January 28, 2026 · View in browser

The Insightful Leader

BY KELLOGG INSIGHT

Leadership advice from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University

Good morning,

Even the most-effective teams may be in danger of falling apart if they lack one crucial ingredient: spirit.

This week, read what leaders can do to help new teams connect and perform their best—or turn morale around if an established group starts showing metaphorical cracks in the dam.

Plus, finance research shows us how simple nudges can make a meaningful difference.

Smells like team spirit

When a team’s spirit is high, it can foster productivity and heighten performance. Kellogg professor Leigh Thompson offers research-backed strategies to help team leaders cultivate that spark.

First, she suggests drafting a one-page charter stating your team’s principles. Define goals, assign responsibilities, and explain how everyone will work together. And make sure it’s written by the team, for the team, so that everyone knows what success looks like.

Next, apply greater structure and focus to your meetings. That can help prevent individual members from taking up too much time and draining the team’s energy. Give your team a “line of sight” as well.

“When people see a clear connection between their own ideas and how the team operates, their commitment deepens,” Thompson says.

Connecting individual ideas and operations with “brainwriting” and “speedstorming” can help make this happen. The former consists of every teammate pitching in shared ideas, which offsets dominant voices. The latter involves rotating pairs across teams to build ideas freely in organized fashion.

Thompson also points to the value of healthy conflict. Groupthink can stifle progress, so try to normalize disagreement to boost ideas over personal identity.

Lastly, celebrate wins and mourn losses as a team. Call out milestones and people’s accomplishments. These moments build trust. And if a setback occurs, speak openly. Leaders can ask two short questions to start the process: “What did we expect to happen?” and “What will we do differently next time?”

Never underestimate a nudge

Unexpected expenses can cause serious damage. Nearly 40 percent of Americans have less than a month of income saved. A third of Americans have no emergency savings at all. However, help might be an email away.

A recent megastudy of nearly two million bank customers conducted in part by Kellogg’s Dean Karlan explored whether a reminder could make a meaningful difference. Researchers sent a variety of email nudges encouraging customers to save in case of an emergency.

They found that the email reminders increased the likelihood a customer would make a one-time savings deposit in a given month by 0.51 percent. Though the increase in deposits was relatively small on an individual level, it was large relative to the tiny cost of sending messages. Had each of the customers received the team’s top-performing email reminder, the study estimates that they could have collectively saved millions of dollars more over the study’s two-month run.

This look into light-touch interventions offers practical lessons not just for banks but the business community at large. And on a broader societal level, the study reinforces the importance of making saving a habit.