Introduction · When Two Plus Two Equals Ten

For more on culture’s effect on the bottom line, see John Kotter and James Heskett’s Corporate Culture and Performance (New York: The Free Press, 1992); D. Denison and A. Mishra, “Toward a Theory of Organizational Culture and Effectiveness,” Organization Science 6 (1995), 204–23; and G. Gordon and N. DiTomaso, “Predicting Corporate Performance from Organizational Culture,” Journal of Management Studies 29 (1992), 783–98.

1 · The Good Apples

For more on belonging cues, see W. Felps, T. Mitchell, and E. Byington, “How, When, and Why Bad Apples Spoil the Barrel: Negative Group Member and Dysfunctional Groups,” Research in Organizational Behavior 27 (2006), 175–222; J. Curhan and A. Pentland, “Thin Slices of Negotiation: Predicting Outcomes from Conversational Dynamics Within the First Five Minutes,” Journal of Applied Psychology 92 (2007), 802–11; and William Stoltzman’s “Toward a Social Signaling Framework: Activity and Emphasis in Speech,” master’s thesis, MIT (2006). For an exploration of sociometrics, see Alex Pentland’s Honest Signals (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008) and Social Physics (New York: The Penguin Press, 2014) as well as Ben Waber’s People Analytics (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson FT Press, 2013).

The concept of psychological safety was pioneered by William Kahn in “Psychological Conditions of Personal Engagement and Disengagement at Work,” Academy of Management Journal 11 (1990), 692–724. Amy Edmondson’s work in this area is outstanding; you can find much of it in Teaming: How Organizations Learn, Innovate, and Compete in the Knowledge Economy (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Pfeiffer, 2012).

2 · The Billion-Dollar Day When Nothing Happened

For a deeper look at Google’s development of the AdWords engine, see Steven Levy’s In the Plex (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011). For more on the success rates of different organizational models, see J. Baron and M. Hannan, “Organizational Blueprints for Success in High-Tech Startups: Lessons from the Stanford Project on Emerging Companies,” California Management Review 44 (2002), 8–36; and M. Hannan, J. Baron, G. Hsu, and O. Kocak, “Organizational Identities and the Hazard of Change,” Industrial and Corporate Change 15 (2006), 755–84.

For more on belonging cues and behavior change, see G. Walton, G. Cohen, D. Cwir, and S. Spencer, “Mere Belonging: The Power of Social Connections,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 102 (2012), 513–32; G. Walton and P. Carr, “Social Belonging and the Motivation and Intellectual Achievement of Negatively Stereotyped Students,” in Stereotype Threat: Theory, Processes, and Application, M. Inzlicht and T. Schmader (eds.) (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); A. Brooks, H. Dai, and M. Schweitzer, “I’m Sorry About the Rain! Superfluous Apologies Demonstrate Empathic Concern and Increase Trust,” Social Psychological and Personality Science 5 (2014), 467–74; G. Carter, K. Clover, I. Whyte, A. Dawson, and C. D’Este, “Postcards from the Edge Project: Randomised Controlled Trial of an Intervention Using Postcards to Reduce Repetition of Hospital Treated Deliberate Self Poisoning,” BMJ (2005); and P. Fischer, A. Sauer, C. Vogrincic, and S. Weisweiler, “The Ancestor Effect: Thinking about Our Genetic Origin Enhances Intellectual Performance,” European Journal of Social Psychology 41 (2010), 11–16.

For more on how belonging and identity work inside the brain, see J. Van Bavel, L. Hackel, and Y. Xiao, “The Group Mind: The Pervasive Influence of Social Identity on Cognition,” Research and Perspectives in Neurosciences 21 (2013), 41–56; D. Packer and J. Van Bavel, “The Dynamic Nature of Identity: From the Brain to Behavior,” The Psychology of Change: Life Contexts, Experiences, and Identities, N. Branscombe and K. Reynolds (eds.) (Hove, United Kingdom: Psychology Press, 2015); and D. de Cremer and M. van Vugt, “Social Identification Effects in Social Dilemmas,” European Journal of Social Psychology 29 (1999), 871–93.

3 · The Christmas Truce, the One-Hour Experiment, and the Missileers

The Christmas Truce story has been told in many places; the most in-depth versions can be found in Tony Ashworth’s Trench Warfare 1914–1918: The Live and Let-Live System (London: Pan Books, 2000) and Stanley Weintraub’s Silent Night (New York: Plume, 2002). For a wide-angle look at how altruism works, see Robert Axelrod’s The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984) and Michael Tomasello’s Why We Cooperate (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009).

