Top Team Building books recommended by experts

At MentorCruise, we are all about making the most out of the experience of others. As part of that, we've connected and asked dozens of experts and professionals about their favourite Team Building books – and here are the answers.

Table of Contents

Fundamentals of Team Building

Understanding the concepts of Team Building starts with understanding the fundamentals. On your way to mastery, it's crucial for you to understand how certain concepts were derived, and why things work like they do. Starting with these resources is the best way to do so.

The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork: Embrace Them and Empower Your Team

Individual all-stars can only take you so far. Ultimately, success--whether in business, family, church, athletic teams, or any other organization--is entirely dependent on teamwork. But how does one build that team? Leadership expert and bestselling author John C. Maxwell knows that building and maintaining a successful team is no simple task. Even people who have taken their teams to the hig…

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Harvard Business Review on Building Better Teams

Most teams underperform. Yours can beat the odds.If you need the best practices and ideas for superior team building--but don't have time to find them--this book is for you. Here are 10 inspiring and useful perspectives, all in one place.This collection of HBR articles will help you:- Boost team performance through mutual accountability- Motivate large, diverse groups to tackle complex project…

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The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable

After her first two weeks observing the problems at DecisionTech, Kathryn Petersen, its new CEO, had more than a few moments when she wondered if she should have taken the job. But Kathryn knew there was little chance she would have turned it down. After all, retirement had made her antsy, and nothing excited her more than a challenge. What she could not have known when she accepted the job, h…

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Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High

“[Crucial Conversations] draws our attention to those defining moments that literally shape our lives, our relationships, and our world…. This book deserves to take its place as one of the key thought leadership contributions of our time.” ―From the Foreword by Stephen R. Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People “The quality of your life comes out of the quality of your dialogu…

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Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World

When General Stanley McChrystal took command of the Joint Special Operations Task Force in 2004, he quickly realized that conventional military tactics were failing. Al Qaeda in Iraq was a decentralized network that could move quickly, strike ruthlessly, then seemingly vanish into the local population. The allied forces had a huge advantage in numbers, equipment, and training—but none of that …

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Team Building: Proven Strategies for Improving Team Performance

Now in its fifth edition, Team Building is a classic in the field of organization development. In this new edition, the authors strengthen the Four Cs framework that was introduced in the fourth edition and add a wealth of new illustrative examples, a chapter on the challenges of managing cross-functional teams, and a chapter on leading innovative teams in a competitive environment. To complem…

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Additional Team Building Reading

These books are not required for you to learn Team Building, but they are highly recommended for you to deepen your knowledge.

Unbreakable: Building and Leading Resilient Teams

An essential guide for managers and leaders on building resilient teams in turbulent times. As a result of global economic changes, new technologies, and increased competition, business environments are becoming increasingly turbulent and unpredictable, requiring new forms of resilient work teams. Due in part to the increasing complexity of business environments, more and more organizations wo…

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The Ideal Team Player: How to Recognize and Cultivate The Three Essential Virtues

In his classic book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni laid out a groundbreaking approach for tackling the perilous group behaviors that destroy teamwork. Here he turns his focus to the individual, revealing the three indispensable virtues of an ideal team player. In The Ideal Team Player, Lencioni tells the story of Jeff Shanley, a leader desperate to save his uncle’s company …

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The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups

In The Culture Code, Daniel Coyle goes inside some of the world’s most successful organizations—including the U.S. Navy’s SEAL Team Six, IDEO, and the San Antonio Spurs—and reveals what makes them tick. He demystifies the culture-building process by identifying three key skills that generate cohesion and cooperation, and explains how diverse groups learn to function with a single mind.

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Leaders Eat Last

Imagine a world where almost everyone wakes up inspired to go to work, feels trusted and valued during the day, then returns home feeling fulfilled. This is not a crazy, idealized notion. Today, in many successful organizations, great leaders create environments in which people naturally work together to do remarkable things. In his work with organizations around the world, Simon Sinek noticed…

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

This list is curated by MentorCruise and can include Amazon affiliate links. Have any other suggestions? Add here.

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I’m a software engineering leader and manager with over 17 years of experience leading development of a variety of software systems. I enjoy delivering impact, growing people around me and bringing out the best in them. I have received mentorship and sponsorship from some amazing leaders throughout my career and …

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I am technology executive who has led large scale transformation and coached over a hundred technology professionals through career growth. My mentoring and coaching outcomes include * made my coachees more self-reliant * helped them redefine their role or evolve their career * equipped them with strategies to resolve conflicts …

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I'm Michael, a retired professional based in Spain with a wealth of leadership, industry, coaching, and transformative experience. Over my 30-year career, I've navigated various sectors, including Retail Banking, Financial Services, Insurance, Manufacturing, Telecoms, and Government, both as a permanent member of staff and as a freelance advisor. Recently, I've …

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Hi, I’m Joey Pedicini! Holistic CTO for solo builders and startup founders. I’ve spent 12 years building software the old fashioned way, mostly as a frontend engineer, with a bunch of full-stack web development experience mixed in. Before transitioning into coaching and fractional CTO work, I led frontend development for …

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📚 Specialist topics where I can share my experience include; driving operational excellence, improving hiring processes (or preparing for them), lightweight process and practices for teams, partnering with Product, technical decision making, technical leadership skills, operational/support issue management and managing managers. 🏢 I was hired as the first engineer for …

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Seasoned Engineering Manager currently working at Zalando (8 years) and previously led teams at Rakuten (3 years), after 8 years as a hands-on Software Engineer. I built and scaled Zalando’s Fashion Search Engine from 2 engineers to a multi-team organization by hiring more than 15 Search Engineers and developing and …

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  • "Naz is an amazing person and a wonderful mentor. She is supportive and knowledgeable with extensive practical experience. Having been a manager at Netflix, she also knows a ton about working with teams at scale. Highly recommended."

  • "Brandon has been supporting me with a software engineering job hunt and has provided amazing value with his industry knowledge, tips unique to my situation and support as I prepared for my interviews and applications."

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