691: Dr. Ron Friedman - The Science of High-Performing Teams, Chevy Chase, Toxic Teammates, The Succession Writers' Room, Deleting Recurring Meetings, Why Side Hustles Are Good, and Why Only 8% of Teams Make the Cut

**Ryan Hawk** (0:00)
As I told you before, I am super pumped about my next book, The Price of Becoming. It will be out in a few months. In the meantime, I have sent it to some leaders that I really admire. One of them is four star General Stanley McChrystal. I asked him what he thought and he sent me back this email, quote, having led in environments where preparation, discipline and trust determine outcomes, I found The Price of Becoming deeply authentic. Ryan Hawk captures a truth familiar to those in uniform. Excellence is earned through consistent effort, accountability and the willingness to stay uncomfortable long after others stop. Man, so cool. I hope you will choose to pre-order my book The Price of Becoming. You can do it at learningleader.com and see all types of pre-order bonuses. Or if you want, just go straight to Amazon and pre-order The Price of Becoming. Thank you so much.
Welcome to The Learning Leader Show presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Go to learningleader.com for show notes of this and all podcast episodes. Go to learningleader.com. Now on to tonight's featured leader, Dr. Ron Friedman is a psychologist, researcher and the author of Superteams, The Science and Secrets of High-Performing Teams. Ron and his team spent years studying what the best teams in the world actually do differently, surveying thousands of professionals, analyzing more than 100,000 data points, and publishing research that became the second most read article in Harvard Business Review history. During our conversation, we discussed why the most popular productivity tips show zero correlation with better team performance, and what Super Teams did instead. And then, what Chevy Chase and Tina Fey reveal about the difference between a toxic teammate and a great one, what the Succession Writer's Room teaches us about the kind of feedback that actually makes teams better, and then the research on recurring meetings that led Shopify to ban them entirely and what happened when they did. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Dr. Ron Friedman.
So, I loved reading about briefly your dad. You said he threw himself into impossible challenges and taught us, I love this, the dignity of hard work. Can you tell me more about your dad?

**Ron Friedman** (3:02)
My dad was a physician. I grew up in Israel and my dad did not want me to go to the army. Felt like he wanted his family to be safe and he came to the US as a physician who had a job in Israel and picked up the phone and just started dialing for jobs. Just started calling hospitals in New York City until he found a job at NYU.
That was a risk. He pulled his family out of a country he knew, didn't really speak the language and succeeded and that was inspiring.

**Ryan Hawk** (3:32)
Wow. What made you choose to dedicate it to him?

**Ron Friedman** (3:35)
He just recently passed away.

**Ryan Hawk** (3:36)
I'm sorry to hear that. I love hearing about great people that have influenced you, and so I appreciate you sharing that, man.

**Ron Friedman** (3:44)
Yeah, I appreciate you asking.

**Ryan Hawk** (3:45)
Yeah, for sure. A little bit more about your backstory. You compare and contrast a couple of different experiences in your life. One, when you were at the firm, and one, when you were at the agency. I won't spoil the story. I want to hear you tell it in your words. I've read about it, but I'm curious, can you tell me how these two experiences at the firm and at the agency, how they impacted you?

**Ron Friedman** (4:11)
Yeah. So I started out as a professor teaching at colleges and universities, and what I discovered being a professor is you're basically teaching the same thing over and over again, and so I wanted to learn new things. That's the thing that got me into academia in the first place. So I decided to get a job outside of academia and I got a job as a pollster. So my job was to measure public opinion, figure out what it is that people believe, and then help organizations shape those opinions using psychological principles.
So my first job was at a political consulting firm, and it was incredibly high-pressure, cutthroat. You had to consistently stand out in order to demonstrate how smart you were. Do you remember the quote from the book about being the smartest person in the room? You got to be the smartest person in the room or you're dead wood. That's how we were taught to succeed. I left that firm and I then joined a marketing agency, and that marketing agency was basically the cultural opposite. Collaboration was the agency's primary focus. And so we were in constantly in team building activities, every meeting involved at least like 10 people. We were even encouraged to keep our doors open. We had private offices, we were not allowed to close our doors because it sent a signal that you thought your work was more important than the team's.