Every team drives the work. Make time to tune the engine.

The team is the work engine through which you create value for your organisation. How smoothly it functions affects your organisation’s performance.

That’s why we’re here. We help you give your team a six-week tune-up.

Build Better Teams is a six-week online programme to make your team work better together.

View the founding offerSee how it works

A 2-minute tour of Build Better Teams

Every unit, four steps

Step 1 / Everyone answers

A few minutes.
Everyone’s view counts.

Each person answers a short set of statements about the team, on their own device, in their own time.

Anonymous where it matters: the team sees the combined picture.

Team Dynamics survey

Question 3 of 7 · illustrative

On this team, it is safe to take a risk.

5 of 6 team members have answered.

The next meeting opens with the last meeting’s commitments to check on how well the team has stuck to them. A follow-up survey at the end of the journey shows the improvements.

The AI coaches

Two AI coaches. One for each person, one for the team.

For the team as a whole · everyone sees it

A coach for the team as a whole

Informed by the team’s combined survey results and meeting records, each person’s Working Styles manual and the files you share, and by the guidance built into the journey. Ask it anything in team chat with @coach.

Survey results · Meeting records · Working Styles · Shared files

Maya

@coach Recovery under pressure came out lowest. Where should we start?

Team coach

Your Team Dynamics notes mention late handovers three times. One small test: name an owner for every handover in Monday’s meeting, and check in two weeks.

@coach How should we run Monday’s handover meeting so everyone gets a say?

Your team’s Working Styles manuals split evenly: three of you prefer to think first, three to talk it through. Send the handover list the day before, then keep the first five minutes open for discussion.

@coach Turn our notes into next steps with owners.

From the notes in your Team Dynamics meeting: three next steps, each with the owner the team named. The handover owners first, then the Monday check-in, then a review in two weeks.

@coach What did we commit to last time, and how is it going?

Your meeting record lists four commitments from the Team Dynamics meeting. Two are under way. No one has confirmed the Monday handover owner yet.

Answers only when asked. Uses only what the whole team can already see.

For each team member · private to them

A private 1-on-1 coach for every team member

Each person gets their own coach to prepare a hard conversation, think a decision through or keep a commitment going. It draws on that person’s results and Peer Feedback, and is built to interpret personality profiles: the Big Five profile is included, and it can read a Hogan or NEO report they upload.

Their results · Peer Feedback · Big Five (included) · Hogan and NEO uploads

You

How do I push back in meetings without sounding defensive?

Your coach

Your Peer Feedback says people value your directness. Try opening with the goal you share, then name your concern as a question.

I need to raise a missed handover with Sam. How should I go about it?

Sam’s Working Styles manual, which the team can see, says they prefer to think before talking, and yours says you like to talk it out. Send Sam the one handover that slipped the day before, then talk.

Help me open Thursday’s meeting so the quieter people speak first.

Your Working Styles manual says you think out loud. Three of your six teammates say in theirs that they prefer to think first, so they tend to stay quiet. Start with two minutes of private writing, then go round the table before any discussion.

I committed to interrupting less. How do I keep it up?

You made that commitment at your last Team Dynamics meeting, and your Peer Feedback mentions it too. Pick one meeting this week to watch for it, and note what happened just before.

1-on-1 chats are never shared with the team.

Why it matters

How well a team works together shows up in its results.

The research makes two consistent points: how a team works affects how it performs, and it can be improved.

How a team works matters as much as who is in it.

Star analysts who changed firms on their own often saw their performance fall for years, unless the new firm had stronger capabilities. Stars who moved with their teammates showed no significant decline.

Groysberg et al., 2008

Trust between teammates pays off.

Across many studies, trust within a team was consistently linked to higher performance, even after accounting for how the team had performed before.

de Jong et al., 2016

Teamwork can be learned.

In controlled studies, teams that worked on how they work together went on to perform better.

McEwan et al., 2017

Read the research behind the journeyDownload the business case (PDF)
Why it’s hard

Most teams underinvest in how they work together.

Three things get in the way:

  1. Everyone is busy driving the work.

    Deadlines, customers, the next deliverable. How the team aligns, decides and supports each other runs in the background, and the background rarely makes the agenda.

  2. Development is built for individuals.

    Reviews, coaching and courses mostly look at one person at a time. How the team works together can end up belonging to no one.

  3. These conversations are awkward to start.

    Asking “how are we really working together?” is uncomfortable for anyone, and more so for the person in charge, who is part of the answer. Few leaders are ever handed a way to run that conversation.

Our approach

We help teams get stronger, using methods backed by science and experience.

Created by IMD professors and leadership-development practitioners.

Five principles shape every part of the journey.

