Build Your Best Career Ever

Anita Brick: Hi, this is Anita Brick. And welcome to CareerCast at Chicago Booth to help you advance in your career. Today we're delighted to be speaking this doctor, David Berkus. He is one of the world's leading business thinkers, corporate advisors and author of five books about business and leadership, including the one that  we're going to talk a bit about today, Best Team Ever: The Surprising Science of Best Performing Teams. His insights on leadership and team work have been featured in many places, including The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and the BBC. A former business school professor, Berkus now works with leaders from organizations across the globe and across industries including PepsiCo, Fidelity, Adobe and NASA. The book is great, by the way, David, it is practical. It is on point, and I would say that at this point of time in society it's absolutely essential. So thank you for writing it.

David Berkus: Oh, thanks for reading it. Thanks for having me on to talk about it too.

Anita Brick: Of course, we have a lot of different questions, but I have a question for you. Given your background, given what you've done, you could have chosen a lot of other areas in business. Why did you decide to choose the path of teams? Because you clearly seemed very deeply passionate and committed to it.

David Berkus: Oh well, thank you. When I started my career as a doctoral student, as researcher, etc. and even even started writing books for practitioners, I kind of had a little bit of, let's call it intellectual ADHD, just sort of all over studied creativity, studied social networks and all this sort of thing. And, and I realized about ten years in that teams were really the through line. Even my first book was about creativity, innovation. The most highlighted sentence in that book is creativity is a team sport. So I sort of sort of was already headed that way when the pandemic hit and everybody was talking about remote work and remote teams and what have you.I've written about it a bit from a macro level. In a previous book I'd done on kind of the future of work, but I realized the missing piece was around teams. And what do you do if you were an in-person team that now suddenly has to collaborate remotely, even add new members remotely and what have you? And it was in that moment that I realized I could settle down here on teams and talk about it for a long time, because it's that important.

I mean, teams are how work gets done these days, right? They build our roads, our factories, they build our houses of worship. We educate children in teams, we work in teams, we live in teams. And so much, especially post-pandemic, so much of our experience of work is actually determined by the team. It's far less about perks at the office and those sort of things that we attribute with company culture, because if you're not there, you can't take advantage of it anyway.

And so much more about the team or teams that you're serving on that are going to have a huge impact on your experience, your productivity and your career. Maybe ten years ago realized it was the through line through all my career and probably about two years ago realized, wow, this is actually the through line through most people's career.

Anita Brick: I would agree. You talk about three topics: common understanding, psychological safety, and pro-social purpose. Have questions that cover those three areas. But let's start with one I thought was really interesting. And the alum, she said, I really like the idea of common understanding and the positive implications of that on a team. And for me as an individual, my team doesn't have that because my organization has been changing up the teams every few months because of layoffs and people leaving. I feel like I need a playbook, but I'm not the leader and don't have that option. How would you advise someone like me to succeed without leaving, as I really like my job overall?

David Berkus: Yeah. So yeah. Sounds like if you're constantly changing it, it's tough to get to know people and get to build that. That sense of common understanding, which is how well the team understands what's expected of them, roles and responsibilities, etc. but then also the people that are working with, you know, my prescription for most teams in this situation, if I could talk to the leader, I'll tell you that first, and then I'll tell you what I think she could do in this specific scenario.

If I could talk to the leader. I usually say, whenever you're forming a new team or whether you're kicking off a new project, I encourage them to start with what I sometimes call a working agreement, or a team charter or project charter, or frequently unasked questions document. I have a bunch of different names for it, but the idea here is we get together as a team and we talk about how we want to work together.

And this is the little things like, what's a reasonable amount of time to wait for an email response? But it's also big things like what tools are we going to use and for what? What project management tools or collaboration tools are we going to use? What are valid reasons to call a meeting? What are we going to use to call the meeting? Is it zoom? Is it teams? Is it in-person? Whatever it is? A lot of conflict on teams stems from this lack of common understanding, mostly because we don't understand or respect the work preferences of our coworkers. And so we think everybody should work like us. And then we get really frustrated when they don't. But that's only human. So that's what I would advise a leader.

