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Team Chemistry: The Intangible Forces That Make Teams Win | Joan Ryan, Revisited
01:06:15
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- [00:04]
A
I came across this mind blowing sentence that started to crystallize what team chemistry was. No human is a functioning whole on his own. Each has open loops that only someone else can complete. What does that mean? Jake Peavey was this ferocious picture. I asked him, I said, okay, Jade, you cannot get more than 100% because 100% is 100%. And he said, my teammates bring out a fight in me I can't willingly summon for myself when I'm with these teammates who care so much. They're committed to each other, they're bonded with each other. That to me is really the foundation of team chemistry. They all connect to each other and ultimately it all leads to high performance and winning.
- [01:02]
B
Welcome to the Work for Humans podcast. This is Dart Lindsley. I think about this episode all the time. It's still a question. Is performance just the sum of individuals or is there something more? Is there something emergent? Does team chemistry make a difference? Joan Ryan says absolutely it does. Joan is one of the first female sports columnists in the United States. And as an award winning journalist and author with over four decades of experience, she's watched teams rise and fall and win and lose. And she says success cannot be predicted by adding up the stats on the team roster. In her book, Unlocking the Science and Soul of Team Chemistry, Joan tells the inside stories of team chemistry. What it is, how to recognize it, and how to use it to elevate the performance of any group from sports to business and beyond. In this episode, Joan and I discuss how to talk about how to identify and use team chemistry to elevate performance, the neurophysiology of human connection, and the process of connecting with others through emotions versus over a shared goal. We also talk about the essential archetypes that drive this kind of team chemistry and how to use this intangible concept to create tangible results, as well as other topics. All right, if you enjoyed this episode, please continue to support Work for Humans by subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts. And now my conversation with Joan Ryan. Joan Ryan, welcome to Work for Humans.
- [02:47]
A
Thanks, Dart.
- [02:49]
B
I just spent a lot of time with your book Intangibles, and I'm going to read the whole title. It's Unlocking the Science and Soul of Team Chemistry. And I really believe you set out and achieved something incredibly ambitious here. And it's captured in the title, which is that so much of what makes teams successful or not successful is intangible. It's emergent. And I'm going to ask you about your journey Because I wonder if you knew how hard it was going to be when you started. I'm going to come back to that. But I want to just say to you and to listeners why we're talking about this, which is that so many people that I talk to and I ask them what they love about work or what they want from work, they say they want to work with teams. And it is absolutely true that when you're on a team that is just kicking ass, it feels fantastic. And so you've written a book, it's about sports, it's about teams. And I want to dig into how teams like that emerge or are created. So, first of all, did you expect it to be as hard as it was?
- [04:00]
A
No. I mean, I knew it would be hard. And when I launched into this, I really wasn't necessarily visualizing a book. It's just that curiosity about team chemistry. And it happened, really in 2009 at the 20th anniversary of the Giants 1989 team that got to the World Series. And anybody who watched it knows that we had the earthquake and all the rest of it. And so 20 years later, I go to the reunion outside of what's now Oracle park in the parking lot, and I was really looking forward to seeing that team because I loved that team. I came to San Francisco in 85, and so this was very shortly after that. And that was a team I totally fell for. I fell in love with these guys because they were just these misfits. And I go into the tent and I'm looking at these guys, and back in 89, even though they were misfits, and they really, that team should have just fractured into shards, instead, they openly loved each other. And I heard the words team chemistry as I walked through these guys and caught up with them. And when I could see it in their eyes and hear it in their voices, they still loved each other. And so on my way home, I started to think. I never really thought about what team chemistry actually was. And so my curiosity got the best of me, and I just wanted to answer three questions. Does team chemistry actually exist? If it exists, what is it? And then how does it elevate performance? Because why even talk about it if it doesn't improve performance?
- [05:57]
B
Why were you hanging out with the Giants?
- [06:00]
A
Why was I hanging out with the Giants? I was a sports writer for a long time, starting in 1983, 84, at the Orlando Sentinel, and luckily for me, the editor of the Orlando Sentinel became the editor of the San Francisco examiner and hired four of us away. And I was lucky enough to be there. And I never set out to be a sports writer, but there I was. And the reason, frankly, I was still in Orlando and I was a cub reporter, this young person. And I had to cover The Orlando Renegades vs. The Birmingham Stallions in the USFL United States football League, which nobody really paid any attention to. But anyway, I go down, the game's over. I know who I have to talk to, this one player who broke his hand or something. And I go into the locker room. It was one of my first or second time in a locker room, a baseball locker room. And I walk in, push open the door and walk right in to this. You know, it's like the wildebeest crossing the rivers in Kenya. It was, you walk right into these guys going to. And from the back, you know, from the lockers to the, you know, and so you're right in the middle of them and they're all naked and whatever, so you kind of stop and you're like, okay, I just need to find this one guy's locker. And so I'm standing next to the lockers, there's a bench there. And one of the guys is. Actually, this was a football locker, not baseball. Walk in right next to a bench where one of these big old guys is cutting off the tape on his ankles and his wrists like they all do. Anybody who knows football. And while I'm standing there and they've just stopped in their tracks and looked at me, and then all of a sudden erupted in and I was, you know, it was like the bullies at the, in the playground, I don't even remember what they said, but it wasn't nice. And then I feel this thing going up my leg toward the hem of my skirt. And I look down and it's this guy with the long handled razor running it up my leg. Yes. So at that point I stopped asking for that player that I needed and just like, okay, I've got to get, get the hell out of here. And found the PR guy. Anyway, he pulled the player out for me and I asked some bad questions, went up to the press box. I'm sure I wrote a terrible article. I don't really remember, but at that point when I never really set out to be a sportswriter, it's not what I really wanted to do. But after being in that locker room and how clearly they did not want me around at all in their world, that's when I decided I really wanted to be a sports writer. So I based my whole career on bitterness and Resentment. But it has worked out quite well
- [09:17]
B
for me and it's consistent with going after a subject that maybe didn't want you. Right?
