Project Aristotle
I want to expand a little on the topic of office etiquette by looking at how to work collaboratively and what makes a great team. What I found to be particularly interesting was the guide Google has created on understanding team effectiveness, code-named Project Aristotle.
Project Aristotle was a study completed by Googles researchers to find out what makes an effective team at Google? The first step of the project was to define what a team actually is. In doing this a clear distinction was made between work groups and teams. Work groups are characterised as less interdependent than teams and meet periodically to hear and share information. Teams, on the other hand, are highly interdependent i.e. they need one another to get work done.
To measure team effective a combination of qualitative assessments and quantitative measures were used. This was done from 4 different perspectives of effectiveness:
- Executive evaluation of the team
- Team leader evaluation of the team
- Team member evaluation of the team
- Sales performance against quarterly quota
The following dynamics were identified as having the greatest impact on team effectiveness:
- Psychological safety
- Dependability
- Structure and clarity
- Meaning
- Impact
Psychological Safety
The above video was included in the section about psychological safety. I thought this was a pretty incredible video and that the finding from Amy Edmondson who completed a study on whether better hospital staff teams make fewer mistakes. To Edmondson’s surprise, the answer was that better teams were making more mistakes. Edmondson then made a new hypothesis, what if the better teams weren’t making more mistakes what if they were just willing to discuss them. To test the new hypotheses a new research assistant was brought in to assess the openness of the climate in relation to having a willingness to discuss problems.
Edmondson has termed this, psychological safety. Psychological safety refers to an individual perception of being able to take risks or as stated by Google, “an individual’s perception of the consequences of taking an interpersonal risk”. Teams with high psychological safety have team members who feel confident that they can contribute freely without fear of being embarrassed or punished for admitting a mistake, asking a question, or offering a new idea.
Dependability
This refers to being able to depend on team members to complete work of good quality within an agreed timeframe.
Structure and Clarity
This refers to an individual understanding of what the process is to fulfil the requirements/expectations of a job and what those requirements/expectations are.
Meaning
This relates to having a sense of purpose. An individual needs to be able to find meaning in the work itself or the output.
Impact
The subjective judgement by the members of the team that their work is making a difference.
Evaluation
I found this to be an incredibly interesting study and was shocked to find that psychological safety played such an important role in team effectiveness. I think having knowledge of these determining factors is particularly important for team leaders and managers. However, understanding the above is also incredibly important for any individual going into a highly collaborative work environment.
Things I need to consider before/ following joining a company or team are:
- How am I responding to team members ideas, suggestions and mistakes? Am I positively contributing to a climate of psychological safety?
- Am I dependable? If not how can I become more dependable?
- Do I understand what is expected of me in this role and the processes I need to follow to meet that expectation?- this might be daunting but if I do find myself in a scenario where I am struggling with it is incredibly important that I speak up and address the problem (the long term consequences of not doing so will likely be worse).
- Will I find this work meaningful?
- Will this work have an impact and will my input (this will increase with time) have an impact?
I am very excited about having a way to actually gauge how likely a team is to be successful and awareness of what the problems might be if it is not. This will allow me to have a solid approach to addressing problems in future team environments even if only in addressing my own position and behaviour.