If you're not in that leadership role, then I think the best thing you can do, you can't force your whole team to come to a working agreement on what they can do, but you can put forth some more information about me. So you could do a little bit different tack that I advise a lot of teams to do, which is write manuals of me or teammate manuals. And so you could say to your team, hey, you know, I know it's a new team. We're excited to get kicked off. I just want to give you more information about me and then tell them a little bit more about you and your working style. I use a four question template for manuals of me, which is four fill-in-the blank questions: “I'm at my best when___”,  “I'm at my worst when___”, “you can count on me to__”,  In other words, here's how I'm going to support the team, and “what I need from you is__”. So you're talking about strengths and weaknesses, their types of work that you like to do, and then also the ways you can contribute to this team and the support you're going to need from the team.

And my hope is you have the boldness to create something like that and that inspires other people to go, wow, that was great. I should give you the same answers. And then you grassroots inspired this team to come up with all these different manuals. The beautiful thing about that, if your teams are constantly changing, it's not something permanent because you can't rely on permanent, but it's something you could do with every team and it wouldn't get old.

Anita Brick: Got it. It seems to me, and I've heard this from students, alums, friends, that they're walking into situations where a manager isn't really prepared to manage and is operating from this fight and flight type of operation. There are a couple of questions around that, and an alum, he said, I started in a new company, and the idea of clear goals and responsibilities has been rejected by my manager. She seems to want to keep things loose. However, I am evaluated on meeting or not meeting certain objectives that have never been defined and frustrated, less motivated and feel like I'm being set up to fail. Not sure where to start since I feel like I'm running around in circles. How would you advise others in similar situations to get beyond this?

David Berkus: Yeah. Oh, I feel for them in this, I really do, right? Because clarity is a gift that leaders give their team. Knowing what's expected of you, by when,  it's impossible to exceed someone's expectations if you don't know what they are. And so you as a leader, are kind of setting your team up for what will feel like failure, even if you're kind of okay with them. If you're in the opposite of that, if you're the individual contributor, the member of the team, if you can't get them to commit to that, there's not a lot you can do other than continuing to document, especially document your wins.

You might say, okay, these things, they're not getting clear on expectations, but I'm still going to get clear, I'm going to send them an email every Monday or start of every sprint or whatever the write cycle for you is. And it's going to say, here are my three focus areas for this week and what I'm going to accomplish.

And then I'm going to send them something on Friday. Hey, here's what I accomplished, and here's what I'm teeing up for next week. And so you're just constantly documenting here's what I'm attacking and here's what I'm winning on. What you get there is that at the very least, especially amongst your peers, you have this documented record of success.

Now, my hope, the kind of like the manuals of me. My hope is that you asserting that clarity for yourself inspires this manager to to change his or her mind and decide, hey, I need to do this with my whole team and I encourage a lot of teams to do this. I call it a huddle where you get together on a regular basis and kind of answer, what am I focused on? What do I accomplish between now and last week, and where do I need help? If you can't force the team to do that, you can still do that on your own. And then the good news is, as you're committing to certain things and then circling back a week or two weeks later and checking them off, you've got this documented record of success.

So when performance evaluation time comes or what have you, you're in a much better position. Somebody that's that unclear, you can't really guess what they're going to want to evaluate you on. But I have a feeling a lot of it stems from laziness and the fact that you've got all this documentation, it just really sets you apart when it comes time for that.

Anita Brick: Okay. Psychological safety, clearly a big deal, seems to be in short supply. A current MBA student said, It seems so bizarre to me, but I've heard of other things like this. I'm going to share it with you and see what you would advise him. I feel there is little or no psychological safety at work. So the situation was the student had been labeled an underperformer and he submitted a slide that showed what he was accomplishing. The manager inadvertently added the slide even though she wanted to maintain the position that he wasn't performing well. Once she realized that that positive slide was in the deck, she removed it so that no one would see his contributions again.

David Berkus: So in essence, you're actually performing well. Your manager thinks you're not, and you submitting evidence. Kind of like our last question, right? You're backing up your own evidence of how you're performing. And then the manager is just ignoring that evidence. And even when they accidentally show it, they sort of regret it. In the book, we talk about how psychological safety is a combination of trust and respect and what's really degrading. The psychological safety here is the sort of lack of respect right.

It's one thing if you disagree with your boss or if your boss disagrees with you about an issue, but the ability to kind of have that conversation provides evidence and feel heard at the end of it. It's one thing if you submit all of that and a manager says, okay, I see all of that, but here's what you didn't bring up. That still leads me to believe you're a lower performer, right? In other words, I see and I hear your data. And here's my other data that you're ignoring. And now here is a whole other thing. If you just go, yeah, I'm discounting your data. I'm just having you do all of that work and submit that there's honestly not a lot there other than my hope is this is going to be useful for you for a career change.

And then when you get the opportunity, it's amazing in the exit interview how much psychological safety there is at this point. You're right, you've gotten the new offer, etc. I wish I had better news, but honestly, that may be the first time. It's safe to be honest is when you've done that. But it goes to show you just how not present it is on so many teams.

Anita Brick: Oh my gosh, you're absolutely right. Okay, so let's switch to a bit more positive note. And there's another MBA student and he said:  Hi David. I also believe that trust and respect. But the starting point for positive growth a lot of all times. Here's my dilemma. I'm on a team where there is solid and consistent trust and respect. It's also a driver for our manager. Yeah, senior leadership doesn't appear to trust and respect us. And it's demoralizing. How can our team positively transform the situation when at some level that's not in our control?

David Berkus: Yeah, you have to control the controllables. That's a weird way to say it, but you get what I'm getting at. In this case, you know, it sounds like in here the manager, the leader of the team is is bought in and understands the importance of this.

And so I think it was Bob Sutton who first pointed out to me this metaphor of bosses human shield sometimes. The best you can do is create a pocket of excellence and what have you. And so in that situation, what I would do if I'm, if I'm the MBA student, I would shift the conversation to my manager about the ways in which the manager can help protect us.

It's deep in psychological safety, etc., and we realize we're not going to change this organization overnight, or possibly at all, but we can still be on a team. And this happens all the time, by the way. It's weird how often they run into examples of great teams inside toxic or now nonexistent organizations. And vice versa, toxic teams inside of organizations that when all sorts of Glassdoor and great place to work awards.

Right. So it really does vary by the team. And in this case, that would be what I'd focus the conversation is we're committed to making our team a pocket of excellence. What do we need from you to kind of help protect us? What can we give you that will help us all protect ourselves as well? I think that's where it's time to shift the conversation, because I'm not optimistic about the ability to change that senior leadership dynamic.

Anita Brick: And it really is interesting because sometimes you don't realize what a shield a direct manager has been until that person moves on. I read this dialog, thank you for being the Shield. And what can we do to support that, I think is a really good way to go from the person who asks the question, as you said, find out what you can do to help them even more.

And it may be data, it may be examples, could be a whole variety of things. But that's a very good way to put it because it puts the control back on the person who isn't feeling respect. At least it's not coming from their direct manager.

David Berkus: Yeah. As you do this ironically on the team level, you're going to grow in your sense of trust and psychological safety because what the manager is now doing is being transparent about what they are blocking.

It's a lot of times it can be depressing to be a manager and be the human shield and not have your team realize it, not have your team know how much you're holding back and what have you. If you shift that conversation to what can we do to protect each other, it's going to be amazing how fast that trust and respect is going to grow, even inside the team, even more than is already there.

Anita Brick: It's a good point. So shifting gears a little bit, another Boothie, he said,  in your book you talk about the difference between meaning and impact. Thank you for presenting them in a way that is actually really true for me. My question is, how do you show in messaging from resonate and LinkedIn to stories that you might share in an interview or a networking chat?

How do you bring those forward in a way that is relatable and accessible?

David Berkus:I remember working with so many different MBA students and looking at resumes and what have you, and I'm sure you run into this advice too, which is what can you quantify? First, it's funny because a lot of the book, when we talk about the importance of pro-social purpose and motivating people, we talk about doing it through stories.

There's even a suggestion to make metrics meaningful, and that's true. But when you only have a page to sell yourself in, you can't tell an elaborate story. But I think here, when we say quantify, what we mean is two specific things. When you look at pro-social purpose and you look at doing work that matters, there's your contribution and then the impact your contribution makes.