- [09:25]
A
Didn't want me. I don't know why I did this.
- [09:28]
B
So in going after chemistry, one of the things I noticed in a lot of the people you interviewed is that there's a very split camp on this. People either say chemistry is super important, it's everything, or people say, absolutely there's no such thing as chemistry. It turns out it's almost like a religious war that you waded into.
- [09:51]
A
It was analytics versus human nature, analytics versus team chemistry. And early in the book, I have a little thing about Michael Lewis because I had interviewed him like four nights in a row for a speaking series and the first time I saw him in the green room. And I really admire Michael Lewis. I'll say that up front. His books are just extraordinary. However, comma, when I talked from the green room and I just introduced myself, we had this one person in common, a professor at UC Berkeley. And he says, well, how do you know him? And I said, well, he's advising me a little bit on this book that I'm writing. Oh, what are you writing about? And I said, team chemistry. And he says, doesn't exist, period. And I kind of was like, oh, that's kind of interesting. And what occurred to me is like, oh my gosh, he's such an analytics guy from the book Moneyball, all about stats and measurement and all of that. And I thought, well, that's really interesting that somebody as smart as Michael Lewis could think that a team could perform at its best only by analytics. Because I know all the, we have tons of analytics guys that the Giants where I'm in my 16th year as their media advisor. It's really, really important and essential and to come up with the right strategies, but it's human beings that have to carry out that strategy. And it's mind boggling to me that some really, really smart people like Michael Lewis just dismissed out of hand that team chemistry even exists, much less matters
- [11:47]
B
a part of the reason. And this comes up over and over again in the book, not always directly. I'm going to put this in systems thinking a little bit, which is that the idea of A system is 100% defined by the atoms, by the single things in the system, as if they're completely independent. And that's reasonable for something like atomic particles, right? Which are themselves quite simple. But this is something I argue. Every person in a company, for instance, is bigger than the whole company. In terms of the complexity of their mind, that the human brain is so complex that we have not been able to create a company that matches its complexity. And that's definitely true of a sports team, which is that the sport itself is. The rules are quite simple. Right. But the complexity of each human inside it is larger than the whole system that they're in. So let's get into the first part of the book here, which is about essentially the neurophysiology of connection. You started exploring how people are connected. What did you find?
- [12:57]
A
Well, what I found was, and this was maybe in general, the most fascinating stuff I came across, which was the neuroscience. So our brains evolved over 3 million years. We have among the biggest brains, maybe the biggest brains, proportionately with other animals in the animal kingdom, or at least primates. And our brains kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger of those 3 million years, quadrupled in size. And scientists came to understand that the brain got larger, not to house our intellectual wiring. It was to accommodate all the growing social wiring. The social wiring was more important for our survival back then and today than our intellectual wiring now. Why is that? Now we know from caveman days it was about we needed to bond with each other, to bond with each other so strongly that we would sacrifice ourselves for each other. It was the most essential thing. So relationships are team chemistry in a lot of ways. It's one of the basis of trust. We had to have trust. I mean, tribalism is our most deeply rooted human behavior. And it's those atoms. You know, the atoms come together to create something. Individual people, when they're together, are no longer individual people. It becomes an entity unto itself.
- [14:45]
B
Yes. Yeah, that's a really good point. What is? You phrase it as our open loop nature.
- [14:53]
A
Yes. And that's from a book by a psychoanalyst neuroscientist named Thomas Lewis, who I discovered happened to live down the street from me, which I didn't know. So I spent a little time with him because in his book I came across this mind blowing sense that I thought started to crystallize what team chemistry was. And he said, no human is a functioning whole on his own. Each has open loops that only someone else can complete. And now there's a lot of examples. What does that mean? One thing it means is something that a baseball player said, and then I'm going to take it to my parents and babies in orphanages. But Jake Peavey, when I asked him about team chemistry and how team chemistry is supposed to elevate performance, and Jake Peavey Was this just ferocious pitcher? And he would stomp and snort on the mound and just give up everything he has. So when I asked him, I said, okay, Jake, you do this on the mound. You're just 100%. And I said, you know, you cannot get more than 100% because 100% is 100%, you know. And he said, my teammates bring out a fight in me I can't willingly summon for myself. And I thought, man, that's the best sentence in the book. And I didn't write it said, when I'm with these teammates who care so much, they're committed to each other, they're bonded with each other, that they will do whatever they need to win. They are elevating each other's performance. And we use the word independent a lot of times. And I start to think there is no such thing of independence of a singular person. But these open loops are. For instance, my mother died when she was, like, 75, and she died very suddenly nine months later. My father, who had really nothing wrong with him, all of a sudden was losing weight. He wasn't eating. He just looked kind of skeletal. He didn't know how to use the remote anymore. All these things. He just kept deteriorating, and he died, you know, and of course, we had sent him to doctor, you know, whatever. And so that was one thing. So keep that. That his diagnosis was failure to thrive. Okay, what does that mean? And it reminded me the only time I had heard that must have been in college biology or something, about babies in, quote, sterile orphanages over in Europe. And so, you know, sickness would go around, so they decided that the best thing to do would be to keep these babies separate in their little cribs with plastic dividers between them all, and that the caretakers were instructed to not touch them except when you absolutely have to, because they didn't want to start a contagion. So that's what they did. You know, they didn't really talk to the babies, nothing. Well, over time, one baby died, another baby died, and one of these orphanage, sterile orphanages, every single baby died. And again, it was failure to thrive. And that's the open loop that literally, we humans cannot survive without connection with other people. These babies could not, on their own, produce the hormones and chemicals in their brain that they needed to be able to be whole. And so that, to me, is really the foundation, ultimately, of a clubhouse of players and team chemistry and a team that is able to create high performance. They all connect to each other, and ultimately, it all leads to high performance. And winning.
