Transforming Teams
Build Teams That Connect, Collaborate, and Achieve
Published by ATD Press: May 2026
Build High-Performing Teams for Extraordinary Business Results
Imagine a workplace where team members not only excel individually but thrive collectively—where collaboration is an expectation deeply ingrained in a culture that drives success. That’s the goal of transformational people leader and team-building expert Ed Cohen and his expert contributors—Rahul Andrews, Nandini Darsi, Emily King Grandinetta, Sheina Laws, Priscilla Nelson, and Anil Santhapuri.
Transforming Teams is a method and mindset that puts trust, collaboration, and cultural intelligence at the heart of team success. Ed and his colleagues have spent the last 25 years developing this six-phase approach for building relationship-centered organizations. This framework has been tested and proven to work in more than 150 global organizations—from startups to Fortune 500 companies like Booz Allen Hamilton, Western Union, and Warner Bros. Discovery.
Organization leaders, TD and HR professionals, and coaches who want to foster business cultures in which people feel connected to their work and one another will find this book invaluable. You’ll learn to break through conflicts, reduce turnover, increase engagement, and overcome dysfunction by aligning team behaviors with shared values and strategic goals. Use the real-world case studies and practical tools to transform your teams and drive success no matter your organization’s size or industry.
Pre-order Transforming Teams, and discover the proven framework that helps teams connect, collaborate, and achieve—together.
Since 1998, Transforming Teams has now been implemented in 150+ organizations across 40 countries, impacting an estimated 8 million people. It has inspired thousands of leaders and facilitators who continue to expand its reach.
What sets this model apart is that it redefines culture transformation from a top-down leadership initiative into a co-created, measurable system of trust, accountability, and performance. This framework drives measurable business outcomes and sustains engagement, resilience, and innovation across teams and enterprises worldwide.
Every leader knows when a team is stuck. Meetings feel heavy, silos grow thicker, and even the most talented individuals don’t seem to click. Too many teams operate on autopilot, guided by accidental culture—unspoken habits, vague values, or unchallenged norms. That’s where Transforming Teams begins: with the hard truth that performance alone doesn’t create cohesion. Teams thrive only when they intentionally define how they will work together.
This book gives leaders and teams a six-phase roadmap—Assess, Discover, Articulate, Activate, Integrate, Transform—that has been applied across more than 150 organizations on six continents. It grew out of my early work at Booz Allen Hamilton, where a brilliant but fractured team nearly collapsed under its own weight until we created our first Team Agreement. Years later, it became the backbone of the Satyam School of Leadership in India, where more than 600 professionals used it to build trust during the most turbulent chapter in the company’s history. From there, it spread into industries as diverse as technology, healthcare, finance, education, and 3D printing, touching global organizations like Western Union, Warner Bros. Discovery, Yahoo, and SprintRay.
Inside, you’ll find:
- Real-world case studies showing how leaders turned “accidental” culture into intentional behaviors.
- Practical exercises to help teams define values they can actually live.
- Tools for resolving conflict, building trust, and holding each other accountable in ways that stick.
- Stories of transformation—from small project teams that found their rhythm to multinationals that used this framework to align thousands of employees worldwide.
This is not a theory. It’s the same process that cut attrition in half at SprintRay, helped a nonprofit survive a merger, and built belonging in organizations where trust had once been broken.
Foreword by Josh Bersin, the globally recognized analyst, educator, and thought leader in HR, corporate learning, and leadership. His introduction frames Transforming Teams as not only timely but essential in a world where hybrid work, generational diversity, and digital disruption are rewriting the rules of collaboration.
Endorsements already describe the book as “a playbook that makes culture tangible” and “a toolkit for connection that brings vision into daily work.”
At its heart, Transforming Teams is about something every leader longs for but few know how to build: teams where people feel safe, supported, and inspired to achieve more together than they ever could alone.
About the Contributors
This book includes voices from practitioners, coaches, analysts, and leaders who have applied the Transforming Teams approach in real settings over the past 25 years:
- Rahul Andrews – Brings expertise from large-scale digital transformations and collaborative models, drawing on his leadership roles at Capgemini and Tech Mahindra.
- Nandini Darsi – Executive coach with extensive cross-cultural leadership experience, guiding teams to align values, behaviors, and performance.
- Emily King – Author of Field Tested and At Ease, and a communication strategist whose work helps organizations integrate identity, culture, and inclusion.
- Pris Nelson – Executive coach, consultant, and co-founder of Nelson Cohen Global Consulting. Pris co-leads many of the cases in this book and contributes her deep experience in executive coaching and team transformation.
- Anil Santhapuri – Global HR and talent leader, Head of the Academy for Management and Leadership Excellence at TVS Motor, recognized among Asia’s Top 100 HR Leaders.
- Sheina Laws – Director of People Services at SprintRay, analyst, facilitator, and author of The Dark Side of Leadership: Shining the Light. Sheina’s diagnostic work uncovers the hidden dynamics that shape how leadership teams succeed—or struggle.
Special Contributor
- Arunav Sinha – Vice President of Global Communications, Content Marketing, and Events at Coursera. Arunav highlights the critical role of communication and storytelling in ensuring culture takes root both internally and externally.
About the Author
Ed Cohen
Ed Cohen is a global leadership strategist, coach, and author whose work has spanned more than 75 countries. He has held senior roles at Booz Allen Hamilton, SprintRay, and Tech Mahindra, where his talent and culture strategies helped organizations earn global recognition for learning and leadership excellence. Ed is the author of Next Generation Corporate University, Leadership Without Borders, and Riding the Tiger (with Priscilla Nelson). His frameworks and methodologies have guided countless teams and organizations in becoming relationship-centered and high-performing.