And so both need to be quantified. You can't take credit for something the entire organization does. But you can say, here's my percentage, here's how many people were in my sphere of influence. Here's the budget I was responsible for. Here's the number of different brands that we managed. Here's whatever it is you can quantify as your contribution, and then you can say, which contributed to the organizations doing this. Right. But I would make sure to think about it in those two levels. It's not just the bullet of here's what I did, don't give me your job description, but here's my contribution. And then that was in the service of the larger impact. And that's how I would be looking to write those description sides on the resume, etc..

Anita Brick: And I think those three words that you said in the service, I guess they're four words in the service of is a very important part of how you approach the world. How do you bring that into a situation, into an organization, whether it's a team or a broader organization, it's hard to see how the organization is in service beyond profitability and stakeholders value. How do you shift your mindset a little bit to bring that in service of to the forefront?

David Berkus: Yeah, and you see this especially with younger generations, etc., this desire to do very purpose driven work where it's easy to see the contribution the organization makes in the world. And interestingly, from the pro-social motivation research and the pro-social purpose research, that would be a nice to have but not necessarily required.

And hear me out on this. Most of us, we're wired. Humans are social creatures, and we're wired to see the impact and to feel motivation based on who we can see impacted by our work. So it doesn't necessarily mean that every single person needs to be able to know exactly how their role fits the end customer stakeholders, society, etc. no, it's great.

If they do, it's great if you have a leader that really gets it. In the book we talk about Alan Mulally in the turnaround in Ford in this term sort of stakeholders and the greater good. He read from. We believe that if you save this organization, you're doing the greater good. But obviously his success is going to be judged based on what was the stock price, right, how profitable are we, etc..

So you can go that route a lot of times you spend a decent amount of your career in what we might. I hate these terms, but we might call a support role or a quote unquote back office role. Or when you do a good job, it empowers someone else inside the organization to do a good job. You can still derive an awful lot of meaning from.

That doesn't necessarily mean you have anything to do with what the bottom line is, or the end customer or what have you, but you're still serving a certain group, a certain organization, etc.. So I give you an example. I was working with a bank last week, preparing for a big leadership conference. I was supposed to come on as the keynoter and then after me were a series of different people from HR.

One woman did an absolutely amazing job quantifying the different trainings and leadership development programs that they had built based on how many people had gone through it, how many hours, how many this, how many that? I mean, very much quantifying the impact in the organization never mentioned the profitability of this particular bank or anything like that. She's deriving her purpose not from knowing that if their work does a good job, the stock price goes up.

But if I do a good job that helps all of these leaders do a good job, and I'm focused in on that and I'm driving my purpose from that,

Anita Brick: I like that. And I know in the book you talked about, I think it was Kaiser, you talk about people who are in this case, not the doctor is not the nurses, but people who were moving everything along so that the patients had good experiences. I think as a manager, how would you advise someone to make sure as you put their more support behind the scenes, staff is recognized for the value and impact that they're bringing?

David Berkus: Yeah. First we got to know what it is and to do that, I play a pretty morbid game. I call it the It's a Wonderful Life test in the book, and it comes from the movie It's a Wonderful Life, right? Which we all watch around Christmas time, although fun fact that movie was actually a total flop. It became a Christmas classic because it entered the public domain and it was free for TV stations to play it around Christmas time. But anyway, it's the movie George Bailey is thinking about committing suicide and an angel comes to him. The angel’s name is Clarence, shows him the world as if he didn't exist. It shows him what would happen, the negative things that would happen to his community, etc. if he weren't around. In other words, he shows him the impact of his presence by showing him the impact his absence would make. And a lot of times when I'm working with teams, that's the thought experiment I run. I mean, you don't have to get morbid. Like we all, we all died. Here's one I use the other week. I said, let's just say we were all at a conference in Europe, and then a volcano in Iceland kept us grounded there for three weeks, and we couldn't get back and work with anyone. What would happen to the rest of the organization? What things would go wrong?

Saying so you get this conversation about the impact of your absence, which hints at the impact that your team is actually making. Now, once you know it, it's going to be easier to measure it. Like this woman at the conference had done. But even if you can't measure it all that well, you could still make a point as a manager to stay in touch with the managers of those other teams so that when you're doing your work and you hand it off to them, when they express gratitude or appreciation because they're regularly in conversation with you, you can take that back to your team.