- [19:23]
B
Yeah. And you said something toward the end of the book which was, was it encourage, enhance performance, Elevate performance. It elevates performance, which is to say that there needs to be the fundamental capabilities there in the first place to be elevated, but that the chemistry of the team can either potentially destroy or block that or enhance it.
- [19:51]
A
Yeah. And where I came to land on this was that team chemistry has only one function, and that is to elevate performance. And if it doesn't, if what you're calling team chemistry doesn't elevate performance, it's not team chemistry. It's camaraderie. A lot of people mix that all up. Oh, you know, we go out to dinner together, we really super like one another, and it's like, that's great. But it's not team chemistry. You have to improve your performance in order for team chemistry to exist.
- [20:30]
B
You cite as one example, which I'd love to dig into, by the way. I don't follow sports. And so as a result, I have to look at everybody's name. Johnny Gomes. Yeah, you spoke about Johnny Gomes, and you used the idea of him being a super carrier of chemistry. What does that mean?
- [20:48]
A
Yes, he has fascinated me. And there's a whole chapter in the book devoted to Johnny Gomes, who few people really know anything about. You know, he wasn't a great player, baseball player. You know, he hit 242, if anybody knows, batting averages over the course of his career. And he went from one team to another over 11 years. And a pattern began to emerge about Johnny Gomes. And like I said, he played for like six different teams, just went from one to another. And the pattern was that Johnny Gomes teams seemed to win disproportionately. And Johnny Gomes was this guy who was just loved baseball. He loved it. And part of that was because he grew up in a single family and a single mother and all of that. And his baseball team as a little kid became his family. So he grew up in this sense of, I am part of a team at all times. And what Johnny Gomes did was he would go into the video room if one of his teammates was having a hard time with their swing, and he'd go study it and study it and come back and help this guy. So anyway, long story short, he lands on the Boston Red Sox, and he'd already been on teams where, you know, they hadn't won in 17 years. And he comes on and they win. And, you know, so there have been, like, four teams like that. So now he lands on the Red Sox, and they get to the World Series. It's now game four of a seven game series. The Red Sox are playing the St. Louis Cardinals. The Red Sox are down two games to one. Now, if they lose game four, they're down three games to one. And it's really almost impossible. So it's like just a few hours before game four is about to start, and the leadership in the Red Sox clubhouse, they gather together in a corner and they're talking to each other, and it's all the big names, big papi and all those guys. And then they march into the manager's office. This is a few hours before the game of a World Series game, march into the office, and they say, because Johnny Gomes is not in the lineup because he hasn't had a hit yet in the postseason. So they walk in and they said, you got to put Gomes back in the lineup. And the manager's looking at him. It was John Farrell at the time, looking at him like they got three heads. You know, it's like the lineup has been put up. It's been out on social media. I'm the manager, and he's not playing. He hasn't gotten hit. And they basically staged a mutiny, which I'd never heard of before. Nobody's ever heard of it, and they would not leave that office. They believed so much that Johnny Gomes presence on the field made them a better team, that they wouldn't leave the office. So the manager finally said, all right, we're going to pull one guy out and put Johnny Gomes in. And sure enough, they win the game and the next two. And so the measurement. So we talk about, you know, okay, well, who cares, you know, what else was going on? But the numbers that people respect about Johnny Gomes was not that he hit.212 during the day. It was that in every game in the postseason that Johnny Gomes played in, the Red Sox were 10 and 1. They've won 10 of the 11 games that Gomes was in. So there's definitely something to the impact that Johnny Gomes had on almost every team he was with.
- [24:44]
B
Did you find a split between people who believed in it in chemistry and people who didn't? Did people from teams believe in it more than people who observed teams?
- [24:57]
A
No. No. There were managers who didn't believe in team chemistry. You know, you'd always get a player here and there that didn't believe in team chemistry. But mostly the people who didn't believe in team chemistry Were the guys who were. And it was mostly guys who really, really, really were focused on analytics. And if it couldn't be measured, it didn't exist. When of course, again, that's just ridiculous. Of course it's like light still existed before we could measure the light waves and how they reached us. So it was just the whole thing just kind of ridiculous. And what I also found was that when managers like Jim Leland with the Pirates, he would say team chemistry doesn't exist. But then the longer I talked with him, the more he was describing team chemistry. He just didn't call it that.
