The ultimate playbook for building high-performing teams, packed with practical, eye-opening insights from the most comprehensive study of elite groups ever conducted.

What do the best teams do differently?

To find out, award-winning social psychologist Ron Friedman launched a landmark study surveying thousands of teams, pinpointing the habits that separate the best from the rest.

In Superteams, he shares their secrets, and explains why the old blueprint is broken. The best teams do more than rally around a goal or build camaraderie. In a world of endless meetings and 24/7 work, what truly sets high-performing groups apart is their relentless commitment to three critical factors: focus, teamwork, and growth.

In this timely book, you’ll learn the exact practices the world’s top teams use to achieve extraordinary results—without the burnout—including a collaboration strategy that enables guilt-free, focused work during regular work hours; a communication method that leads to fewer meetings and smarter decisions; and a treasure trove of surprisingly simple tactics for unlocking your team’s full potential.

Blending eye-opening discoveries with unforgettable stories, Superteams takes you inside the writers’ room of Succession and Bridgerton, the recording studio of ABBA and Fleetwood Mac, the kitchens of fine dining restaurants, the laboratories of Nobel Prize–winning scientists, the locker rooms of NBA and NFL teams, the chambers of Supreme Court justices, the boardrooms of Silicon Valley’s most innovative companies, and the White House Situation Room.

Throughout the journey, you’ll discover a wealth of counterintuitive findings, including:

-Why feeling like the smartest person in the room is a sign you’re on a weak team
-Why top performers worry less about disappointing their boss than their peers
-Why where you work doesn’t matter nearly as much as how you work
-How an obsession with personal productivity actually undermines teamwork
-The only office amenity that reliably improves team performance (spoiler: it’s not coffee)

If you want to lead or join a high-performing team, forget the old playbook—it’s obsolete. What you need is a data-backed roadmap that details a smarter way to work. By applying the lessons in this book, anyone can turn their group into a superteam.