What Every Team Needs to Be Successful

There must be a formula for building a great team–or, at the very least, a common characteristic underlying all of them.

The hunt for the perfect team

This was Google’s premise when it launched Project Aristotle, which studied hundreds of internal teams to isolate what makes a team successful. You’d expect that it’d be as simple as finding competent individuals–who work great on their own–and putting them together.

But great teams can be made from more average members, and collaborations between high performers can go down in flames. Given that there seemed to be no outright similarities between great teams, it took Google a while–two years–to figure out the answer.

What Project Aristotle discovered

Rather than the individual members, a team’s effectiveness lies in the relationship between members, or the norms of a group. Google discovered that there are five major factors:

• Meaning – having a personal connection with your work and being internally motivated  
• Impact – believing that your work will make a difference
• Structure and clarity – goals are clear, and members know what they’re supposed to be doing
• Dependability – members can be relied on to do their part
• Psychological safety – feeling secure enough to express contrary opinions and take risks

If you look back on your own experiences of failed groupwork (and I’m sure you’ve been there), you’re probably going to complain that people were unreliable, or you had no clear idea what your tasks were, or you weren’t motivated.

The right amount of challenge

Surprisingly, though, psychological safety is the most important out of these five.

It’s imperative that you trust the members of your team and feel free to act as you are. In a psychologically safe team, you wouldn’t be held back from voicing your concerns because of fear or self-consciousness.

Teams that make more mistakes have been shown to be more successful. The more you make mistakes, the more you learn and adapt. Healthy debate is encouraged.

The good thing about psychological safety is that it’s the middle ground. You’re challenged and stimulated, but not excessively–just enough to grow and go beyond your comfort zone.    

Fostering psychological safety

You can increase psychological safety in your team by following these three tips:

Admit fallibility

If you’re a team leader, you need to set an example–and this starts with acknowledging that you can make mistakes, too, rather than being dictatorial.

Proactively ask for the feedback of your team members, and consider all opinions, even if they clash with yours. A good rule of thumb is that everyone should speak at least once.

Allow for vulnerability

An interesting exercise that you can try is asking each member to reveal something about themselves that you didn’t know before. You can also do the High/Low exercise before a meeting, where members say what went well for them and what they struggled with.

Be a team

Whenever there’s conflict, keep in mind that, ultimately, you’re a team. Your purpose is to collaborate–you win together and lose together.

Every member of your team is a human being deserving of respect. Be mindful when commenting on other people’s experiences, and avoid being dismissive by scoffing at ideas. When your team experiences a win, take the time to celebrate.   

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