Grow the A-Team
A great team does not just happen. It demands continuous efforts from all individuals within the team, including the leader. Google ran a research project called Project Aristotle to find out “What makes the team effective at Google?”
This research found out that five key elements make a great team.
Psychological Safety
Psychological safety is about the environment that we create in the workplace for our team. It’s all about creating a safe culture in which team members feel “safe” enough to voice their opinion, even if it goes against the group. When teams promote psychological safety, there is a free flow of ideas, leading to better outcomes. You can ask for help without fear of retribution or adverse impact on your reputation. Team members feel comfortable asking questions and sharing opinions, leading to healthy debate and help the team thrive.
Dependability
Dependability is all about three things; Accountability.Reliability.Trust.
When everyone on the team is accountable, reliable, and trustworthy, the team will aspire to succeed. It sounds simple, but based on my nine years of working experience, these three things are difficult to find in real life. A team can crumble when even one person can’t be trusted to do the work. On a highly dependable team, every team member can trust that high-quality work will be produced on time. And the leader needs to be mentoring and nurturing the team to have these three essential traits.
Structure and Clarity
To build a great team, they need particular structure and clarity, as long as these rules are not too rigid that they are stopping the progress. When teams have structure and clarity, there are specific and transparent performance standards and directions for the team to work and achieve. With these inputs, team members understand their function, purpose, expectations, and performance objectives. With structure and clarity, specificity is critical. Team members will thrive when they have clear, specific, and transparent goals, so they know what is expected of them. For example, in many companies, Objectives and Key Results (OKR’s) is a management tool used to establish and communicate both long-term and short-term goals. It will be great if these OKRs are set SMART-ly, meaning that Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-Based.
Meaning and Impact
Most individual or team players want to work in a meaningful job and have certain kinds of purposes. In product especially, leaders should inspire and show the team members that they contribute to creating an impact for the organization and the ecosystem. Reserving time for each team member to reflect on their impact can be a valuable exercise to further purpose and meaning. Google found that other ways to create meaning in work include creating financial security, supporting one’s family, helping the team succeed, or exhibiting self-expression.
I hope this article is useful, check out my other article on my medium.