  1. Start from data, not guesswork.

    Short surveys, anonymous where it matters, show how the team sees itself, including where views differ.

    In one study, raters felt more comfortable, and rated less generously, when they weren’t identified.

    Antonioni, 1994

  2. Work on the topics that matter.

    One unit for each:

    • Purpose & Mandate. Many teams believe they’re aligned until they compare notes.
    • Team Dynamics. Trust and the safety to speak up shape whether problems surface early.
    • Working Styles. Friction between capable people often comes from different ways of working, not bad intent.
    • Capabilities & Coordination. Unclear ownership and dropped handoffs are often invisible from any one seat, and fixable once seen.
    • Peer Feedback. Honest feedback on how you come across is rare, so each person’s report stays private.
    • Handling Disagreement. Teams that can disagree openly tend to make better decisions.

  3. Say it out loud, in the room.

    The team discusses its own results, writes one agreement, and everyone makes a personal commitment, by name.

    Teams that review their own work together improve, on average, by a clear margin.

    Tannenbaum & Cerasoli, 2013

    Specific “when X happens, I will do Y” plans make goals markedly more likely to be reached.

    Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006

  4. Build it into the real work.

    About one unit a week, with ordinary working days in between to try what you agreed. No away-day.

    Interactive training (workshops, practice and team reviews) changed how teams worked together most clearly.

    McEwan et al., 2017

  5. Keep going until it becomes habit.

    Each meeting opens by looking back at what the last one agreed, and a Follow-up Survey shows what changed.

    Development spread over several sessions changes what people do more than one-off events.

    Lacerenza et al., 2017

Privacy

Honest answers begin with clear boundaries.

Some information does more good shared: it is how a team learns to work together. Some is only honest when it stays private. So every part of the journey follows one clear rule.

Read the privacy notice

Public to the team, anonymous.

Purpose & Mandate, Team Dynamics, Capabilities & Coordination, Handling Disagreement and the Follow-up Survey. The team sees one combined picture, once at least three people have answered and the lead has shared it. Written comments appear without names. People answer more candidly when they can’t be picked out. The lead can see who has answered, never what.

Public to the team, named.

Working Styles. Each person’s manual is shared with their teammates by name, on purpose: it only helps if people know how each other likes to work.

Private to the person.

Peer Feedback, the Leadership Profile (Big Five, or an uploaded Hogan or NEO report) and 1-on-1 coaching chats. Not the team, and not the team lead. In Peer Feedback nobody sees who said what. Private is what makes honest reflection possible.

The AI coaches.

The team coach only sees and uses what is available to the whole team. A 1-on-1 coach also uses the information that is private to that person, and their chats are never shared.

AI and your data.

Nothing you write is used to train AI models. The app and the coaches are hosted in the EU.

Who we are

The people behind Build Better Teams.

Build Better Teams comes from LeaderInsight: three people who have spent their careers developing leaders and teams.

  • Photo of Michael Yaziji

    Michael Yaziji

    Founder & CEO

    • Professor of Leadership and Strategy, IMD
    • PhD, INSEAD (Strategy)
    • PhD, University of California (Analytic Philosophy)
    • Expertise in strategy, AI, leadership and psychometrics
    • 20+ years in leadership development
  • Photo of Jim Pulcrano

    Jim Pulcrano

    Co-founder & COO

    • Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship, IMD
    • DBA, Grenoble School of Management (Entrepreneurship)
    • Founder of the IMD Startup Competition
    • Co-founder of six startups (four exits)
    • 20+ years of executive education
  • Photo of Raquel Roses

    Raquel Roses

    Co-founder & CTO

    • PhD, ETH Zurich (Information Management)
    • Expertise in data science and AI
    • Experience leading cross-functional teams

We saw the data and design challenges in leadership development. We knew we could do better.

An invitation to begin

Time well spent
on how you work together.

The full six-week journey for your team, with everything you need to lead it yourself.

  • All seven units and their reports
  • Facilitation guides and in-app team meetings
  • Team dashboards and shared commitments
  • A team AI coach, and a private 1-on-1 AI coach for every member
  • Optional personal Leadership Profile
  • Follow-up Survey to see what changed
Founding team invitation
$0 $950 journey price

For the first 20 teams, one team per person · up to 12 people, including you and any facilitator

In return, you take part in the founding programme: two 30–45-minute debriefs with the founders (at about two weeks and at the end), a three-question team rating at the start and at the end, and a two-minute member survey at the end. Members’ surveys stay voluntary.

Enter this code at checkoutFOUNDING20

Terms of Sale (opens in a new tab)

With the founding code no card is needed, and nothing renews automatically · subject to remaining availability · secure checkout by Stripe

The $950 journey price includes VAT. Your team has full access for ten weeks from the day the team is created. After that, continued access is optional at $500 per year per team, and never charged automatically.

