
Are You a Team or a Meeting?
How to Build Teams That Win: An Economist Edge book
Nick Pope(Author)
Economist Books (Publisher)
Published on 12. February 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
256 pages
978-1-80081-909-2 (ISBN)
Description
Winning is a team sport, right?
True, we need to collaborate to make sense of today's challenges. But simply bringing people together is no guarantee of success. Too often, so-called teams are just groups of individuals, attending too many aimless meetings.
It doesn't have to be that way. Using the author's high-performing teams framework, Are You a Team or a Meeting? shows team leaders and members alike how to:
* create teams of the right size and composition
* focus on team purpose to help you prioritise
* encourage healthy challenge and open communication
* develop systems, habits and behaviours that help teams win
True, we need to collaborate to make sense of today's challenges. But simply bringing people together is no guarantee of success. Too often, so-called teams are just groups of individuals, attending too many aimless meetings.
It doesn't have to be that way. Using the author's high-performing teams framework, Are You a Team or a Meeting? shows team leaders and members alike how to:
* create teams of the right size and composition
* focus on team purpose to help you prioritise
* encourage healthy challenge and open communication
* develop systems, habits and behaviours that help teams win
Reviews / Votes
Teams are now too big; too busy; and too many. No wonder they don't work. Nick Pope provides the antidote. A brilliant, practical guide on how to make teamwork work again. Drawing on insights from his work with leadership teams worldwide, Pope shows you how to marshal your team behind a real purpose, turn polite conversations into productive commitments, and build energy rather than exhaustion. Enough of whining meetings, it's time to be a winning team. -- Steve Martin, bestselling author of Yes! As a long-time student of team effectiveness, I found this book refreshingly practical - it challenged me to move beyond running meetings and inspired me to build a team with real purpose, trust, and results -- Paddy Hull, Senior Director Global Talent & Leadership at Heineken Hope is at hand with this excellent book by Nick Pope. It brings together research and practice in a book that leaders at every level will recognise as both rigorous and practical, and is packed with many field-tested tools that leaders can put to work in their own teams immediately. I thoroughly recommend it for team leaders working in any sector, and for team coaches -- Professor Peter Hawkins best-selling author of Systemic Coaching Dr Nick Pope's wry observations of what a team actually is and what can so easily go wrong will have you smiling in recognition. He's certainly put in the hours - deep academic research as well working with over a thousand teams across fifty different countries - and it really shows. His highly practical insights into how to make collaboration (which goes beyond cooperation) real and effective should be read by anyone who is - or wants to be - a leader -- Neil Mullarkey, author of In The MomentMore details
Series
Edition
Main
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Profile Books Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (UK-trade)
Illustrations
5-6 figures throughout the text
Dimensions
Height: 195 mm
Width: 131 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
215 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-80081-909-2 (9781800819092)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
02/2026
Economist Books
€14.49
Available for download
Person
Nick Pope has two decades of experience working with leading companies such as Nike, Unilever, Gucci, M&S, and Lloyds Bank, helping them develop effective teams at all levels of their organisations. He has published with the British Academy of Management and in several industry trade journals. He currently lives in Sydney, Australia, with regular trips to the US and his native UK.