Charles Duhigg spoke with a bunch of people in various arenas about how to be productive and successful. He outlines 8 ideas to make productivity and success your friends.
Atul Gawande is a massively successful and productive guy.
There are medical cases of a complete and utter loss of motivation. People would become suddenly passive. Not sad. Not dealing with memory loss or change in intelligence. This comes from damage to the striatum. Very small damage can result in total apathy. They don't care to move on their own, but CAN move.
"The need for control is a biological imperative". We have an instinct for control. Control is motivating. As a matter of fact it doesn't even really matter what we are controlling. Or if controlling means we aren't any better off. This is why you take the exit off the slow highway even though the back roads are longer.
This book says the same thing. Even the same study. "You tried so hard" as opposed to "you're so smart". The Marines have changed their focus on getting people to become decision makers. The drill instructors don't praise people on the things they are naturally good at.
Google took a good, long intensive look at what separated the highly-functioning incredibly effective teams from those that are less effective. It boiled down to cultural norms within the teams themselves more so than the makeup of the team or any particular cadence of meeting or team structure. The norms related to psychological safety were those that were associated with highly functional teams: ability to bring to light ideas you're unsure of, ability to speak up and question things (respectfully), belief that they are not going to be berated in front of a group.
You need people to feel safe, but also feel like they can speak up and disagree.
<aside> 👉 There is an "I" in "team". There are a bunch of them. They need to be heard and feel safe to retain their individuality and contribute in their unique way.
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Lorne Michaels didn't want "no I in team"... he wanted a team full of "I"s, where nobody's particular quirks are lost to the group. Lorne Michaels treats everyone differently. He wants to preserve the individual. Get different people with different styles bumping into each other.
Equitable conversational turn-taking. Teams should, on the whole, share the role of "speaker" pretty evenly.
Social empathy. Good teams are full of people are attuned to each other's body language and expressions.