ideas, both good and bad, but select better ones, evaluate, develop, and improve solutions of higher quality, and create stronger implementation plans. A study nicknamed the Bus Study, conducted at the State University of New York’s Center for Studies in Creativity, speaks to this. So, besides the scientific foundation, what can managers do and expect in practice? Well, you can count this: Are there more complaints about the work or about working with others than the time spent actually solving problems? In meetings: How often do you hear problem identification language? “How might we…” or “In what ways might we…,” versus “We cannot do that” and “We have never done it that way.” When it is time to generate ideas: Can your team produce dozens of options in a few minutes and then select appropriately, or is it the standard one or two ideas in an hour that get attacked and debated indefinitely?

That is refreshingly hands-on. So, a team leader might literally sit there with a notebook and tally problem-solving language, idea counts, and selection quality to see if the structure is taking hold?

Blair: Exactly.

Give people a common language and a structured approach, and use that to structure agenda items. Over time, people sense the flow.

“Let’s start by clarifying. We will get a briefing on the goal. We will spend a finite amount of time understanding the situation and identify the major issues to address before we generate options and select.” Cutting through chaos this way leads to returns quickly.

Sarah: Another advantage compared with broader personality assessments like DiSC or Myers-Briggs is that FourSight does not stop at self-awareness. Unlike most assessments, FourSight doesn’t focus on personality. It focuses on problem-solving and reveals how you naturally approach a problem. Once you know that, you can learn tools to clarify, ideate, develop, and implement more effectively, and the team can share those tools. The shared language and toolkit speed the group through the process.

Could you walk us through a before-and-after where intentionally managing cognitive diversity moved the needle?

Blair: Sure. Here’s one of my favorites: A manufacturing plant set a goal to save 14 million dollars while improving product features, with no cuts to headcount or quality. People had known each other for their entire careers – 10, 15, or 20-plus years – and many did not believe savings were possible without layoffs. About sixty people took FourSight: We provided a brief overview of the process, which includes clarifying, ideating, developing, implementing, and then generating numerous alternatives before focusing and selecting. For two days, we did high-quality clarification: What is going on? Where is money going out the door? As a manufacturing plant, we examined the waste going up the smokestack, down the drain, and into the trash bins, and we involved everyone from transportation to marketing and sales. Crucially, the plant workers themselves helped identify which problems should be addressed. Nobody put themselves forward as smarter; everybody had a chance to contribute. We then generated ideas against each identified challenge, selected, developed, and refined them.

A pencil has two ends: you write with one and erase with the other, allowing you to improve and keep moving.

And the result?

Blair: By their own estimation, in the end, they blew past $14 million, identifying closer to $67 million in optimization projects. Afterward, the plant manager said, “You got me the money, but that is not what you really do, is it?” He looked around the room. It had been half an hour since we said people could go home and enjoy the extra time. But people were still sitting around the tables.

Many of these workers had known each other since forever. Some had checked out years ago, while others barely spoke to each other. Now, they were talking about work and overcoming challenges together.

Over the two days, they worked hard and had a good time. The process provided them with a way to re-engage and track progress.

Sarah: That is the power. Teamwork is not just about achieving goals. It is about reigniting connection and pride in work.

That story edges into team culture. There is also the larger company culture. What can a team leader do if the broader culture does not encourage clarifying, ideating, or cross-functional problem solving at all? How do you operate as a green island in a desert?

Blair: One job of a team leader is to use their organizational influence and to hold an umbrella over their people. You cannot control everything that rolls downhill, but you can clear enough room for your team to focus on what matters. That is easier said than done, because unreasonable demands keep coming, but high-performing teams figure out how to put that umbrella up. That manufacturing plant was part of a multinational with dozens of divisions. For two days, we put an umbrella over it and said, “Here is how we will operate now.” Not forever and always, though we gave them seeds to keep it going.

Sometimes, you must create a sane microcosm in a crazy place, and be it only for now, for this conversation, the next forty-five minutes. Then take it from there.

Sarah: The umbrella also creates a microclimate. Climate is not culture. Culture is hard to shift. Climate is temporal and local. You can create a small oasis where people feel protected and resourced. As a team leader, you can give people awareness of themselves, of the team, and of the process, so they can solve problems collectively in a way that is engaging and rewarding. Intrinsic motivation tends to involve three key elements. First, it requires a meaningful challenge to galvanize people, which is why giving big and meaningful challenges is important. Second, grant some autonomy in how to work it out; do not send the clarifier, ideator, and implementer off in different directions and then be surprised by the mismatch. Give them a common language and shared tools. Third: Do it together. That brings people back, and they take pride in the work.

Blair: That third leg, together, is communication and relationships. Even in a big company where we might feel beaten down, we can say, “When we have our monthly meeting, we will carve out an hour to work together and knock some things down.” That is not ticking boxes; it is figuring out what we can achieve. It is motivating.

Many organizations already speak Design Thinking, Six Sigma, or Agile. How does FourSight fit in without forcing a new dialect?

Sarah: Yes, some organizations adhere to a particular process like Design Thinking, Six Sigma, or Agile. It’s crucial to understand that these highly useful process models tend to emphasize specific stages of the universal problem-solving process: Design Thinking is strong at the front end, clarifying and ideating. Agile was born in software because it’s effective at the back end: develop and implement. Simply because people with a development preference usually kept refining and redesigning and did not ship when managers said, “Move it out!” Now, FourSight is designed to play well with others. Those models are expert systems for specific applications, and they excel in those areas. FourSight reminds you that the same four types of thinking fuel all of them. That helps you see that people engage with those process models differently.

Blair: Perhaps even more importantly, when you need to communicate across departments, people using different models often do not know how to talk to each other. People who are all-in on design thinking stake their careers on it being useful everywhere. Then the Agile folks say that only they get results. It is not just different departments speaking different problem-solving languages; it can feel like rival camps.

Star Wars versus Star Trek: Both may be sci-fi, but they exist in different and largely incompatible galaxies.

Blair: That’s it. FourSight can bridge that gap with a universal problem-solving process that works as a handshake between them. We will not name the company, but a multinational high-tech firm has deployed FourSight as a metamodel to help with handoffs between design thinking and Agile projects. It has been slow but steady, and now there is a way to interact and decide which projects belong where – finally, Star Wars corresponds with Star Trek.

Before we wrap, if you could leave one practical thought with a leader wrestling with bad team dynamics, what would it be?

Sarah: Do not try to change who people are. Synchronize how they think together. Move through the four modes one at a time. Give meaningful challenges, allow autonomy, and provide the shared language and process. That is how teams move from storming to performing.

Blair: Remember the umbrella.

Even in a messy culture, you can create a sane space where your team thrives. That is where bad teams turn into good ones, and usually faster than you expect.

About the Authors
Sarah Thurber runs the FourSight company, which has introduced creative thinking to more than 100,000 people around the world and is the co-author of The Secret of the Highly Creative Thinker (with Dorte Nielsen), ranked #4 on Inc.’s list of “44 Favorite Books of High Achievers.” Blair Miller, PhD, is the president of Blair Miller Innovation and a co-founding partner and research coordinator at FourSight. Together, they wrote Good Team, Bad Team.

The Bus Study:
Gerard J. Puccio, Cyndi Burnett, Selcuk Acar, Jo A. Yudess, Molly Holinger, John F. Cabra: Creative Problem Solving in Small Groups: The Effects of Creativity Training on Idea Generation, Solution Creativity, and Leadership Effectiveness. In: The Journal of Creative Behavior. Vol. 54. June 2020.