So you may not be able to quantify it right away, but you can at least say, hey, you know, I was just talking to so-and-so. They were saying how great a job we did running all of these numbers in this spreadsheet because it allowed them to turn it into this. I'm making up a hypothetical here, but you see what I mean?

You can't do that if you're not in regular conversation with those people. But when you are, those little gratitude moments are going to happen, and those are stories you can take back to your team about that impact.

Anita Brick: Funny you should mention gratitude. There is another question about gratitude. I'm a big fan of practicing gratitude, and I do it as part of my life. That's it. I work with others who prefer logic and algorithms to quote unquote, that “soft stuff”, and I've seen them roll their eyes when I mention it. Any advice on an entry point to share gratitude with clients?

David Berkus: Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking as you're as you're saying. So we have a poet here who's on a team full of quants. That's that's really big. My suggestion here, is it. That's how they are going to receive gratitude. And being in service of them is putting it the way they can. So we talked about already on a resume,  this idea that here's what I did. And it was in the service of this. So here's my contribution, here's the impact it made. I would kind of do the same thing when I'm expressing gratitude. I think it's great to say thank you so much for whatever you did for me, but it's even better if you can add that impact. If you're doing it to a quant, you might want to quantify it just in general. Thank you so much for this because it allowed me to do that.

Thank you so much for running those numbers, because it allowed me to get them into the slide deck and close the deal with the client. Thank you so much for processing this fast, because I got this work done three days earlier because of your hard work. Thank you so much. So it's again, it's a two part thank you. The thank you, and also the thing I'm expressing gratitude for you had an impact on my life. Here's what it is. And then even better if you can quantify it. And I think that's going to help them see. Yeah okay. And then maybe over time you accidentally train them to give you gratitude. The same way they didn't want to. But now they can see, oh, this is about quantifying impact, etc. I honestly hate that term “soft stuff”.

That's like the one of the few things. If I could wave a magic wand and like, disappear certain corporate jargon, it would be the hard skills, soft skills thing. I'm an organizational psychologist. By training we study people because spreadsheets only tell you where the problem is. Problem is almost always people.

Anita Brick: Oh yeah, I went to this conference and there's someone who also wanted to get rid of the soft skill phrase. And he said, I don't think of it that way. I think of those skills as power skills because without them you lose your power. And I thought that was an interesting way to look at it. The idea of specificity when it comes to feedback or gratitude, and to me, gratitude is another kind of feedback. I think specificity is really key. I remember having a direct report and I would thank her all the time, and one day she came into my office and closed the door and I'm like, wonder what's going on? And she said, Anita, I know you mean well, but when you say thank you without details, it doesn't mean anything to me. Can you please be specific?

That was a really good lesson for me. And maybe part of that was her personality. But if you add detail on specifics, when you're giving feedback, whether it's gratitude or something else, it's going to be more meaningful to the other person than like, hey, thank you, or hey, have a great day or whatever it happens to be. So I just thought I would throw that in there.

David Berkus: Yeah. And by the way, for all of you quants who are listening to this, I learned that trick. Thank you so much for X because it allowed me to do Y from a research study, actually, a research study done on professors. So the study was fascinating. What they essentially did was they had students request recommendation letters from their professors, and then randomized all of the students who requested into one of two conditions, one of which they wrote a generic thank you. And another, they circled back and said, you know, thank you so much for that recommendation. I got into this grad program or I got the job at so and so. In other words, thank you so much for this because it allowed me to do that. And then they followed the same professors and tracked how many recommendation letters they made over the next couple of months.

And it was dramatically higher rate of professors writing these things, which, no, none of us were paid to do. I mean, I can't tell you how many I've written, and, you know, no one ever gave me a dollar. I was more willing to engage in helpful behaviors because someone specified how my previous helpful behavior impacted them. That's what the study measured.

And so there's a lot there.

Anita Brick: I like that, you know, there's a question from a new manager. And I really like this because I think what he's trying to do is pull all three, common understanding, psychological safety, and pro-social purpose as he's thinking about how to create a team that he is inherited. And he said, I'm a new manager, and the team I inherited has individuals with very skills and talents. How would you advise a new manager like me to learn how to develop my team members in ways that are meaningful to them and beneficial to our team?

