What are the tools that high performing groups have in their tool belts? Drawing from a wealth of research and interviews with professional basketball coaches, Navy SEALS, veteran pilots, and scientists researching at the cutting edge of human performance, Daniel Coyle shows us how cultivating safety, sharing vulnerability, and establishing a purpose create performance-enhancing chemistry.

The bad apple experiment that a researcher ran out of New South Wales University in Australia consisted in a person being sent into a meeting with the secret purpose of disrupting and bringing down a team. Researchers introduce the bad apple and watch how he interacts with a team the way a scientist might peer at a Petri dish to observe how a poison or a pathogen impacts a sample.

The most common outcomes of the bad apple are unhealthy dynamics, depressingly low energy levels, and plummeting work ethic. In all the groups that researchers sent their bad apple to subvert, productivity fell by 30 or 40 percent, whether the bad apple adopted the persona of jerk, slacker, or downer. But there was one barrel of apples in which the bad apple failed to spread his rot.

In one meeting, every attempt at subversion failed to bring the group down, and the bad apple even found himself, despite his designated role of subterfuge, being helpful to the group. The team was engaged, maintained high energy, and stayed positive. As researchers played back the tape, they realized that there was one guy who managed to keep the good times rolling. He was quiet and even-keeled. His demeanor was kind and inviting, his body language was open, and he never responded in kind to the bad apple. He was quick to redirect the negative comments and turn them into fuel for positive engagement.

This was surprising for a few reasons. For one, people tend to think of intelligence and experience as the drivers of success, but it was a few simple actions that one man took that made the difference between a meeting tanking and taking off.

It was also surprising how subtle these actions were. They defy the stereotypical leader molds of the bold, assertive, take-charge type who steps in and starts giving orders. This guy did not do any of that, nor did he dazzle the room with a flash of inspired brilliance and talent. And yet, he quietly set up the group to do great things. Everyone is connected and the connection is secure enough to bring out the best in people. 

It was not intelligence but an environment of strong connection that helped the team perform despite the bad apple. Most people would concede that the emotional atmosphere makes some difference, but very few would believe it forms the necessary base on which a healthy, dynamic team culture is cultivated.

Whatever the teams goal was—making a movie, running an inner city charter school or a squad debriefing a military op—these qualities were present in all groups:

-physically close together, commonly in a circle

-lots of eye contact

-physical touch

-exchanges are brief and energetic—not long-winded

-no cliques or factions

-the listening is focused and active

-infrequent interruptions

-inquisitiveness and freedom to ask questions

-humor and levity

-little niceties like saying “thank you” and holding the door open for someone

These generate an effect that is ethereal but palpable called chemistry. It’s a sense of deep joy as well as safety and comfort. It’s intoxicating. We want it and more of it when we experience it.

Is chemistry so enigmatic a process that we can not figure out how to build it? The good news is there are ways to do it. After all, the word culture comes from the Latin word meaning “to cultivate.”

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, there is a lab that tests human chemistry called the Human Dynamics Lab. They use technology to uncover the patterns of behavior that are so primal and intuitive that we miss them. Alex Pentland, who oversees the lab, believes that however smart we think we get, we use systems of tacit signaling just like any other species. To demonstrate his point, he leaned in closer to the author during the conversation and smiled as the author found himself leaning in too, unconsciously copying the action he’d just seen modeled.

While subjects do experiments in the Human Dynamics Lab, there is a stream of data that pours in, flagging everything from speech volume, to the speed of the chatter, the ease of transition in turn taking, and to what degree individuals mirror each other’s body language and intonation.

Based on Pentland’s findings, there are five main factors that drive successful team performance:

1. Everyone talks roughly about the same amount of time, and keeps their comments brief.

2. There is frequent eye contact between members, and conversations and gesticulations are high energy.

3. Everyone communicates with everyone else, rather than talking through the group leader.

4. Group members engage in brief side conversations while also staying connected to the group.

5. Members occasionally pull away from the group and venture beyond the group, and bring back the findings of the side missions.

