In this book, management scholar Mark de Rond explores the worlds of professional sports and high performance athletes as well as the latest social and psychological research to reveal counterintuitive lessons about teams. Why is it so hard to get teams to perform to their potential? How can people work more effectively together on teams? Why does conflict happen even when intentions are aligned - and is that conflict harmful, or can it actually help the group dynamic?

Key business dilemmas such as these, according to de Rond, mimic many of the issues faced on sports teams. Yet the sports metaphors commonly used in business are often trite and superficial comparisons that actually mask the substantial lessons that managers can learn from the world of high performance athletics. Enter There is an I in Team. Combining the latest social and psychological research with stories from world-class sports teams and high performance athletes, the book tests many of our most popular notions about teams and teaches a new way to view team potential as a path to business advantage.

Through numerous examples from sports, highlighted by interviews from distinguished players and coaches around the world, de Rond shows what team leaders can learn by focusing on the individuals within them. You'll learn: why the same qualities that make team members attractive can also make them bad teammates; why the best teams are in constant need of repair; why likeability trumps competence in even the most technically sophisticated environments; why a focus on interpersonal harmony will destroy team performance and kill the team; and, why statistics, analytics and other "moneyball" techniques can never replace the role of intuition in predicting individual and team performance.

At once readable and teachable, There is an I in Team will give managers an understanding of the issues that permeate high performance teams and help them apply those insights to their own work-giving both manager and team the competitive edge.