What are the ingredients to a perfect team?

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What are the ingredients to a perfect team?

It’s the teams we find ourselves in during the early stages of our career that shape the way we work. They impact our levels of job satisfaction and the quality of tasks we deliver. For many, team bonds are what motivate us to log on in the morning and get us through the challenges we face day-to-day. Successful teams foster innovation, enable collaboration and as a result are more effective at problem solving. Taking a step back successful teams have significant impact on the companies they work within too. They can influence employee retention rates and clients get better outcomes, both of which lead to positive perceptions of the firm in the wider market.With such a wide range of benefits generated from team success, it’s no surprise that Senior Leaders ask themselves how they can recreate the ‘perfect team’. So, what does make an effective team?Written by Abigail Bryce 

The researchBack in 2012 Google began a research project to look into what made a team successful while others failed. Project Aristotle evaluated 180 teams looking at their build up (personalities, skills, demographics) through to their dynamics (communication methods, task management, review structures) to distil the perfect mix and set the standard for creating the perfect team again, and again and again. After hundreds of interviews and data analysis the concluding thoughts identified that it was how teams work together and not who is on them that made the difference to performance.Key ingredients for success:Project Aristotle identified five key ingredients to ensuring team success:

  1. Psychological safety – members feel safe to take risks, without fear of punishment
  2. Dependability – quality work is completed on time
  3. Structure and clarity – expectations and the way to fulfil them are defined, as well as clarity on the consequences of missing them
  4. Meaning – a personal sense of purpose in the work completed
  5. Impact – recognition of how the result of the team’s work contributes to a wider goal

The project also highlighted these elements come in order of importance, meaning psychological safety is a critical factor to ensuring Team success.What does Psychological Safety look like?Fear of failure and the anxiety many of us will associate with it can be debilitating. Within the workplace this is heightened when we operate in teams we constantly feel the pressure to ‘prove ourselves’ within. Psychological safety is about building that support net within the team to ensure risks won’t lead to embarrassment and creating confidence in all members to raise new ideas. Ensuring ideas are not shot down and refraining from calling out mistakes in front of the wider team will help to build the foundations of psychological safety.A simple exercise that can be used to break barriers and demonstrate a commitment to psychological safety is at the beginning of a workshop to ask participants to come up with ‘As many different uses for a (insert object here – e.g. coat hanger, paper clip, chopsticks)’. This not only breaks the ice but inevitably as the group moves along ‘the idea curve’ weird (and sometimes wonderful) suggestions can be made. Acceptance that each of these ideas are possible uses for the item brings the group together.How can we build successful teams with our post-covid ways of working?It’s easy to say ‘no idea is a bad one’ but demonstrating commitment to that is much harder. Whilst moving to a virtual world may stop us from being able to see eye rolls or glances in a meeting room, the public feedback we receive to an idea will influence both our own and our team members future suggestions.Communication and emotional intelligence continue to play a key skill in how we build our own successful teams. Whether it’s a Daily Stand-Up or a team’s chat channel, regular touchpoints and feedback to team members helps build confidence in ideas. No one wants the first time they raise an idea to be in a board meeting, and with the loss of ‘shoulder taps’ and desk conversations – successful team leaders need to ensure they are creating the right environments to enable off the cuff thinking.It’s difficult to ignore the changing dynamics that Covid-19 has brought to the way we work. Collaborating virtually within our teams has brought challenges but also opportunities, especially to diversify teams as geographical limitations diminish. However, as the research notes it’s not the who, it’s the way in which we work together that will continue to define team success. For more information on Project Aristotle: https://rework.withgoogle.com/print/guides/5721312655835136/Tools to foster psychological safety: https://rework.withgoogle.com/guides/understanding-team-effectiveness/steps/foster-psychological-safety/