- [25:54]
B
Are there sports where team chemistry might play a bigger role than others? First of all, I was thinking about a game like basketball where people are so intertwined with each other and passing and they almost have to be of one mind to really make that work. I mean, it's an unbelievable sport for that. And so it strikes me as one that's very collaborative as opposed to going to bat one at a time. On the other hand, going to bat is such a fine tuned thing. It's so split second that I can also imagine that it's incredibly important there. And so did you find that some sports had more of a belief in chemistry than others or more effect?
- [26:41]
A
I would say that every team, whether it's business or sports that is chasing a specific goal, that have a shared goal, team chemistry has an impact. So given that every team with a shared goal would want to have team chemistry, they don't all have it, but they want to have team chemistry. One of the reasons I hyper focused on baseball was the idea that if I could prove that team chemistry existed in baseball, then it surely exists on every team. Because baseball is like they're sitting in their own cubicles out on the field, they're not passing the ball as in soccer or basketball, rugby, all of those teams. So it doesn't seem, seem like there's a lot of inner connection with baseball players, but what does happen? Yes, the guy's out in left field or right field and all of that, and you're standing by yourself in that batter's box, but you're not by yourself. If you have a team, a culture of team chemistry in your clubhouse, when you step to the plate, you're bringing all of that with you. You're not alone. You're bringing everything that Johnny Gomes has instilled in you to believe in and to see what the picture is, throw all of those things. So what happens in the clubhouse actually really matters a lot. They build trust with Each other, they bond with each other. And most important is that they commit to each other. They're not committing to that goal off at the end of the season, the World Series or, you know, the NBA championship. A great team, a great chemistry team doesn't commit to the goal. They commit to each other, and that carries them to the goal.
- [28:50]
B
I'm going to read a couple of quotes from the book. The first one's from UCLA basketball coach John Wooden. He defined team chemistry, an eagerness to sacrifice personal glory for the welfare of the group as a whole. So where he says the welfare of the group as a whole. One of my questions was whether the dynamics of some sports damage that kind of thinking of themselves as a whole. I mean, one of the things I got from reading the book is just how not mercenary but cutthroat trades are in baseball. I mean, how many times did Gomes get traded? He was traded like every couple of years because he wasn't batting that great. But every place that he went, the team would make it into the World Series, which was amazing.
- [29:40]
A
Or yeah, similar. Or at least reach a higher level than that team had ever reached.
- [29:46]
B
Had ever reached. I suspect that statistically there's a possibility there of saying what are the odds of that? The odds are infinitesimal that that would happen without some effect. Could happen, but be very unlikely. But the very nature of baseball is that if you are not individually batting at a certain level, it doesn't matter how well your team does, you're going to get cut, you're going to get traded, you're going to get sent to the minors, which happened to Gomes a couple of times. He got sent to the minors. And so the incentive to behave like Gomes and to support the whole team must be really hard to maintain in a sport that treats its players that way.
- [30:28]
A
Yeah, I mean, I think it's real. For sure, that does happen. I don't think it happens as much as people think it happens, frankly. I think it does happen more in baseball because basketball, what does it have 12 players and a baseball team has about 40 generally, but only 26 in the dugout at any one time. I don't think it's mercenary at all. I think it's a team, team executives wanting to obviously feel the best possible team to win that they can. But as we know about Johnny Gomes, we'll just go back to Johnny Gomes. But there's other Johnny Gomez's out there that a really good manager and a really good baseball operations director. They will recognize the impact, the intangible, unmeasurable impact someone will can have in a baseball clubhouse or any team. And part of that is obviously the impact that they have on each other. And I know that you saw this in the book, these archetype characters, these seven archetypes that I identified. And one of them is the sage. So it's an older player, it's a veteran who is past his best years. So he's not necessarily out there to hit home runs, but boy, is he there giving guidance and advice and encouragement to the rest of the team. He's the grandpa. He says, hey, come on over here. Yeah, I screwed up like that, too. It's not fatal. You're great, you're amazing. You're just the guy we need. And the sage can do that. And so the smart managers, the smart executives are going to recognize the impact of that on performance.
- [32:35]
B
Let's talk about the archetypes. I'm going to read them out. We probably won't be able to go through all of them, but we can go through the ones that you think are most critical. And I want to point out something about them ahead of time, that these archetypes are not necessarily attributes of the people, because different people in different situations may become different archetypes. So that was one of the things you pointed out, which is that we adapt ourselves to the context of the organization or the team that we're in. So there's the sage we were just talking about the kid, the enforcer, who I put in parentheses, the standards setter, the person who's going to say, these are our standards and they can either be a jerk about it or they can be sort of a wise sage enforcer. But they're still that standards setter, the buddy, the warrior, the spark plug and the gesture. Do they all have a role, a critical role in chemistry? Are they all necessary? Are some of them more important? Hey, everybody. On June 16th, I'll be speaking at one of my very favorite venues. It's the Future Talent Summit in Stockholm, Sweden. To get Tickets, go to futuretalentsummit.org that's all one word, and enter my speaker. Promo code elevenfold, which is eleven fold, to get a big discount. If you're in the area, I would love to meet you there. That's futuretalentsummit.org, promo code elevenfold.