David Berkus: I think here you need to know what those skills and talents are first. It's really interesting when you're a new leader, you often want to come in and start giving orders, laying down timelines, and when a lot of times, you know, a team I inherited. So this is a team that's been working together before and you just don't know what they're like. A lot of times the best thing you can do is seek to ask questions for the first several weeks and seek to take that sort of facilitator role. It may even be that this team has operated leaderless for a while while they found you. Right. And so they've got these certain rhythms. Have you come in and just sort of start giving answers? When have you start giving orders, start giving out assignments, delegating, etc. You might end up giving the wrong answers, which is hugely embarrassing, but you might also end up delegating stuff to people that's outside of their skill sets and what have you.

So truthfully, I think the best leaders, when they're in that situation and inheriting a team is they take an active listening role first. They go on sort of a listening tour and observe. Now, that doesn't mean, you know, there's still certain things that are your job, what have you, and you're gonna have to do. But when in doubt, try to be the last person to speak, try and pay a lot of attention to how the team is already operating.

If you want to, after those several weeks, get into something like a working agreement or a manual exercise. I think that can be really useful for getting the team to just outright share those skills and talents, but you're going to find them relatively quick. But that would be my first thing. And I know that's sort of weird. I'm essentially saying do nothing.

It's not really do nothing. It's listen, it's really pay attention because this is a team. You inherited, and the best way you're going to learn is just by letting them do that work that plays to their strengths, to volunteer to help other people, that in ways that they can, and ask for help in the ways they can, and messing it up is almost worse.

Anita Brick: Absolutely. Listening is super important because otherwise you might make assumptions. The other part of this, and typically I would guess it would come after some time when trust is built between each team member and the leader. What are some things that someone can do to help them understand what the goals are of each person? Sometimes that also can help you shape how the team is going to be developed. Who's going to do what so that you give people opportunities as well. Any advice about how to get people to share their goals?

David Berkus: Yeah, I mean, when you say goals here, you're thinking long term career goals, etc. the stuff that doesn't get captured in a normal performance evaluation form, right?

Anita Brick: Yeah. Or maybe it's not so long term, but they don't share it because they're afraid to, because maybe it's not super aligned with the company's needs. So it could be a combination of the two. David.

David Berkus: I think the biggest thing here that usually those conversations happen once someone trusts that this isn't being documented. Does that make sense? So I'm a big fan of about ten years ago, I did a lot of study and Adobe as an organization did this grand experiment that turned out to be a success, where they essentially did away with the annual performance evaluation. Instead, they trained everybody on coaching skills. They did have a requirement, which is that you have a certain number of check-ins. They have. They've structured around expectations, feedback, growth and development. And pretty quickly they realized that you had to document as little as possible in order to make that growth and development conversation be real. So you document that you did the check in and you might document anything you could legally have to like if somebody brings up something you're required by law to pursue or something like that. Otherwise it was for your information. That's the context in which those conversations have to come in. And that's one reason I said just sort of listen at first is you're not going to have that level of trust and respect built yet. But eventually, and if there's anything you can do to sort of signal when you're having a formal documented feedback or assessment conversation, and when you're having an informal checking conversation, you're going to get that information in the informal time almost always.

Anita Brick: You have time for one more question? Okay, great. You know, there are a lot of things and I really highly recommend reading the book. It's very practical and actionable and uplifting. I think we could all use more of that. What are three things that you would advise individuals to create a great career for both the individual and the team succeed and thrive.

David Berkus: Well, okay, I have to narrow it down to three.

Anita Brick: Between you and me, you can do a few more if you want.

David Berkus: All right. Well, I mean, the first thing I would do unquestioningly, I'm always fascinated with this, especially candidly, as a veteran of the world of MBA and B-School, I'm always fascinated by how focused people aren't going to work for a brand instead of the team they're on.

When you're just in the evaluation stage of whether or not you want to work for this organization, spend as much time as you possibly can figuring out the team you're going to work with and whether or not that's a fit. Ask to talk to certain members of the team, not just the manager. Sure, talk to them about what the managers like, but also ask them about their working styles and their habits and be very, very upfront with yours, because it's far more important to end up on the right team for having a great career, especially to end up on the right team than to work for the right brand, and to have that that quote unquote “right brand” on your resume. So that would be number one.