For more on the WIPRO experiment, see D. Cable, F. Gino, and B. Staats, “Breaking Them In or Revealing Their Best? Reframing Socialization Around Newcomer Self-Expression,” Administrative Science Quarterly 58 (2013), 1–36. For more on the nuclear-launch crews, I’d recommend Eric Schlosser’s Command and Control (New York: The Penguin Press, 2013).

4 · How to Build Belonging

For Neil Paine’s study of Popovich’s coaching dominance, see fivethirtyeight.com/features/2014-nba-preview-the-rise-of-the-warriors/. For more on the study of why NBA players tend to behave selfishly, see E. Uhlmann and C. Barnes, “Selfish Play Increases During High-Stakes NBA Games and Is Rewarded with More Lucrative Contracts,” PLoS ONE 9 (2014).

For more on the magical-feedback study, see D. Yeager, V. Purdie-Vaughns, J. Garcia, N. Apfel, P. Brzustoski, A. Master, W. Hessert, M. Williams, and G. Cohen, “Breaking the Cycle of Mistrust: Wise Interventions to Provide Critical Feedback Across the Racial Divide,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 143 (2013), 804–24.

5 · How to Design for Belonging

For more on Thomas Allen’s work, see Managing the Flow of Technology: Technology Transfer and the Dissemination of Technological Information Within the R&D Organization (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984).

Hsieh’s urge to MacGyver is still strong. Around the time I visited, he began implementing a radical new management approach called holacracy, which seeks to replace traditional managers with self-organizing “circles” in which people determine their own tasks and roles. To say that holacracy wasn’t an immediate success would be to put it mildly. It caused a wave of employee departures, and in 2016 the company failed to make Fortune magazine’s Top 100 Best Places to Work list for the first time in seven years. Hsieh has since moved to an even more abstract management system called Teal. Whether the organization and the culture can continue to thrive remains to be seen.

6 · Ideas for Action

For more on the power of gratitude, see L. Williams and M. Bartlett, “Warm Thanks: Gratitude Expression Facilitates Social Affiliation in New Relationships via Perceived Warmth,” Emotion 15 (2014); and A. Grant and F. Gino, “A Little Thanks Goes a Long Way: Explaining Why Gratitude Expressions Motivate Prosocial Behavior,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 98 (2010), 946–55. For more on the shortcomings of sandwich feedback, see C. Von Bergen, M. Bressler, and K. Campbell, “The Sandwich Feedback Method: Not Very Tasty,” Journal of Behavioral Studies in Business 7 (2014).

Emails are rich repositories of belonging cues; here are two studies that show how they reveal the internal fabric of groups: L. Wu, “Social Network Effects on Productivity and Job Security: Evidence from the Adoption of a Social Networking Tool,” Information Systems Research 24 (2013), 30–51; and S. Srivastava, A. Goldberg, V. Manian, and C. Potts, “Enculturation Trajectories: Language, Cultural Adaptation, and Individual Outcomes in Organizations,” Management Science, forthcoming.

7 · “Tell Me What You Want, and I’ll Help You”

Flight 232’s cockpit voice recording can be found at aviation-safety.net/investigation/cvr/transcripts/cvr_ua232.pdf. Captain Al Haynes provided a detailed account of the crash in a May 24, 1991, speech to the NASA Ames Research Center at the Dryden Flight Research Facility in Edwards, CA, the transcript of which can be found at clear-prop.org/aviation/haynes.html. In addition, see Flight 232 by Laurence Gonzales (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2014) and Confronting Mistakes by Jan U. Hagen (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

Another element of Flight 232’s story involves a set of training procedures called Crew Resource Management, which had been established by the National Transportation Safety Board in the late 1970s after several crashes caused by pilot error. The training sought to replace the top-down “pilot is always right” culture with frank, fast communication, teaching captain and crew a series of simple behaviors and habits designed to reveal and solve problems together. Prior to Flight 232’s crash, Captain Haynes had undergone several weeks of CRM training; he credited the program for saving his life and that of the other survivors.

8 · The Vulnerability Loop

For more on the science of generating individual and group closeness, see A. Aron, E. Melinat, E. Aron, and R. Bator, “The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness: A Procedure and Some Preliminary Findings,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 23 (1997), 363–77; W. Swann, L. Milton, and J. Polzer, “Should We Create a Niche or Fall in Line? Identity Negotiation and Small Group Effectiveness,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 79, (2000), 238–50; and J. Chatman, J. Polzer, S. Barsade, and M. Neale, “Being Different Yet Feeling Similar: The Influence of Demographic Composition and Organizational Culture on Work Processes and Outcomes,” Administrative Science Quarterly 43 (1998), 749–80.