- [34:14]
A
Yes, some of them are more important. And frankly, I think the most important, important of these seven archetypes is the jester. And it has to be a very wise, very intuitive person as the Jester, and obviously somebody who has some humor,
- [34:39]
B
I want to point out one of the really important things about the Jester is that the Jester is somebody who will adapt their style to who's around them and is somebody who can be a sage or a buddy or a spark plug, which we'll get to when they need to be. And so that's one of the attributes of them.
- [34:58]
A
And what's very important about the Jester is that when a teammate really screws up or they're really just dragging and just not doing what they should be doing, the Jester can shoot a very sharp arrow at that guy, give him very sharp criticism. But when it's wrapped in humor, it doesn't land as demoralizing and diminishing. So he can do that while the recipient of that criticism can walk away without being humiliated or embarrassed. And that is hugely, hugely important to send the message that way.
- [35:45]
B
Is there another on the list that you want to call forward?
- [35:49]
A
Well, I do think that every team needs a warrior. And the truth of the matter is that last season, the San Francisco Giants didn't do very well. Last year, they didn't have a warrior. And a warrior would be, you know, like the big star of that team. The guy where it's like, well, as long as we have him. And I'm just saying I'm always using the male because I'm kind of dealing with the Giants more than anything else. But this goes for men and women. But I'm going to continue to just use him. He's the guy that is sort of the, as you said before, the standard bearer. There's also the enforcer, but he kind of is what everyone is aspiring to, that as long as we have him, we always have a chance. And for a lot, many, many years, that was Barry Bonds. For those who don't know who Barry Bonds is, he's the king of the home run and very much of a difficult person to deal with if you are a reporter, for sure. And I covered him for quite a few years. But there's nobody else you'd rather have on the field with you?
- [37:05]
B
You initially thought that he was. You spoke about super carriers, but you initially thought that he was going to be a super disruptor.
- [37:13]
A
He was. In everybody's mind, he was a super disruptor because, I mean, I don't know how many years in a row, but he was on the top 10 list of worst teammates of all time by one of the sports websites. And so when it came time for me to say well, you know, Johnny Gomes is a super carrier, so there must be super disruptors, and Barry Bonds would be at the top of my list. Okay, so then what happened? As I do my research and talk to his teammates, and of course, he blew me off for an entire year. You know, he blew me off, blew me off. And then we started to have this really interesting relationship with each other. So, again, we talk about trust, bonding, and commitment as three of the pillars of team chemistry. And over that year, it was just building trust with Barry Bonds bit by bit by bit by bit. And once I got there and we could have real conversations, I came to realize, oh, okay, there's different kinds of chemistry. Barry Bonds actually had great chemistry, which I never would have thought, but it wasn't social emotional chemistry. Like most of us. You know, 99% of us walking the earth respond to social emotional chemistry. What he responded to was task chemistry. So when he was on the field, he was the best teammate you'd ever want. He was the guy that was 100% committed to his craft. He'd chew through an old catcher's mitt if he thought it would help the team just a tiny bit to win that game. And so that was a revelation to me. And I'm sure in businesses and companies, that task chemistry with certain people is exactly what they need because they don't have that social, emotional side of them. But we still want them on our team because they're amazing.
- [39:27]
B
I was thinking when you were talking about the Warrior archetype, when you were writing about it, of Caitlin Clark at the moment.
- [39:33]
A
What about that?
- [39:34]
B
Well, just that she's. When you see her on the court. I don't follow any sports, but I can't stop looking at Caitlin Clark playing basketball when she's on the court, while the team definitely knows it has a chance. But also she changes the whole dynamic of the court, in part because she's such a threat that she opens up the whole court for everybody else. And one of the things that led me to consider is whether or not team chemistry doesn't just affect the team that has the chemistry, whether or not it affects the team that they're playing against, which is if they can feel that chemistry. Because, frankly, if I was going onto a court with Caitlin Clark, I'd be afraid I'd be demoralized.
- [40:20]
A
You know what? I don't know. I've never thought about it through that lens. However, would Caitlin Clark be the Warrior on that team?
- [40:30]
B
That. That's what I think. And being the Warrior doesn't mean that you have to be a jerk. I don't have any impression that she is right.
- [40:38]
A
No, you're just that person who is like, wow, we got her on our team. I like our chances.
- [40:44]
B
Yes. One of the dichotomies is there's sort of the camp that believes that there is such a thing as team chemistry, and then there's the camp that believes in skills. And one of the challenges is figuring out whether or not team chemistry is predictive of success. But I wonder if you have any sense that skills are predictive of success. In other words, if the skills camp believes that skills are what's important and chemistry isn't, do they have evidence on their side that skills.
- [41:21]
A
Absolutely.
- [41:22]
B
That make a difference?
- [41:24]
A
Yes. I mean, they have. So if you have a team that has extraordinary skills and there's really, like, no evidence in the locker room that there's any chemistry. You know, it's what the Yankees used to say when they were winning. They had, you know, 25 players, 25 taxis. You know, nobody was going having dinner together, and they won because they were so good. However, after I did all this research on Barry Bonds and the task chemistry, I would bet. Now, I wasn't watching the Yankees back in the day when they would fight in the dugout or the Oakland A's when they would fight in the dugout. And how could that be team chemistry? But it was task chemistry. And I would bet my salary on the fact that when they were out on the fields, they had each other's backs 100%, because every single one out there, they want to win. Now, you can have. And there have been examples. One of them was. I forget what year it was with the Dream Team. The basketball Dream Team. The men's basketball Dream Team won every Olympics except one. And it was the one where they had too many warriors. Everybody was the warrior, and it just didn't work at all. And they. I think they finished third in that way. So in that way, the skill. They had all the skills in the world, but they couldn't win.
