This week my co-host, Professor Eric Knight and I continue our exploration of Thriving Teams with Ben Darwin.

Ben is a former Australian Rugby Union player who represented his country 28 times. He retired at the age of 27 after a neck injury and moved in to coaching before co-founding Gain Line Analytics, a company that has uses empirical analysis to understand the way professional sports teams work and succeed with each other.

It is one of the more fascinating interviews we have had on the podcast because of the challenging views he has on the traditional drivers of success.

Some of the key highlights are:

• The idea that small groups can be highly effective and the example he gives from military and history to show that it is the cohesion of your team, not the size of the talent pool you pull from that is key to success.
• His description of cohesion as understanding between the component parts of a team. And that this understanding is much more predictive of outcomes than the individual skill.
• And How effective cultures have normative behaviors that are established over time, are harder to change and can be learnt more easily across the components of the team.

If you would like to know about more Thriving Teams or use the diagnostic we have created to understand how close to Thriving your teams is you can check out our tools here: https://thegreatcoachespodcast.com/thriving-teams/

If you would like to send us any feedback or if you know a great coach, who has a unique story to share, then we would love to hear from you, please contact us at paul@thegreatcoachespodcast.com or contact us through our website thegreatcoachespodcast.com

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