What is remarkable about these discoveries is that individual skill matters very little. The behaviors that matter most are primal and simple.

One of the key pieces to cooperation that the lab’s researchers have learned to map elaborately is belonging cues, those behaviors that show emotional and energy investment in an exchange, that treat the individual like the only and most special person in the room, and that signal the relationship will continue. “You matter, you are safe here, and you will continue to be.”

Our unconscious brains crave the feeling of safety and will be hypervigilant to threats without numerous consistent signals that we are safe here and that we belong here. It is hard to build a moment (let alone a culture) of belonging but easy to subvert it.

The Human Dynamics lab found that the verbal component was not the game changer either. Words are not what change the group or galvanize cohesive coordinated actions. It was in non-verbal behavioral clues and the way words were expressed that communicated safety so much more. These belonging cues are most effectively expressed in ways we might not have expected, but it is vital to know them if we want to understand how to create chemistry.

For decades, the San Antonio Spurs has been among the winningest teams in American sports—ahead of the New England Patriots or St. Louis Cardinals or many other fabled franchises. Someone developed an algorithm to determine which NBA coaches garnered the expected number of wins (based on each player’s statistics) and which coaches led teams that performed above expectations. When the win rates of all coaches since 1979 were charted out, almost all coaches had records that fell within a certain realm of expectation. But the Spurs’ head coach Gregg Popovich is in a league all his own, with a rate of wins far exceeding what would have been expected given the Spurs’ talent pool.

How did Popovich (or “Pop” as some affectionately call him) facilitate a win rate that so dramatically exceeded statistical expectations? The answer is not initially obvious. Gregg is old school: an unflinching disciplinarian with a reputation for pulling no punches. He can be ornery, he shouts at his players, and not even his stars are spared his candid feedback.

It sounds like a recipe for a demoralized team, but the candor is possible and effective only within a framework of belonging and love. There’s a story of a locker room scene on the heels of an embarrassing loss. He moves around the room, a smile on his face as he chats with each player, offering engaged and steady eye contact, an affirming hand on a shoulder here, an arm there. There were multiple nationalities and languages represented, and Pop has learned snatches of each. When he gets to Belinelli (the guard who let his guard down far too often during the game), his grin widens, he exchanges a few jokes, and they play-wrestle for a moment. Popovich makes a point of connecting with his players, intimately even. He is not afraid to get so close to a player’s face that their noses touch.

It’s relationships first for Popovich. As the Spurs’ general manager put it, Popovich “fills the players’ cups.” An assistant coach said of Pop that, “He’ll tell you the truth, with no bullsh*t, and then he’ll love you to death.” The dynamic that emerges between player and coach approaches that of father and son. As Popovich frequently reminds his assistant coaches, “We gotta hug ’em and hold ’em.” 

Another common practice of Coach Popovich is discussing current events and pressing problems that humanity faces. He asks penetrating questions that force his players to think, and reminds them of the broader world beyond basketball—a world of which they are a part and to which they have a responsibility.

Popovich is also a foodie and he invites his players into his obsession. Sharing meals is a way that he connects with his players. Every night that the players are on the road, the team and coaches eat together. Popovich will scout out spots himself. They spend about as much time around a table as they do on the court.

The kind of feedback that Popovich gives aligns with Ivy League research that explores which critiques to middle school student essays bring out the best in students. Far and away, the most helpful feedback (referred to in the literature as “magical feedback”) pairs high expectations with a sense of belonging. It can be encapsulated in the phrase:

I’m giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know that you can reach them.

What this communicates to students is, “It’s safe to give your best effort here.” This kind of feedback adds a confidence-stoking sense of with-ness critical to high performance. These are exactly the kinds of signals that Popovich sends to his players, and it shows in the Spurs’ culture, their relationships to their coach, and the team’s remarkable track record.