- [42:55]
B
Yeah. There was a quote in here. Let me see if I can find it.
- [42:58]
A
Is that the too much talent effect?
- [43:00]
B
Yes. Can you describe the too much talent effect?
- [43:05]
A
Well, it is that when you just have, you know, so five guys are on. On the court. Right. If you have five guys that basically do the same thing, you know, their role is very, very similar. And again, going back to the Warrior, if that's what's happening, they're all jockeying for stature. There's no Hierarchy. And really, on the best teams, nobody talks about it, but there is a hierarchy of stature. So everybody can fit where they fit, and it doesn't mean they're less than. But there are roles in which we need to know where we stand, so we're all not running to the same spot every time. So that's the too much talent effect. It becomes diminishing returns if you just have everybody up there as warriors, which
- [44:04]
B
is super interesting, because, I mean, one way that that could manifest is that everybody's trying to play the same position. And that was not the case. They had positions. There was one center, and they had defined roles. But their chemistry wasn't right.
- [44:23]
A
Their chemistry wasn't right. And that's leadership, too. Obviously, you have a manager or coach who's a leader, but every single person on a team needs to be a leader in what their role is. And I mean, it requires everybody's best, obviously, to win. And I mean, especially, like, you know, if you're in the Olympics or going into the World Series, every person in there, and it's like, in business, right? Everybody has something to contribute and something really essential to contribute, because you wouldn't be on that team if you didn't have something essential to contribute to that team. And when there is none of that people accepting and really embracing their role, you can have that too much talent effect. And like I said, it's diminishing returns.
- [45:20]
B
So let's take that back to the archetypes, because it may be that some archetypes balance each other out. And so you mentioned, for instance, that the sage and the kid can have a good relationship, which is that the sage might be jaded and might sort of know what's possible and might be a limiting factor on what's possible. Whereas the kid, new to the park, thinks everything's amazing, has never learned a lesson about humility. Right. And that both of them can get value from the other.
- [45:55]
A
Oh, absolutely. I think that that's a really good combination. I'm reminded of the Giants won the World series in 2010, 2012 and 2014. So 2010 was the first time that they won a World Series since they had moved to San Francisco in 1958 or 1959. So they win the World Series, they're in the ballroom after the game. And Buster Posey, who for many years was the Giants warrior, you know, he was the leader in the clubhouse, extraordinary catcher, extraordinary human being. But he's a kid, basically, in 2010. And, you know, one of the broadcasters, Mike Kruko, is in the elevator with him as they're going back to their room after the big ballroom celebration. And I think it was Buster's first year. I think it was. Yes, it was his first year in the major leagues. Going up in the elevator, and my crew coat says to Buster, just say, hey, don't get used to it. This doesn't happen all the time. And Buster looked at him and in all seriousnesses, well, why not? It's exactly what you say. All possibilities are out there, just waiting, waiting for it. And that is really. There's a great quote about Warren Bennis and Patricia Ward in their book Organizing Genius, the Secrets of Creative Collaboration. And they write. Great groups are not realistic places. They are exuberant, irrationally optimistic ones. And that was certainly the case in 2010 with the Giants team winning the World Series. But I love that. I love that quote.
- [47:53]
B
So what was the story of Aubrey Huff, and what did his story tell us about chemistry?
- [48:01]
A
Boy? Yeah. Aubrey Huff was a guy who came to the Giants in 2010, and he was the opposite of Johnny Gomes. He was indifferent to his teams, and he played on several teams. Tampa, Baltimore Orioles, I think, maybe Cincinnati Reds, I don't know. But he was a guy who was on losing teams. Five of his six years at Tampa, they finished last with the Orioles, two out of three years finished last. So he was indifferent. He would show up late and leave early. He just didn't care about anybody but himself. When I think about the story of Aubrey Huff, I think about. We often talk about, what is the impact this player had on his team? You know, like, my archetypes are that way. Right? You know, what's the impact the Jester has? What's the impact the Sparkpoke has? Aubrey Huff was all about what the team had, the impact on him, and it showed the power of team chemistry to actually reshape a human being that it seemed impossible. But Aubrey Huff comes in, he struts into the clubhouse during spring training. He hasn't met anybody yet. And he's bracing himself because everybody in baseball knows this guy is just a yudge, just a terrible guy. And so he's going into the clubhouse just waiting, you know, for guys to kind of dismiss him and everything. So he goes in, and it's a lot of young guys, and he's, you know, unpacking his bag and putting things away. And, you know, sure enough, here comes a player over, and Aubrey's just waiting for him to say, you know, what are you doing here? And the guy said, hey, Aubrey, Great to meet you. Glad you're here. Hey, welcome. And he's like, all right. And then another guy, Buster Posey, comes over, the big guy, and he does the same thing. And one after another, they're welcoming him. They're happy to see him. And these younger guys start to think that, oh, this guy's a veteran. He's a veteran guy, and he seems really confident in himself. And so, you know, long story short, Huff starts to see, like, these guys are coming and asking his advice. Well, nobody in his whole life has ever asked him for advice. And he starts to change. He starts to believe. He takes it in that, oh, they see me as a leader. And he starts to behave like one. He's also a jester. He's funny, but it's like I say, he's clubhouse funny, which is not funny to anybody else, but for them, it's funny, and he gets them to laugh. And sure enough, Aubrey Huff is leading the team. And home runs, hits. He's there early. Every time. He stays late, he's there. He is Mr. On the spot, arm around the younger guys and giving them advice, and he is a totally different person. And in fact, he is the leader of that team. I didn't know that at the time. And it was years later when I'm doing this research, and I had to go back and ask all of the players on that team, seriously, Aubrey Huff was the leader of this team. Because I really did not like Aubrey Huff. And nobody did. Ended up. Nobody liked Aubrey Huff. The next year, he was terrible. But on that year, he was literally the leader of that team. And I thought, that's a miracle, really, a miracle that this guy could be seen as a leader of a team. And yet that's the impact. A great team chemistry team can take that one Outlander, the one outsider, and pull him in not only to be part of the team, but to be the leader of that team.