Before you begin

A few good
questions.

The journey

Isn’t this another team-building day?

No. It runs inside six ordinary working weeks, on your own team’s survey results. Each meeting starts by looking back at what the last one agreed, and a follow-up survey shows what your team reports has changed. It isn’t a one-off event.

How much time does it take?

About an hour and a half a week, most of it in one team meeting. Most surveys take 3–10 minutes (Peer Feedback takes a little longer, because you rate each teammate). Meetings usually run 60–90 minutes and can take the place of one of your regular meetings. The order and pace are recommendations: choose the units that fit and take longer if you need to. The team lead needs some time to prepare.

Do I need facilitation experience?

No. You launch each survey, remind anyone who hasn’t answered, read the results and lead the meeting. Every unit has a facilitation guide and a two-minute video on how its meeting works. You can run it yourself, or with a professional coach or facilitator, but you don’t need one. If you’d like human coaching support, write to feedback@leaderinsight.ai and we can point you to qualified coaches.

Is this for a team that’s struggling, or one that’s doing well?

Either. The results describe how people answered at one point in time; they are not a diagnosis or a measure of anyone’s worth. A team under strain gets a structured way to talk about what’s hard, and a strong team finds its next step. It isn’t mediation: if a personal dispute comes up, the guide says to pause it and bring in outside help.

Who is it for, and how big can the team be?

Real teams that work together: up to 12 people including you and any facilitator. It works for remote teams, because everyone opens the same meeting page on their own device. Results open once at least three people have answered, and Peer Feedback needs at least four people on the team. HR and L&D teams can buy several journeys at once.

What does it cost?

One team journey is $950, paid once, VAT included. The first 20 teams take it free with the founding code FOUNDING20, one team per person. In return, you take part in the founding programme: two 30–45-minute debriefs with the founders, a three-question team rating at the start and at the end, and a two-minute member survey at the end (members’ surveys stay voluntary). It covers a team of up to 12 including you and any facilitator; team members pay nothing. If you’ve paid, you can ask for a full refund within 14 days, as long as the team hasn’t started: no survey launched and no AI coach used in a chat.

What happens after the six weeks?

The follow-up survey shows what your team reports has changed, and you choose which commitments to carry forward. Your team has full access for ten weeks from the day the team is created: six weeks for the journey, four more to keep using it. After that, continued access is optional at $500 per year per team, and never charged automatically. It keeps the team AI coach and everyone's 1-on-1 AI coach, which know your team, plus optional follow-up surveys with a progress report and fresh Peer Feedback rounds. Without it, everything your team has done stays readable; new surveys, meetings and the team AI coach pause, and a member's 1-on-1 AI coach pauses only if none of their teams still has access.

Privacy and data

Who sees my answers, and what does the team lead see?

Your lead sees what the whole team sees: combined results (only once at least three people have answered and the lead has shared them), shared Working Styles manuals, team chat, meeting records and commitments. They can also see who has answered a survey, so they can send reminders, but never what anyone answered. Written comments appear without names. Your Peer Feedback report, Leadership Profile and private coach chat are visible only to you.

What do the AI coaches see, and can I trust them?

The team AI coach, which you reach with @coach in team chat, uses only what the whole team can already see. Each person’s 1-on-1 AI coach is private: your lead and teammates can’t read that chat, and you can see and change the notes it keeps about you. Both coaches can be wrong and are for reflection, not professional advice.

Is my data used to train AI, and where is it stored?

No. Your content isn’t used to train AI models. The app, its database and the AI coaches are hosted on Microsoft Azure in the EU, and Microsoft may keep prompts for up to 30 days solely to detect abuse. A team’s data is deleted automatically 24 months after its last activity, after an email warning, and anyone can delete their account at any time.

Can anyone else on my team see my private data?

No. Your Peer Feedback report, Leadership Profile, uploaded reports and 1-on-1 coaching chats are visible only to you: not your teammates, not your team lead and not the team AI coach. Our privacy notice explains the limited access our own staff have, for support and security.

Is taking part voluntary, and can results be used to judge people?

Yes, voluntary: our terms require team leads to make it so and not to penalise anyone for their answers, for not answering or for leaving. Our terms also forbid using any result for hiring, selection, promotion, pay, performance ratings, discipline or dismissal.

Your team already drives the work. Give the engine six weeks.

Seven units, about one a week, at your team’s pace. The first 20 teams take the journey free with the code FOUNDING20 (one team per person).

Start your team’s journeyQuestions? Write to feedback@leaderinsight.ai