The author, who imagines brave new worlds for a living, sees technology not as an Orwellian threat but as an empowering vehicle for individual expression.

The belief that teams make us more creative and productive - and are the best way to get things done - is deeply entrenched. But Hackman, a professor of organizational psychology at Harvard and a leading expert on teams, is having none of it. Research, he says, consistently shows that teams underperform despite all their extra resources. In an interview with senior editor Diane Coutu, Hackman explains where teams go wrong. Shockingly, most of the time members don't agree on what the team is supposed to be doing or even on who is on the team. The belief that bigger is better also compounds problems; as a team grows, the effort needed to manage links between members increases almost exponentially. Leaders need to be ruthless about defining teams and keeping them small (fewer than 10 members), and some individuals (like team destroyers) should simply be forced off. The leader also must set a compelling direction for the team - but in so doing, may encounter intense resistance that puts him or her at great risk. Hackman explores other fallacies about teams - for instance, that teams whose members have been together a long time become stale. In fact, research reveals that new teams make 50% more mistakes than established teams. To avoid complacency, though, every team needs a deviant - someone who is willing to make waves and open up the group to more ideas. Unfortunately, such individuals often get thrown off the team, robbing it of its chance to be magical. Leaders can't make a team do well. However, by being disciplined about how a team is set up and managed, instituting the right support systems, and providing coaching in group processes, they can increase the likelihood that a team will be great.

In January 2008, CBS anchor Katie Couric asked then-candidate Barack Obama what single book, apart from the Bible, he would bring with him to the White House. He cited Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin's account of Abraham Lincoln's leadership during the Civil War. It was a signal that Obama intended to model his leadership during the current crisis on the style of his presidential predecessor from Illinois. By bringing heavyweight politicians who are themselves past and future presidential contenders into his cabinet, Obama has indeed reprised Lincoln's strategy of creating a team composed of his most able rivals. If the new U.S. president can learn from Lincoln so, too, can business executives now grappling with similar questions of how to lead in turbulent times. To draw out the lessons of Lincoln's administration, HBR senior editor Diane Coutu interviewed Goodwin, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian whose other books include No Ordinary Time (about Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and their era), The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, and Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream. In their wide-ranging conversation, Goodwin discusses the advantages of forming an executive committee of strong-willed, forthright individuals who won't insulate a leader from uncomfortable but important dissent. She describes how Lincoln managed a group of people who were capable of taking over the top job - and sometimes plotting to do so. She sheds light on Lincoln's magic, which she says was not so much a matter of charisma as of emotional intelligence. And she takes the historian's long view on the current economic crisis and the opportunities for political and business leaders alike to take advantage of these extraordinary times.

Today's business leaders increasingly rely on coaches for help in understanding how to act in a demanding and volatile world. These confidants and advisers can earn up to $2,000 per hour. To understand what they do to merit that money, HBR conducted a survey of 140 leading coaches and invited five experts to comment on the findings. Commentators and coaches agreed that the reasons for engaging coaches have evolved over the past decade. Ten years ago, most companies hired a coach to help fix toxic behavior at the top. Today, most coaching is about developing the capabilities of high-potential performers or acting as a sounding board. As a result of this broader mission, there's a lot more fuzziness around coaching engagements, whether it be with regard to how coaches define the scope of engagements, how they measure and report on progress, and what credentials a company should look for when selecting a coach. Do companies and executives get value from their coaches? When we asked coaches to explain the healthy growth of their industry, they said that clients keep coming back because "coaching works." Yet the survey results also suggest that the industry is fraught with conflicts of interest, blurry lines between what is best handled by coaches and what should be left to mental health professionals, and sketchy mechanisms for monitoring the effectiveness of a coaching engagement. The bottom line: Coaching as a business tool continues to gain legitimacy, but the fundamentals of the industry are still very much in flux. In this market, as in so many others today, we have to conclude that the old saw still applies: Buyer beware!