- [52:05]
B
Yeah. And it's a story in unlearning, learned helplessness, he'd always been on teams that lost. He'd learned to not care, because if you cared, you're just gonna get hurt. This is a narration of his evolution that he told you, Right? So it's partially. You observed it from the outside, but he also explained this to you. And it's very interesting because I've worked with people who were absolutely stunningly incredible in one context, and in another context weren't, and I really have not been able to figure out exactly how that worked. And it's almost like they were a Different person in a different context. Just like what you're saying about how the archetypes can be somewhat emergent. And Huff is a good example of having emerged to fit the situation he was in.
- [53:01]
A
That is so fascinating and that it is about the archetypes, as you mentioned earlier, you can't hire them. You can't say, oh, we got a jester, we got to go hire a jester. It doesn't work that way. And players don't know that they're the jester. They don't know that they're the spark plug. It's just that they end up inhabiting that role. Because what happens is there's a role that's open, and I believe after all the research and all the teams I've been with, that players will fill the role that hasn't been filled yet. And so you could be the gesture on one team because the team needed it. The team needed a gesture. You know, there's these seven archetypes. They don't know that they're doing this, but the team needed a gesture and the team understood that. This guy steps up and he's the jester. So it is an emergent thing that you can't stage. You can't say, oh, God, let's tick off. Because there may be three sages, team chemistry. You know, they may. We may not have the buddy, but we've got two spark plugs. And that's why a manager, the manager, coach, they're the ones that need to identify those guys who are filling those roles. Because if they don't. If they just don't even realize that there are these archetype roles in a clubhouse, they're never going to be able to tell that guy, I understand the impact you're having. It's never going to show up on any scorecard, never going to show up anywhere. But I know your value, and I see it every day. And that's so important as a leader, as a manager, to acknowledge the value and the impact. It's the intangible value that we need to recognize and underscore and encourage for these guys, and that they know it and they feel it. They feel proud, they feel they belong there.
- [55:21]
B
You know, this is one of the themes of the book that I found most compelling, is it goes very deeply into the idea of measurability and that there are things that are real that can't be measured. And I think one of the sentences I loved in there was, being measurable doesn't make something real. Being measurable just makes something measurable. And one of the dynamics that I worry about in business all the time is essentially the thing I was bringing up about batting averages and getting sent to the miners, which is that people are promoted in companies largely for their batting average, and that there are people in the company who are producing value in part by optimizing the success of their organization over the success of themselves. And so when you set up a situation in a company where, I mean, a typical one is that only measurable things are rewarded. And sometimes what that sets up is that people are going to pursue an objective because it's measurable, not because it's important. This is one of the things I love about the book, is that you wade into this space between what can be known through measurement and what's actually reality, and that you walk in that space. And a part of the reason why it's hard to measure is because it is emergent, which is you can't do a cause and effect relationship between these things. That's very, very direct or predictive, but it's still real. It's as real as gravity, potentially. It's as real as magnetism, which are both invisible. But it's a really challenging thing to do. It's a really challenging thing to wade into that and to try to find the meaning in it.
- [57:10]
A
Yeah. And it'll be interesting to talk this through a little bit, that the intangibles can have tangible results.
- [57:20]
B
Good phrase.
- [57:22]
A
So there is that it's not measurable in the way we think about it being measurable, but if we see the results, it's like talking to this neuroscientist about belief. It's like, oh, just because you believe in something doesn't mean it can happen. It's like, well, yeah, I mean, it happens all the time. That we believe in something and we make it happen. It's either a placebo effect, which becomes real, or it's like the yips in golf. And again, it kind of goes back to Michael Lewis and saying, like, you know, it's kind of crazy that you see one thing, but you can't see the other. Like, you can see the analytics, but you can't see that the chemistry matters at all. And it's the same thing. If we believe in things and we can't see it, we can't measure it. We can't. But we can see the result of it. So, for instance, the yips in golf, right? Everybody knows that, okay, you keep missing the ball. It's going right, it's going left. And it's like, oh, I got the yips. I can't do it. Well, oh, it's all in your head. But yeah, it is. And it's having a physiological impact on you. But people have a harder time believing. If you believe in something positively, like, oh, well, you're just believing it, it doesn't mean that it actually happened. But if I believe, I'm going to, I don't know, throw the ball to first base every time. And I really believe it now. It's a skill too, of course, but there's a tangible result to that, just as there's a tangible result to the yips. Does that make any sense at all?
