Google have been conducting research into a crucial aspect of innovation - how to make a great team.
In doing so they are in line with recent research that shows modern workplaces are increasingly based on teamwork. Rather than focussing on improving individual workers, they wanted to find out what makes the perfect team. Google has, obviously, an enormous amount of data and plenty of algorithms to work with, and yet the team, Project Aristotle, who were tasked with solving the riddle, struggled to find the secret.
They looked at teams with strong leadership, teams with no leadership, teams with strong social connection, teams with little social link, teams of similar backgrounds, and others which were highly diverse. The secret couldn't be found in any of those combinations. It didn't seem to matter who was in the team, or how they were structured. They found high achieving teams made composed in totally different ways, the diversity of group makeup supplied no clues for a formula.
Then they had a breakthrough. It happened when one team leader was able to turn around a team - changing it from a moderately successful team into one which was strongly bonded and highly effective. The leader did something very unconventional at Google - he took the group off the premises for a get-together, then started a conversation by spontaneously revealing to them that he was fighting a losing battle with cancer. The group members responded with compassion, and, in turn, sharing parts of their own lives, things they had never discussed before. They talked about the tricky topics, things which left them vulnerable and open. This vulnerability lead to a profound bonding of the group; they then found their group work more rewarding, more meaningful, and therefore were more effective. As it turns out, the successful teams did have one thing in common - in the best teams, members listen to one another and show sensitivity to feelings and needs.
"What Project Aristotle has taught people within Google is that no-one wants to put on a 'work face' when they get to the office. No one wants to leave part of their personality and inner life at home. But to be fully present at work, to feel 'psychologically safe,' we must know that we can be free enough, sometimes, to share the things that scare us - without fear of recrimination. We must be able to talk about what is messy or sad, to have hard conversations with colleagues who are driving us crazy. We can’t be focused just on efficiency. Rather, when we start the morning by collaborating with a team of engineers and then send emails to our marketing colleagues and then jump on a conference call, we want to know that those people really hear us. We want to know that work is more than just labor."
Google found that the key thing that made people really 'show up' to work, really give their best, and work well with their colleagues, was the sense of connection amongst the group. Fostering this sense of connection required tapping into feelings, vulnerability, and authenticity.
Remember that this breakthrough occurred at Google - where the workforce is largely made up of data engineers and IT specialists, certainly not a group of people known for their ease with emotional conversations. Quite the opposite in fact. However, by adopting the data-driven approach of Silicon Valley, Project Aristotle has encouraged emotional conversations and discussions of norms among people who might otherwise be uncomfortable talking about how they feel. The data provided clear evidence for the value of these type of conversations, and quickly established a set of methods and tools they could use to adopt these in everyday work settings.
The key takeaway here is that effective teams, and effective people, need meaningful connections, both to each other and the work they are doing. Meaningful connection is the glue that holds our lives together, and when you're leading a team charged with driving innovation , thinking about how you're going to create the platforms for this meaningful connection is critically important.
To read more about Project Aristotle, see the New York Times article here: