Margaret

Editor at PragProg

Spotlight: Sandy Mamoli and David Mole (Authors) Interview and AMA!

Creating Great Teams
with Sandy Mamoli @sandymamoli and David Mole

What if teams could form themselves, rather than being assigned by management? That’s exactly what Sandy Mamoli and David Mole propose in Creating Great Teams: How Self-Selection Lets People Excel, now in its second edition.

With years of experience coaching organizations, Sandy and David have developed a practical method for empowering teams to choose who they work with—and there’s evidence that it leads to stronger, happier, and higher-performing teams.

We sat down with Sandy and David to talk about how self-selection works, why it creates better teams, and how any organization can adopt this approach.

INTERVIEW

Watch the complete interview here:

WIN!

We’re giving away one of Sandy and David’s ebooks to one lucky winner! Simply post a comment or a question in their Ask Me Anything (AMA) below, and the Devtalk bot will randomly pick a winner at a time of the authors’ choosing . . . then automatically update this thread with the results!

Interview Highlights

On self-selection…

“What we’ve discovered along the way is our role, if nothing else, is a lot easier as a coach when people have chosen their own team,” David says.

Sandy adds, “Creating high-performance teams—it is an absolute boost if people work on what they want to work on and who they want to work with.”

On where it all started…

The first self-selection experiment happened while they were coaching at New Zealand’s largest e-commerce company. “We were in the process of creating teams… we had a ship it day…I realized what people were doing…choose their own team and choose their own work,” Sandy recalls. “I got home, and I started blogging about the experience.”

David remembers being open to trying something different after frustrating rounds of management-driven team assignments: “You have to be confused to learn something. You have to be frustrated to try something a bit different.”

On how self-selection works…

It’s not just pick your friends, David explains. “We came up with a method and a facilitated structure where you can actually do this in a really nice way that people enjoy.”

Sandy elaborates: “You have agency. You are in charge. You put yourself where you want to be. No one is picking you.”

When teams are oversubscribed, it’s not about popularity but about conversations. We ask "people to have conversations and figure out together which combination will work for each team to reach their purpose,” Sandy says.

On treating people like adults…

“If we treat people like responsible adults, they will act like responsible adults,” Sandy emphasizes.

David adds, “When you pitch this well… the way people show up has just blown me and Sandy away every single time.”

On ownership and complaint reduction…

“One of the things we’ve observed is a reduction in whinging,” David says. When people have been involved in the choice, they feel ownership of that decision.

Sandy notes, “As a manager, at least you don’t have all these people coming to you whinging about they don’t want to be on this team—because they’ve done it to themselves!”

On recruiting and retention..

“We have watched people stay longer, and we have seen it in the recruitment process where people actively joined a company because they have heard they could get to pick their own team,” Sandy shares.

On self-selection in remote environments…

“The method translates really, really nicely,” David explains. “In fact, it translates so nicely to doing this remotely, I’m not sure which one I would pick if I were given the option tomorrow.”

On progress over perfection…

“We know we’re not going to get perfection, but we also know management selection won’t give us perfection. If we have an imperfect result, I would much rather have trusted adults who are responsible and who have agency and ask them to solve that problem together,” says Sandy.

Now that you know their story, add Sandy and David’s book to your library today! Don’t forget to use coupon code devtalk.com to save 35 percent on the ebook:

Creating Great Teams (Second Edition)

book-creating-great-teams-second-edition

Follow the authors:

Sandy Mamoli

Website: nomad8.com
LinkedIn: sandymamoli

David Mole

Website: nomad8.com
LinkedIn: davidmole

YOUR TURN!

We’re now opening up the thread for your questions! Ask Sandy and David anything! Please keep it clean, and don’t forget that by participating you automatically enter the competition to win one of their ebooks!

2 comments

#author-spotlight /book-creating-great-teams #teams /book-creating-great-teams-second-edition

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2025-06-13 14:42:25 UTC

Most Liked

AstonJ

Another great Spotlight

I completely agree with what you mentioned in the first few minutes - that people work best when they work on what they want to work on and with who they want to work with. I know some large companies actually cycle their staff members to work in recruitment and training as they feel the best people to select prospective employees are those who are going to be working with them.

When it comes to people seeking advice on getting work I usually mention that essentially people hire people, so if you’re looking for a job it’s always worth asking yourself “would you want to work with you?”