- [59:06]
B
It does. It does. The way you said it. Intangible causes of tangible results. That's a really great way to say it. And I suppose there can be the inverse, which is that they're tangible causes of intangible results, which may be, you know, one of the players that you described as a super carrier, it's hard to see what that super carrier is doing. It's hard to observe. Right.
- [59:31]
A
And it's the neuroscientist who said to me, I said, well, where's the evidence for it? Like, where in the brain would we know that Johnny Gomes had an impact on anything? And he said, people do this all the time, that they don't believe what their own eyes and brain are showing them. And he said, well, did the team play better? Well, yeah, played better. Well, did they win? Oh, yeah, they won. Said, well, there's some evidence that this was having an impact. Don't reject something that you can see with your own eyes that it does exist, it is real. And that's a neuroscientist talking about that.
- [60:19]
B
Yeah, it's interesting. There's something there about how truth exists on paper more than in reality. Like, if I can't get it to show up on paper as a number, it can't exist in reality. There's something there that's really incredibly Western, among other things. This is a question I ask every person who comes on the show, which is, what job do you hire your job to do for you?
- [60:46]
A
Oh, what do I hire my job to do for me to be able to follow my curiosity and that doing the research was just such a joy every single day to just say, oh, well, what about this? And then that led to that. And so that was the wonderful part of my job of writing that book. No, no, no, no, it wasn't. Was it the joy of writing the book? It was the Joy of researching the book. I did not like almost any part of writing that book. It was just too hard.
- [61:27]
B
Yeah. You know that answer that you just gave following your own curiosity? I've gotten that from a couple of other writers and one professor in particular who studied the math of business, and it was just gave him a platform from which to pursue his curiosity wherever it led him.
- [61:46]
A
Yeah. And there's nothing better. And it's such a gift to have the time to follow my curiosity that I can read research paper after research paper and book after book and interview 162 people and bit by bit put this picture together of, wow, I didn't know this. I didn't. I mean, mostly I didn't know anything before I started doing the research. Which is exactly what you want.
- [62:14]
B
And also because of your method as a journalist, there's also a beautiful part about it, which is that you were able to, largely just by driving around the Bay Area, meet face to face with experts on almost any topic you needed. So most of us go to books or we go to some paper or something like that, but you get to go drive out to them and interview them. Yeah, it's a human interface to pursuing your curiosity.
- [62:43]
A
And it is. It goes, you know, full circle back to the team chemistry and how we elevate each other. So by interviewing somebody in person, you know, and even here, you know, we're not in person, but we kind of are by doing that. We read each other's faces, tone of voice. All of that is going back and forth constantly between us, and so we both lead changed in some way or form, and that's our own individual chemistry, bit by bit. Hopefully it is elevating each other and not doing the opposite.
- [63:20]
B
That's what I've learned about podcasting, by the way, because I am doing that sort of curiosity research where I explore things by talking to people. It's such a great way to move in the world.
- [63:31]
A
It is. And you're very good at it. And it's. And it is. It is a pleasure to talk to somebody who's read the book very carefully. And you're stimulating my brain. Because this book came out four years ago. I'm not right on top of everything. And you really. You dove into all the interesting parts, and I. I really enjoy that.
- [63:57]
B
And I really recognize the challenge of writing it. I really do. I think it's a very hard thing to have attempted. And it reads beautifully, by the way. And I don't want to give you a complex about the next thing you write where it has to be beautiful, but it really does. It reads beautifully.
- [64:14]
A
Nice. It's very, very nice of you to say, especially since I have vowed never to write another book because it was that one took me 10 years. It was a struggle. And one of the things, and I don't know if I said you said this to you before, but one of the things I finally like, I'm five or six years in and I'm sitting in my sparse, sparse little office. Not this little office item. Worse for office. I had a desk and a chair and a lamp. And I sat there by myself day after day after day writing a book about how important relationships are and connection is. I thought, okay, I'm not doing this well. I need to find another place to set up my computer. Yeah, it's kind of crazy.
- [65:04]
B
Where can people learn more about you and this book?
- [65:07]
A
Well, go to your local bookstore if you have one, and order it there. Unlocking the Science and Soul of Team Chemistry. And I do have a website, but I don't think I've looked at it in about four years. So I'm not sure you can get some information there. But also I love getting emails. You know, My email is joanryan1gmail.com if you have any thoughts or just want to say hi.
- [65:34]
B
Fantastic. Thank you very much for coming on the show.
- [65:36]
A
Thanks Dart. I so enjoyed it.
- [65:42]
B
Thanks for joining me for another episode of Work for Humans. If you enjoyed this episode, please give us a five star rating. Wherever you listen to podcasts and share the show with one person you think would get value from it, believe it or not, this really helps us grow the show and reach more people who want to build the kind of work that people really want. As always, thank you to my producer Jason Ames at 9th Path Audio for his insights into content and his high standard for quality. Final the opinions shared here are my own and not the views of Google or Cisco Systems. Thanks again for listening. See you next time.