Teams Don’t Exist in Business

Larry Coval spent nearly four decades leading organizations at AT&T, Global Crossing, and Cox Business, and came out the other side convinced that most of what gets taught about leadership is wrong. He joins Neal to talk about his new book, Misled, and the argument at its center: “team” is the wrong unit of analysis for business, leadership was never a soft skill, and the fundamentals got skipped while the keynote circuit sold platitudes.

He also makes the case for the smoked marlin taco at Oscar’s - drowned in orange sauce.

Key topics

* Why teams don’t exist in business — and the three things real ones have

* Leadership Industrial Complex: why substance lost to style

* Gallup’s data: managers are now as disengaged as their people

* Hiring for sameness as the founder’s most expensive mistake

* Red teaming: how the military pressure-tests decisions

* Setting expectations with crystalline clarity — confusion is friction

* How hoarding work robs your people of development

* 60% of managers get zero training when promoted

* The ARCANE model and why career planning has no playbook