Unlocking Team Excellence: Insights from Google's Quest for the Perfect Team

In its relentless pursuit of innovation and excellence, Google embarked on a fascinating journey to uncover the secrets of high-performing teams. Through extensive research and analysis, the tech giant sought to understand what makes some teams succeed while others falter.

The findings from Google's quest may be surprising to some and/ or obvious to others but however the findings resonate with your experience it is a timely reminder of the importance of the human being in the success of the organisation.

Project Aristotle: Unravelling the Mystery

Google's quest to build the perfect team began with Project Aristotle, a multi-year study aimed at identifying the key factors that contribute to team effectiveness. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the researchers discovered that factors like team composition, individual intelligence, and even personality types had minimal impact on a team's success.

The Power of Psychological Safety

One of the most significant findings to emerge from Project Aristotle was the importance of psychological safety within teams. Psychological safety refers to an environment where team members feel comfortable taking risks, expressing ideas, and being vulnerable without fear of judgment or reprisal. Teams with high levels of psychological safety outperformed others in terms of innovation, problem-solving, and overall effectiveness.

The Five Key Dynamics of High-Performing Teams

Google identified five key dynamics that distinguish high-performing teams:

Psychological Safety: Teams where members feel safe to take risks and be themselves perform better.

Dependability: Team members can rely on each other to deliver high-quality work on time.

Structure & Clarity: Clear goals, roles, and expectations contribute to team success.

Meaning: The work feels personally meaningful to team members, contributing to their motivation and engagement.

Impact: Team members believe that their work matters and makes a difference.

Psychological Safety in Team Dynamics

What does psychological safety in a team really look like and how as leaders can we best create and maintain it. To go back to the findings in project Aristotle significant elements included:

Conversational turn-taking: Interestingly a culture of conversational turn taking can still involve interjections and collaborative discussion. It refers more to the fact that everyone in the team has relatively equal space to talk. There is no one dominant party or small sub group who dominate the talking time.

Average social sensitivity: Social sensitivity refers to the ability to understand and empathise with others' emotions, perspectives, and experiences. It involves being attuned to subtle social cues, such as body language, tone of voice, and facial expressions, and responding appropriately in interpersonal interactions. Individuals with high social sensitivity are adept at building rapport, fostering positive relationships, and navigating social dynamics effectively. They demonstrate empathy, respect, and compassion towards others, creating inclusive and supportive environments where everyone feels valued and understood. Social sensitivity is a fundamental skill that enhances communication, teamwork, and collaboration, contributing to personal and professional success.

The keys are reflection, awareness and intention. Putting together a group of highly intelligent individuals is not necessarily going to produce a highly effective team or effective outputs. Consider how, as leaders, you demonstrate and cultivate team dynamics within your organisation. There is no one size fits all approach reflection and challenge with a coach collaborator is a really helpful starting point to see if this approach could work for you.

Try this fun test to evaluate your social sensitivity "Reading the minds eye test"

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