For more on the the machinery of trust, see D. DeSteno, M. Bartlett, J. Baumann, L. Williams, and L. Dickens, “Gratitude as a Moral Sentiment: Emotion-Guided Cooperation in Economic Exchange,” Emotion 10 (2010), 289–93; and B. von Dawans, U. Fischbacher, C. Kirschbaum, E. Fehr, and M. Heinrichs, “The Social Dimension of Stress Reactivity: Acute Stress Increases Prosocial Behavior in Humans,” Psychological Science 23 (2012), 651–60. For a deeper exploration, see David DeSteno’s The Truth About Trust (New York: Hudson Street, 2014).

For more on the Red Balloon Challenge, see J. Tang, M. Cebrian, N. Giacobe, H. Kim, T. Kim, and D. Wickert, “Reflecting on the DARPA Red Balloon Challenge,” Communications of the ACM 54 (2011), 78–85; and G. Pickard, I. Rahwan, W. Pan, M. Cebrian, R. Crane, A. Madan, and A. Pentland, “Time-Critical Social Mobilization,” Science 334 (2011), 509–12.

9 · The Super-Cooperators

For more on the origins of the Navy SEALs, see America’s First Frogman by Elizabeth Kauffman (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2004). For more on the Upright Citizens Brigade, see High-Status Characters by Brian Raftery (New York: Megawatt Press, 2013); The Upright Citizens Brigade Comedy Improvisational Manual by Matt Besser, Ian Roberts, and Matt Walsh (New York: The Comedy Council of Nicea LLC, 2013); Yes, And by Kelly Leonard and Tom Yorton (New York: HarperBusiness, 2015); and The Funniest One in the Room: The Lives and Legends of Del Close by Kim Howard Johnson (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2008).

11 · How to Create Cooperation with Individuals

For more on Bell Labs, see David Gertner’s The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation (New York: Penguin Press, 2012). For more on IDEO, see The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley (New York: Currency Doubleday, 2001) and Change by Design by Tom Brown (New York: HarperBusiness, 2009).

For studies on concordance, see C. Marci, J. Ham, E. Moran, and S. Orr, “Physiologic Correlates of Perceived Therapist Empathy and Social-Emotional Process During Psychotherapy,”Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 195 (2007),103–11; and C. Marci and S. Orr, “The Effect of Emotional Distance on Psychophysiologic Concordance and Perceived Empathy Between Patient and Interviewer,” Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback 31 (2006), 115–28.

13 · Three Hundred and Eleven Words

For the starlings’ system of navigation, see M. Ballerini, N. Cabibbo, R. Candelier, A. Cavagna, E. Cisbani, I. Giardina, V. Lecomte, A. Orlandi, G. Parisi, A. Procaccini, M. Viale, and V. Zdravkovic, “Interaction Ruling Animal Collective Behavior Depends on Topological Rather than Metric Distance: Evidence from a Field Study,” PNAS 105 (2008), 1232–37.

Gabriele Oettingen’s work on mental contrasting can be found in Rethinking Positive Thinking (New York: Current, 2014), as well as G. Oettingen, D. Mayer, A. Sevincer, E. Stephens, H. Pak, and M. Hagenah, “Mental Contrasting and Goal Commitment: The Mediating Role of Energization,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 35 (2009), 608–22.

For more on the Pygmalion Effect, see R. Rosenthal and L. Jacobson, “Teachers’ Expectancies: Determinates of Pupils’ IQ Gains,” Psychological Reports 19 (1966), 115–18. For more on how narratives affect motivation, see A. Grant, E. Campbell, G. Chen, K. Cottone, D. Lapedis, and K. Lee, “Impact and the Art of Motivation Maintenance: The Effects of Contact with Beneficiaries on Persistence Behavior,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 103 (2007), 53–67.

14 · The Hooligans and the Surgeons

See C. Stott, O. Adang, A. Livingstone, and M. Schreiber, “Tackling Football Hooliganism: A Quantitative Study of Public Order, Policing and Crowd Psychology,” Psychology Public Policy and Law 53 (2008), 115–41; C. Stott and S. Reicher, “How Conflict Escalates: The Inter-Group Dynamics of Collective Football Crowd ‘Violence,’ ” Sociology 32, (1998), 353–77; A. Edmondson, R. Bohmer, and G. Pisano, “Speeding Up Team Learning,” Harvard Business Review 79, no. 9 (2001), 125–32; and A. Edmondson, R. Bohmer, and G. Pisano, “Disrupted Routines: Team Learning and New Technology Implementation in Hospitals,” Administrative Science Quarterly 46 (2001), 685–716.

15 · How to Lead for Proficiency

See S. Reilly Salgado and W. Starbuck, “Fine Restaurants: Creating Inimitable Advantages in a Competitive Industry,” doctoral dissertation, New York University Graduate School of Business Administration (2003).

16 · How to Lead for Creativity

See Creativity Inc. by Ed Catmull with Amy Wallace (New York: Random House, 2014).