The Prime Effect: Turning a Team of Experts into an Expert Team
Brian "Ponch" Rivera
Co-creator of The Flow System? | No Way Out Podcast Co-Host | AGLX NA MD
In the recent episode of the No Way Out Podcast, I explored the remarkable "Prime Effect" with Eduardo Salas, PhD, a recognized expert in Team Science and co-author of "Teams That Work."?
Dr. Salas and I took a few minutes make sense of what is happening in Boulder, CO through Boyd’s OODA loop and Team Science lenses. In essence, Coach Prime is putting on a leadership clinic on how to get inside the OODA loop of competitors, expert pundits who don’t believe, and athletes who need to believe. ?
Eight months into his role as the CU Buffs' head coach, Coach Prime masterly executed a cycle of Destruction of Creation—a cycle that permits living systems to shape and be shaped by a changing environment. With the relaxation of NCAA transfer rules and a penchant for winning as a player and as a coach, Coach Prime’s adaptive leadership strategy became clear: recruit talent and hire expert coaches.
His strategy yielded a substantial turnover—70% among expert athletes and 90% within expert coaches. This scenario would be perhaps the worst nightmare for those fixating on the Tuckman model, alignment, culture, and stable team membership as team performance prerequisites.
In a sport where task interdependence is high and the whole team's performance surpasses individual performances, Coach Prime undertook the distinct challenge of transforming a team of experts into an expert team.
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How did he do it? According to Dr. Salas, Coach Prime intuitively knows the elements of team effectiveness - capability, cooperation, coordination, communication, cognition, conditions, and coaching, that lead to something called collective efficacy.
Collective efficacy refers to the shared confidence within a team about their ability to achieve set goals. It's a significant element in Team Science, as it is one of the strongest predictors of team performance.
Recently, Coach Prime commented on the team's collective efficacy journey:
These young men, they believe. Not all of them believed before, but they came up, one by one, two by two, [to say] ‘Coach, we believe.' Now they believe. Boulder believes. People in the front office, people in the building, the fans, the students.
Now, everybody wants to believe. And we've got room.
This narrative extends beyond the sports domain, shedding light on leadership lessons that can be adapted to various business environments. After all, whether they are football teams or business units, teams are the driving force that determines the outcome of any game.
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Consultant Strategist, Synthesising Aviation Experience, People Power and Technology Adoption | MSc Organisational Psychology | Discover Soft skills in Tough Times | Leadership | Facilitation | Training | Coaching |
1 年Thanks for this summary, and in particular the codification of the elements of team effectiveness, “capability, cooperation, coordination, communication, cognition, conditions, and coaching, that lead to something called collective efficacy.”