July 10, 1989. A one-in-a-billion set of technical malfunctions, beginning with a microscopic crack in the hydraulic fans and ending in explosions, defunct engines, and unresponsive controls, put a United commercial jet on a fatal trajectory. The two pilots had no control of the plane. The jet was tilting one way without any way of correcting through manual controls. The two pilots were joined by a pilot trainer who happened to be a passenger on board. Together, the trio sat side-by-side in the cockpit and coordinated unconventional methods to steer the plane and bring it in for landing without pulling on the steering wheel (or “yoke” in pilot speak). Makeshift solutions like raising thrust on one side and lowering it on the other had to do the job.

Miraculously, the three pilots managed to land a defunct plane traveling twice the usual speed with a descent six times steeper. One hundred eighty-five passengers survived along with the whole flight crew. How did they do it? The National Transportation Safety Board tried to recreate the conditions in a virtual simulation, bringing in veteran pilots to replicate the same feat. All 28 times the pilots "crashed" the virtual plane.

What had these pilots done differently? The difference was in the communication style: It was far more vulnerable than convention advised. People would expect the pilot to exude an attitude of cool, collected confidence and wherewithal (whatever he might have been feeling internally). But the pilots aboard that United flight had no idea what they were doing and made no pretense to the contrary. It was an unprecedented set of mechanical failures and they admitted that they were not sure what to do. They kept communication channels wide open, speaking frankly with short staccatoed notifications. The updates were implicitly interrogative: They communicated, “This just came up. Any ideas on what to do?” These responses came as fast as one per second in the wake of the explosion, as they tried to keep the plane aloft and find a way to descend as safely as possible.

In a word, the pilots shared vulnerability. They were not shy about mentioning their deficiencies from moment to moment. Their collective intelligence skyrocketed as a result.

It is one thing to have a culture promoting safety and cohesion in a group. But how does that team move? What does that smooth coordinated approach to a challenge look like? Whether it's a SEAL team or a sketch comedy group, there is flow.

In vulnerable moments there is risk. It can feel awkward or uncertain but a culture where that is accepted means the awkward doesn’t get the last word and the team works smoothly as a result. This pattern of willingness to have unpleasant vulnerable conversations shows up in Navy SEAL after action reviews and in what Pixar calls Brain Trust meetings: candid check-ins throughout the course of a film’s production.

Bell Labs is legendary in the world of technology and innovation. So many technologies that we rely on everyday came out of this group of scientists and engineers during its half-century beginning in 1925. Everything from the transistor to satellite communication to binary codes for computing came out of Bell Labs. It was the precursor to Silicon Valley.

In the Bell Labs patent library, most employee binders containing patent applications are sizable but 10 were especially thick. These ultra-creatives had filed and applied for dozens of patents, and researchers at Bell were curious to discover any themes or patterns that set these employees apart. Was it similar education or training? Were they in the same department? Did they have similar upbringings?

The common thread was an unexpected one: Each of these ultra-creatives would routinely have lunch in the Bell Labs cafeteria with an unassuming Swedish engineer named Harry Nyquist. Nyquist was not the zany eccentric leader that Bell Labs tended to attract. He was gentle and even-keeled. He might strike most as average—average enough to blend in with the corporate scenery. He was accomplished in his own rite, but his superpower was more subtle.  

There were several aspects to Nyquist that set him apart. One was the personal kind heartedness and sincerity that he became known for. The other was a fathomless curiosity which, when combined with his encyclopedic knowledge across a number of fields, made him an asset to his colleagues. He had a way of gently bringing the best out of people, including creativity and the ability to connect dots.

For a long time it was common for Bell scientists from different fields to mingle. It was a way to cross-pollinate, get out of ruts, and view one’s own field or study from a new perspective. None did this better than Nyquist.

Nyquist came to represent a sort of catalyzing archetype that the author would look for in team settings as he researched: reserved but deeply kind, interested in the interests of other people; the gifted listener whose presence becomes a place of refuge and support that fosters Eureka moments in others.