The next U.S. administration will face enormous challenges to world peace, the global economy, and the environment. Exercising military and economic muscle alone will not bring peace and prosperity. According to Nye, a former U.S. government official and a former dean at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, the next president must be able to combine hard power, characterized by coercion, and what Nye calls "soft" power, which relies instead on attraction. The result is smart power, a tool great leaders use to mobilize people around agendas that look beyond current problems. Hard power is often necessary, Nye explains. In the 1990s, when the Taliban was providing refuge to Al Qaeda, President Clinton tried - and failed - to solve the problem diplomatically instead of destroying terrorist havens in Afghanistan. In other situations, however, soft power is more effective, though it has been too often overlooked. In Iraq, Nye argues, the use of soft power could draw young people toward something other than terrorism. "I think that there's an awakening to the need for soft power as people look at the crisis in the Middle East and begin to realize that hard power is not sufficient to resolve it," he says. Solving today's global problems will require smart power - a judicious blend of the other two powers. While there are notable examples of men who have used smart power - Teddy Roosevelt, for instance - it's much more difficult for women to lead with smart power, especially in the United States, where women feel pressure to prove that they are not "soft." Only by exercising smart power, Nye says, can the next president of the United States set a new tone for U.S. foreign policy in this century.

As the economy softens, corporate downsizing appears almost inevitable. Don't panic yet, though. While layoff decisions might seem beyond your control, there's plenty you can do to make sure you retain your job. In this article, Banks, a former HR executive at Chase Manhattan and FleetBoston Financial, and Coutu, an HBR senior editor and former affiliate scholar at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, describe how to improve your chances of survival. It's mostly a matter of coolheaded planning, they observe. When cuts loom, the first thing to do is act like a survivor. Be confident and cheerful. Research shows that congeniality trumps competence when push comes to shove. Look to the future by focusing on customers, for without them, no one will have work. Survivors also tend to be versatile; tight budgets demand managers who can wear several hats, so start demonstrating what other capabilities you can offer. If you're, say, a manager who once worked as a teacher, take on a training role. Remember to be a good corporate citizen: Participation matters now more than ever. It isn't the time to behave as if work is beneath you or to argue for a new title. When one executive's department was folded under the management of a less-experienced colleague, she swallowed her pride and wholeheartedly supported the new hierarchy. Her superiors noticed her commitment and eventually rewarded her with a prestigious appointment. It's also important to offer leaders hope and realistic solutions. Energize your colleagues around change, like the VP of learning at a firm undergoing major staff reductions did. He organized a humorous in-house radio show that revived spirits and helped management communicate with employees-and ended up with a promotion.

Advances in neurobiology have demonstrated that the brain is so sensitive to external experiences that it can be rewired through exposure to cultural influences. Experiments have shown that in some people, parts of the brain light up only when they are presented with an image of Bill Clinton. In others, it's Jennifer Aniston. Or Halle Berry. What other stimuli could rewire the brain? Is there a Boeing brain? A Goldman Sachs brain? No one really knows yet, says Medina, a developmental molecular biologist, who has spent much of his career exploring the mysteries of neuroscience with laypeople. As tempting as it is to try to translate the growing advances to the workplace, he warns, it's just too early to tell how the revolution in neurobiology is going to affect the way executives run their organizations. "If we understood how the brain knew how to pick up a glass of water and drink it, that would represent a major achievement," he says. Still, neuroscientists are learning much that can be put to practical use. For instance, exercise is good for the brain, and long-term stress is harmful, inevitably hurting productivity in the workplace. Stressed people don't do math very well, they don't process language very efficiently, and their ability to remember - in both the short and long terms - declines. In fact, the brain wasn't built to remember with anything like analytic precision and shouldn't be counted on to do so. True memory is a very rare thing on this planet, Medina says. That's because the brain isn't really interested in reality; it's interested in survival. What's more, and contrary to what many twentieth-century educators believed, the brain can keep learning at any age. "We are lifelong learners," Medina says. "That's very good news indeed."

Unless you're a hermit, you can't avoid relationships. And your professional career certainly won't go anywhere if you don't know how to build strong, positive connections. Leaders need to connect deeply with followers if they hope to engage and inspire them. Despite the importance of interpersonal dynamics in the workplace, solid research on the topic is only now beginning to emerge--and psychologist John M. Gottman, executive director of the Relationship Research Institute, is leading the way. His research shows that how we behave at work is closely related to how we behave at home. Few people understand personal relationships better than Gottman, who has studied thousands of married couples for the past 35 years. He and his colleagues use video cameras, heart monitors, and other biofeedback equipment to measure what goes on when couples experience moments of either conflict or closeness. By mathematically analyzing the data, Gottman has provided hard scientific evidence for what makes good relationships. In this interview with HBR senior editor Diane Coutu, Gottman emphasizes that successful couples look for ways to accentuate the positive: They try to say yes as often as possible. Even thriving relationships, however, still have room for conflict. Individuals embrace it as a way to work through essential personality differences. Gottman also points out that good relationships aren't about clear communication--they're about small moments of attachment and intimacy. Still, he warns, too much of a good thing can be a menace in the workplace, where simple friendships can spill over into emotional affairs.

