As business leaders navigate the ever-increasing pace of change, it’s important to remind ourselves of the need for high-performing, strong and well-connected teams. But what exactly makes a high-performing team?
Defining high-performing teams
Following the success of its Project Oxygen in 2015, Impact client, Google, published the results of a two-year study into what constitutes a high-functioning team. Was it the team with the most senior people? With the highest collective IQ? With the fewest mistakes? Google’s Project Aristotle uncovered five key dynamics that make high-performing teams particularly successful:
- Psychological safety
- Dependability
- Structure and clarity
- Meaning
- Impact
Interestingly, it was psychological safety that stood out as the most important factor.
Psychological safety for high-performing teams
The term ‘psychological safety’ was originally defined by Harvard Business Review as ‘the belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes.’ And indeed, what Google found was that the teams who made the most mistakes outperformed those that didn’t.
Why? Because creating safe environments in which people are allowed to fail ultimately means that they are free to voice their opinions, take more risks and foster a culture of innovation. A high-performing team bounces ideas off each other, builds on each other’s action points, solves issues together, and supports one another. It’s the key foundation to building trust and fostering innovation.
Creating effective teams with psychological safety
‘There’s no team without trust,’ says Paul Santagata, Head of Industry at Google. In order for teams to excel, it’s key that the workplace feels challenging, but not threatening. Here are four simple ways you can promote and build psychological safety when leading high-performance teams.
- Human to human approach: Even in the hardest team situations of who-did-what, it’s vital we remember that the person in front of us is just like us. Building effective teams requires us to acknowledge that others just want to feel recognised and supported, and that they have their own hopes, anxieties and aspirations.
- Feedback culture: Regularly asking for feedback as well as providing it should be business as usual in high-performing teams. Feedback should be seen as a tool to help build a stronger team and improve processes. Lead by example by sharing a recent failure and your learnings from it at your next team meeting.
- Creating a safe environment: How many times have you been in a meeting where nobody seems to voice what everyone is thinking? Or one where people are on their phones rather than listening or contributing? As you work on building high-performing teams, there are little practices you can introduce in meetings to encourage active listening and involvement, such as showing understanding by repeating your team member’s point, asking more questions, avoiding blame language, and encouraging out-of-the-box ideas to be listened to and discussed.
- Inclusive decision-making: Asking for your team members’ input when making decisions and seeking their thoughts and feedback will help them to feel included and build psychological safety. Once a decision has been made it’s also essential to communicate to them how their input was taken into consideration. These are essential components of any change management initiative. And with the huge and unprecedented rise of remote work in the past year, it’s more critical than ever to show honesty and transparency in decision-making.
Creating a psychologically safe team environment will always improve employee experience and, as a result, improve performance. Which of the above tips will you try next to build your high-performing team?
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