Michaela Kerrissey

In a knowledge economy, where experts often both collaborate and compete, how do teams effectively integrate their diverse expertise so they can problem solve cohesively, even when their goals are not fully aligned?

“Teaming is core to business in almost any area, but it often gets left to intuition and chance,” says Michaela Kerrissey, Ph.D., an award-winning professor of management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “There is a real competitive advantage to expertise in teaming – being able to build trust in the moment, communicate across divides and adapt on the fly.

A researcher on how teams and organizations innovate, integrate and perform, Kerrissey focuses on team climates and psychological experiences at work to create actionable frameworks for measuring what is working in an organization and then scaling it effectively. This results in cross organizational teamwork that enables significant long-term growth.

“In high-performing teams, we can use team data to spur discussion about what you’re aiming to do, what the empirical basis is for it, and what behaviors and processes to put in place to enable it to succeed,” she continues. “By bringing these kinds of teamwork tools to the conversation, you can bring more intention and less fluff to teamwork.”

Named to the 2023 Thinkers50 Radar list, Kerrissey is a leading expert on psychological safety who has co-written multiple Harvard Business Review articles with Amy Edmondson, including a summer 2023 piece on leading through sustained crises. A naturally engaging and passionate “expert on experts” who has received the Bok Center award for excellence in teaching, she designed the mandatory Management Science course at Harvard’s School of Public Health and teaches courses and executive education programs at both Harvard Business School and Harvard Medical School. Through interactive talks, workshops and simulations using models she’s developed to work with high performing teams, she reveals how leaders can level up their teams to spur organizational innovation.

Teaming with Intention to Enhance Effectiveness and Promote Thriving at Work

Inspired by her early career experience streamlining and organizing HIV/AIDS programs to put effective treatments in the hands of patients in need, Kerrissey has seen first-hand how “teaming with intention” can be a game-changer for organizations.

“Despite all the technical expertise developing new medications, organizational problems still prevented us from solving the issue at hand – saving lives,” Kerrissey shares. “I learned that the real challenge was finding out where conflict arises in teams of very skilled people so they can share information and problem solve together to achieve their goals.”

Drawing from her time working with experts around the world, she demonstrates how teams can collaborate effectively, even when spread across geographies or facing complexity and pressure. With a focus on the “4 Ups” model she developed – Speak Up, Listen Up, Team Up, and Level Up – her actionable strategies create a climate of psychological safety that enhances communication and aligns team efforts with organizational objectives. This cultivates environments where teamwork thrives, innovation flourishes and burnout is systematically addressed, all through intentional practice and structured interaction.

Avoid the Common Information Effect to Solve Complex Challenges

Leaders want to harness the full potential of their teams, but when it comes to making decisions, their varied experience can make it harder to solve problems – or may even inadvertently create an echo chamber.

“When you get people from different backgrounds together, they naturally have a bias to share information they know other people already know – because it feels psychologically comforting to know that people will agree with you. This leads to meetings where people reiterate what everyone already knows,” Kerrissey explains. “We can avoid this ‘common information effect’ by applying structure to conversations, giving teams a method for eliciting diverse ideas and making conflict an opportunity for learning.

Kerrissey’s approach creates an environment where challenges are viewed not as individual hurdles but as collective opportunities, encouraging teams to co-create solutions even when objectives diverge. Her strategy explores how to develop a “we mindset,” where psychological safety and lean thinking merge to empower teams to speak up, share diverse insights and work together across boundaries. With an encouraging bent, Kerrissey equips leaders with practical tools for cultivating this mindset within their organizations, enhancing their teams’ capacity to innovate and solve problems together, and fostering a culture of shared purpose and resilient, dynamic teamwork.

Ultimately, Kerrissey’s frameworks for cultivating a collaborative mindset can be put into practice just one day after an engagement to boost a team’s capacity to innovate and solve problems together. By demonstrating how to apply the science of teaming, Kerrissey offers a path for creating systems and cultures where people speak up to identify problems, innovate and find new ways of accomplishing goals.

“Don’t leave teaming up to chance – draw on the science,” Kerrissey sums up. “If you study the most effective teams doing complex work, you’ll find that they are experts in teaming. They put smart structures and processes in place, and they actively curate their culture. That’s how diverse teams achieve breakthrough results.”

Michaela Kerrissey, Ph.D., M.S., is on the faculty at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She conducts research on how teams and organizations innovate, integrate, and perform, with a focus on team climates and psychological experiences at work.

Kerrissey has authored over 40 publications on team and organizational topics. She publishes in leading academic journals, such as Administrative Science Quarterly, and in popular outlets, such as Harvard Business Review, Stanford Social Innovation Review, and NEJM Catalyst. She has received numerous Best Paper awards, including from the Academy of Management and the Interdisciplinary Network for Group Research. She is listed on Thinkers50 Radar, a global listing of top management thinkers, and was shortlisted in 2023 for their top award.

She designed the Management Science course at the Harvard School of Public Health and co-teaches an online Teaming course across Harvard Business School and Harvard Medical School. She also teaches in multiple executive programs across Harvard University, is Faculty Director for the Elevate Teams course in Corporate Learning and received the Bok Center award for excellence in teaching.

Kerrissey holds a Ph.D. from Harvard Business School, an M.S. from Harvard School of Public Health, and a B.A. from Duke University. She has been a Robertson Scholar, a Hart Fellow, and a Reynolds Fellow. Prior to academia, she was a consulting team leader at The Bridgespan Group, which was launched out of Bain & Company.

Michaela Kerrissey is available to advise your organization via virtual and in-person consulting meetings, interactive workshops and customized keynotes through the exclusive representation of Stern Speakers & Advisors, a division of Stern Strategy Group^®.