Number two. So now you're joining that team. I would say put the team's goals ahead of your own for the first or at least kind of year. Your goal is to make a contribution to that team. Your goal is to figure out where your skills, where your knowledge, your abilities, your strengths all fit into that team and where you can make that contribution.

It's okay to have your own goals. I'm not saying don't pursue your goals, but put the ones of the team ahead of yours. If you do that, you're going to suddenly find ways to align the two, which is even better. So put the needs of the team's goals kind of ahead of your own.

And then the third is you're progressing. You said three things. The three stages of joining a team. Right now, you're leaving and you're going to join that kind of next team before you leave, before you take on that, and then really try and make sure that you understand what the team did that contributed to your own success, that allowed you to get to this next level.

The research here is pretty clear. Started with Boris Groysberg and at Harvard on transfers inside investment world, but it's pretty consistent and replicated in a bunch of other areas. A significant amount of your individual success is going to be the result of the team that you're on. That's why the number one takeaway was so important. But as you're looking to transfer to a new team, make sure you know what that is and you know whether or not that new team will be able to provide it, because it might be you get poached by a headhunter or you get promoted new team, what have you, but if you have no idea what type of team you need to be planted in, you're not going to thrive in that next role either.

Which is really just a way of restating number one, but in a little bit different context, because now you've been on a great team and you want to make sure you know why it was so great and, you know, to look for that when you go to the next one.

Anita Brick: Got it, to give you a little wiggle room, any other words of wisdom you want to share with us before we conclude?

David Berkus: To kind of underscore that idea, we talked about it in the context of a career. I'll just level with you and say, it's more important than that. You know, I said at the top about how the pandemic made me realize how important teams are to our lives. And that's true. I had a bunch of other realizations, too, like, so my wife is an air physician, which meant that we didn't really get like an escape from Covid, right?

We lived in it and we like anyone who had a health care practitioner in their family. We had a whole sort of disinfection ritual: dedicated car that goes to and from the hospital hamper in the garage for all of the clothes running right to the shower. Our kids didn't understand why, like all of a sudden now they can't see mommy when she gets home from work. I have to wait till she gets in the shower and Lysol herself and all of that sort of stuff. And by the way, it didn't work. We all got Covid and we all got Covid early because you worked in the E.R.

First time we all got Covid. Maybe it was a fever dream. I don't know what it was, but I had this realization that for most of us, work is the same way. You can try and do things that keep work and life from interacting, but if you've got toxicity and negativity negativity on your work teams, that's going to infect you at home eventually too, or with friends eventually too, it's going to invade the other spheres of your life. But if you got positivity, same rule. It's still going to infect that, right?

These things bleed over at the edges far more than we give credit to. And so everything we've talked about today, it's not just important for your career, it certainly is. But it's also important for having a great life as well. People that you work with, your experience of work, whether or not you like your job and the people that you do it along with.

It's that important.

Anita Brick: It’s that important. Great. Well, I really, really appreciate you doing this and writing the book. And I know I get this wonderful email from you every Monday that have your latest and greatest those in written form, in audio form on YouTube. What's the best way for someone to sign up for that?

David Berkus: Honestly, I'm so lucky in that my name is really odd, but there's not a lot of Berkus out there. So David Berkus B-E-R-K-U-S. Cuz if you want to add .com to that and type of writing to Google, it'll take you right there and you can sign up there. But if you just type that into as a search, you'll find me on whatever social network platform you like where we put that regular content, as you said.

And you, you're always so good with a reply to. And a reply like that doesn't say please unsubscribe, which I appreciate you. So, you know, we put that content, it starts, as an article, podcast and video, but it spreads out to all of the other socials too. So if, if LinkedIn or whatever is your thing or if it's TikTok or if it's Instagram, we are there and we've got content that'll help you lead and find that best team ever.

Anita Brick: Right. Thank you so much David. This is great and lots of good content buzz today and that people can access and books. And thank you very much for making the time for us.

David Berkus: Thank you so much for having me.

Anita Brick: And thank you all for listening. This is Anita Brick with CareerCast at Chicago Booth. Keep advancing.