As the CEO of Hathaway Jones, an American luxury apparel retailer, Fred Westen has spent the past four years struggling to revamp his company's stodgy image and boost flagging sales. He's just announced an ambitious plan to elbow in on China's fast-growing luxury goods market when he gets a call from an old prep school friend. Fred agrees to meet his friend's daughter, Mimi Brewster, to see whether she might be able to head up the company's flagship store in Shanghai. Fred is impressed by Mimi's CV, and the interview goes off without a hitch, but a routine Google search turns up information about her that could affect the company's performance in China. News stories and photos reveal that when Mimi was fresh out of college, she'd participated in nonviolent but vocal demonstrations--including one in front of China's San Francisco consulate--against the World Trade Organization. As the vice president of HR urges caution, Fred ponders hiring practices in the digital age. He knows that nothing is secret anymore--especially among younger people, who brazenly post the most intimate details of their lives for the world to see. If he hires Mimi, and her past conduct becomes widely known, his company's expansion overseas could be set back. But rising stars like Mimi don't walk in the door every day. Should Fred hire her despite her online history? Commenting on this fictional case study in R0706A and R0706Z are John G. Palfrey, Jr., a professor and the executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School; Jeffrey A. Joerres, the CEO of Manpower; danah m. boyd, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, and a corporate adviser; and Michael Fertik, the CEO of ReputationDefender.

As the CEO of Hathaway Jones, an American luxury apparel retailer, Fred Westen has spent the past four years struggling to revamp his company's stodgy image and boost flagging sales. He's just announced an ambitious plan to elbow in on China's fast-growing luxury goods market when he gets a call from an old prep school friend. Fred agrees to meet his friend's daughter, Mimi Brewster, to see whether she might be able to head up the company's flagship store in Shanghai. Fred is impressed by Mimi's CV, and the interview goes off without a hitch, but a routine Google search turns up information about her that could affect the company's performance in China. News stories and photos reveal that when Mimi was fresh out of college, she'd participated in nonviolent but vocal demonstrations--including one in front of China's San Francisco consulate--against the World Trade Organization. As the vice president of HR urges caution, Fred ponders hiring practices in the digital age. He knows that nothing is secret anymore--especially among younger people, who brazenly post the most intimate details of their lives for the world to see. If he hires Mimi, and her past conduct becomes widely known, his company's expansion overseas could be set back. But rising stars like Mimi don't walk in the door every day. Should Fred hire her despite her online history? Commenting on this fictional case study in R0706A and R0706Z are John G. Palfrey, Jr., a professor and the executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School; Jeffrey A. Joerres, the CEO of Manpower; danah m. boyd, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, and a corporate adviser; and Michael Fertik, the CEO of ReputationDefender.

As the CEO of Hathaway Jones, an American luxury apparel retailer, Fred Westen has spent the past four years struggling to revamp his company's stodgy image and boost flagging sales. He's just announced an ambitious plan to elbow in on China's fast-growing luxury goods market when he gets a call from an old prep school friend. Fred agrees to meet his friend's daughter, Mimi Brewster, to see whether she might be able to head up the company's flagship store in Shanghai. Fred is impressed by Mimi's CV, and the interview goes off without a hitch, but a routine Google search turns up information about her that could affect the company's performance in China. News stories and photos reveal that when Mimi was fresh out of college, she'd participated in nonviolent but vocal demonstrations--including one in front of China's San Francisco consulate--against the World Trade Organization. As the vice president of HR urges caution, Fred ponders hiring practices in the digital age. He knows that nothing is secret anymore--especially among younger people, who brazenly post the most intimate details of their lives for the world to see. If he hires Mimi, and her past conduct becomes widely known, his company's expansion overseas could be set back. But rising stars like Mimi don't walk in the door every day. Should Fred hire her despite her online history? Commenting on this fictional case study in R0706A and R0706Z are John G. Palfrey, Jr., a professor and the executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School; Jeffrey A. Joerres, the CEO of Manpower; danah m. boyd, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, and a corporate adviser; and Michael Fertik, the CEO of ReputationDefender.