More and more, much of the work is done in teams. A team is the molecular unit where real production takes place, where innovative ideas are conceived and tested, and where employees experience most of their work. But it is also where interpersonal problems, mismatched skills and unclear group goals can hinder productivity and cause friction.

Teamwork is also crucial at Google. Google wanted to know why certain teams performed well and others less so. They launched an international research project codenamed Project Aristotle. The goal was to answer the question, “What makes a team effective at Google?” The name Aristotle was a tribute to Aristotle’s statement “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” Google researchers believed that employees can achieve more by working together than alone.

Using input from executives from around the world, the research team identified 180 teams to study (115 project teams in engineering and 65 pods in sales), including a mix of high- and low-performing teams. The study tested how both team composition (e.g., personality traits, sales skills, demographics on the team) and team dynamics (e.g., what it was like to work with teammates) affect team effectiveness. Ideas were drawn from existing research and from Google’s own experience with what makes an effective team.

What is a “team”

The term team can have many different meanings. At the most basic level, a distinction can be made between teams and working groups.

• Working groups are characterized by least interdependence. They are based on organizational or managerial hierarchy. Working groups may meet periodically to hear and share information.
• Teams are highly interdependent – they plan work, solve problems, make decisions and evaluate progress in the service of a specific project. Team members need each other to get the work done.

So what makes a team effective?

The researchers found that it matters less who is on the team and more how the team works together. In order of importance:

• Psychological safety: Psychological safety refers to an individual’s perception of the consequences of taking an interpersonal risk or the belief that a team is safe to take risks in the face of being seen as ignorant, incompetent, negative or disruptive. In a team with high psychological safety, team members feel safe to take risks around their team members. They trust that no one on the team will embarrass or punish another for admitting a mistake, asking a question or suggesting a new idea.
• Reliability: In reliable teams, members deliver their quality work on time (as opposed to the opposite – shirking responsibilities).
• Structure and clarity: It is important for the effectiveness of a team that a person understands the expectations of their work, how to meet these expectations and the consequences of their performance. Goals can be set at the individual or group level and should be specific, challenging and achievable.
• Meaning: Finding a purpose in the work itself or in its output is important to the team’s effectiveness. The meaning of work is personal and can vary: financial security, supporting family, helping the team succeed or self-expression for each individual ….
• Impact: The results of your work, the subjective judgment that your work is making a difference, is important to teams. Seeing that your work contributes to the organization’s goals can help uncover impact.

Psychological safety

Let’s zoom in for a moment on psychological safety. Successful team members need to be able to work in a safe space where they can share ideas without being judged personally. Instead, ideas are judged on their own merit. This safe space leads to trust, structure and clarity, meaning to work and impact to create change.

This basic building block of a safe space for generating ideas is a feature of VIEW theory. VIEW measures how each employee prefers to solve problems. VIEW helps teams recognize how differences in problem-solving style contribute to cognitive diversity in the workplace. By understanding this diversity of thought and learning new ways to communicate with colleagues, individuals can more easily work together to solve problems – resulting in better team cohesion and a greater sense of well-being at work.

It is estimated that full-time employees spend on average 50% of their waking hours at work, or about 1/3 of their lives in total. Thus, it is important for organizations to realize that people need to feel satisfied and valued at work to prevent them from going elsewhere.

An important way to ensure a sense of value and belonging is to help employees understand how they fit into the organization and how their unique preferences for problem solving can benefit the organization. This is where VIEW can be particularly useful, as it measures whether people prefer to solve problems in a structured way, using existing or proven solutions or processes – thus taking a more developmental approach; or whether they solve problems in a more radical way, coming up with different ideas and thus taking a more exploratory approach.

The majority sets the standard

A VIEW users can average the VIEW results in a given team to identify a cognitive team climate, which may be more developmental or more exploratory; more internal or more external or finally more relationship-oriented than task-oriented. Individuals who fall outside this cognitive climate may feel that they do not fit in with the team. This lack of fit may lead them to believe that their problem-solving style is not valued and that they should seek another organization to work. However, they offer the most diversity in their problem-solving style and should be valued.

Working together to solve complex problems

A person’s problem-solving style is not related to intelligence, learned skills, motivation, values or culture; and there is no ideal problem-solving style in general. Teams face complex problems every day that require team members to work together, mutually respecting the advantages and disadvantages each person brings to the safe space.

Once employees recognize how they differ from their peers, they often experience AHA insights that enable them to understand why problems arose in the past and how the theory can be used to improve teamwork in the future. They also see how their individual approach to problem solving is valuable to the organization.

Conclusion

Organizations must make psychological safety a strategic priority by creating a culture where employees can comfortably voice concerns, offer ideas and share unique perspectives. This culture can only occur when different problem-solving styles are accepted, valued and used complementarily to address complex problems and challenges.

Understanding how colleagues prefer to solve problems leads to acceptance of the cognitive differences that exist and recognition that sometimes a problem requires a more developmental solution (inside the box) and sometimes a more exploratory solution (outside the box). This fosters a greater sense of belonging within the team and within the broader organization. This is crucial for a safe environment. This safe space leads to trust, structure and clarity, meaning to work and impact to create change.