Octahedron
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Research

Understanding teams starts with understanding behavior.

Octahedron brings together research, leadership experience, and organizational insight to help teams examine how they work together.

Our focus is practical: making the patterns behind team dynamics easier to recognize, discuss, and address.

What the work draws on

  • ResearchOrganizational behavior and studies of how teams work
  • Leadership experienceDecades of leading and supporting teams
  • Organizational insightWhat leaders and teams see inside real organizations
The patterns behind team dynamics
RecognizeDiscussAddress

Who leads the research

Research leadership. Practical purpose.

Octahedron’s methodological development is led by Dr. Nabeel Ahmad, Co-Founder and Chief Research Officer. His work connects organizational behavior with assessment models designed for leaders and teams.

Nabeel is also a Lecturer in Columbia University’s Human Capital Management program, bringing an academic perspective to his work at Octahedron.

The purpose is not to make teamwork more academic.It is to give teams a more structured way to understand their experience and a clearer place to begin.

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Dr. Nabeel Ahmad

Co-Founder & Chief Research Officer

  • OctahedronLeads methodological developmentConnecting organizational behavior with assessment models for leaders and teams
  • ColumbiaLecturer, Human Capital ManagementColumbia University

The wider evidence

Why trust and team dynamics deserve attention.

Research beyond Octahedron provides important context for this work.

Trust

Trust is associated with team performance.

112independent studies
7,763teams

One mark per study combined in the meta-analysis.

A meta-analysis combining 112 independent studies involving 7,763 teams found a positive relationship between trust within teams and team performance. The relationship varied with characteristics of the team’s work and structure.

De Jong, Dirks & Gillespie, 2016 · Journal of Applied Psychology. Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam ↗

Psychological safety

Psychological safety is associated with team learning.

51work teams

One mark per team in the study.

Amy Edmondson’s study of 51 work teams found that a shared sense of safety in taking interpersonal risks was associated with learning behavior within teams.

Edmondson, 1999 · Administrative Science Quarterly. DASH ↗

These studies help explain why the way people experience working together deserves attention, not just the results they produce.

A framework for asking better questions.

Octahedron’s RASP framework focuses on four connected dimensions: Receptive, Adaptive, Supportive, and Productive.

RReceptive
AAdaptive
SSupportive
PProductive

It examines patterns such as

Raising concernsAdjusting approachesSupporting colleaguesWorking through disagreement

Our aim is to help teams move from a broad feeling that something needs to change to a more specific conversation about what to work on.

Explore the RASP model See a sample report

Sources

  1. De Jong, B. A., Dirks, K. T., & Gillespie, N. (2016). Trust and team performance: A meta-analysis of main effects, moderators, and covariates. Journal of Applied Psychology. Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
  2. Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly. DASH (Harvard)