Google spent millions of dollars and conducted an extraordinary analysis to discover this insight. Which on face value, seems surprising and simple. Each of us can contribute to building great teams.
So why is this important? In every industry I’ve been working in… From Military to Oil Industry, Aerospace to Manufacturing, education or recycling, Leaders have been experiencing unprecedented changes and the technology sector could probably be considered an outlier in change.
In 2012, Google began a quest to understand how to build the perfect team. They started this research with the recognition that teams need to work much better in today’s workplace. One recent study in Harvard Business Review confirms this.
It revealed that time spent managing teams in collaborative practices has ballooned by 50%. Google began by tracking a 180 teams around the world, looking at more than 250 different factors So what did this research known as project Aristotle reveal?
At first they looked at a number of hypotheses: Was it the teams with the highest collective IQ? Was it those with the most high potential members? Was it those with the most diversity? Though a conference can identify individual skills and traits necessary to make the perfect team, but they were dead wrong. What they learned was that there are five key dynamics.
All norms that set high-performing teams apart. The five kingdoms were:
- Number One: Psychological Safety – Can we take risks in this team without feeling insecure or embarrassed?
- Number Two: Dependability – Can we count on each other to do high quality work on time?
- Number Three: Structure & Clarity – Are goals, roles, and execution plans in our team clear?
- Number Four: Meaning of Work – Are we working on something that is personally important to each of us and
- Number Five: Impact the Work – Do we fundamentally believe that the work we are doing matters?
Well, all five factors were shown to be important. But by far the most important element was psychological safety. It was found that if a team was good at this, all of the norms were much easier to achieve.
So what are the qualities of a psychologically safe team? Researchers found the following: Each person on the team speaks approximately equally. Secondly, each team member has good social intuition for sensing how others are feeling based on their tone of voice and body language. Thirdly, members felt they could take risks because each team member cared about them.
So how do we encourage psychological safety? Research by Google and others has found that the following team rituals foster safety: The leader ensures that each team member One: shares a risk they have taken the last week Two: contributes approximately equally to the group conversation and Three: shares and welcomes ideas.
Now some may say that we’re too busy to have these touchy-feely discussions. Shouldn’t we just get on with the job at hand. This may have been valuable when we had very defined projects where nothing changed from start to finish. But because of the rapidly changing market, the VUCA economy, this is really the case.
The capacity to communicate collaborate and adapt quickly have become critical success factors. So in summary, extensive research conducted by google has found that 5 team qualities were paramount to project success.
But by far the most important was psychological safety. Psychological safety is when each team member contributes equally to the conversations, feels safe to take risks and be vulnerable and welcomes ideas.
So what might you as a tribe consider doing differently? Why not strive for the following in your meetings:
- Number 1: Start each meeting with each team member sharing a risk they’ve taken in the last week.
- Number 2: Try to ensure that each member speaks equally and
- Number 3: Everyone shares and welcomes ideas
Thank you & Have A Safe Day!