1: Why do some teams succeed and others fail?
The People Analytics team at Google had spent two years attempting to answer this question.
The initiative was code-named “Project Aristotle.” The team gathered survey data, conducted hundreds of interviews, analyzed a mountain of data and statistics, ran regression models, and built software programs.
There were no clear patterns or trends on what makes teams perform at the highest level.
Until they discovered the research on psychological safety, popularized by Amy Edmondson, now a professor at Harvard Business School.
Psychological safety occurs when there is a “shared belief, held by members of a team, that the group is a safe place for taking risks. . . [that is] characterized by interpersonal trust and mutual respect in which people are comfortable being themselves,” Charles Duhigg writes in Smarter Faster Better.
It wasn’t the people who determined the success of a team. It was the “norms” by which the team operated.
“It was clear to us that this idea of psychological safety was pointing to which norms were most important,” says Julia Rozovsky, a member of the Project Aristotle team.
“We think we need superstars. But that’s not what our research found,” says Laszlo Bock, then head of Google’s People Operations. “You can take a team of average performers, and if you teach them to interact the right way, they’ll do things no superstar could ever accomplish.”
2: The next challenge was how to teach the concept of psychological safety inside Google.
“We needed clear guidelines for creating psychological safety,” Julia notes, “without losing the capacity for dissent and debate that’s critical to how Google functions.”
Being willing and able to fight for what you think is right is a key skill in many organizations.
“But you need the right norms to make arguments productive rather than destructive,” says Abeer Dubey, another member of the Project Aristotle team. “Otherwise, a team never becomes stronger.”
Is it possible to create a safe environment that also encourages people to disagree?
“For a long time, that was the million-dollar question,” Harvard MBA Professor Amy Edmondson says. “We knew it was important for teammates to be open with each other. We knew it was important for people to feel like they can speak up if something’s wrong.
“But those are also the behaviors that can set people at odds,” she says. “We didn’t know why some groups could clash and still have psychological safety while others would hit a period of conflict and everything would fall apart.”
The time had come for the Project Aristotle team to share their findings at an all-hands meeting at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California. Thousands of Google team members joined live while many more watched via livestream.
Laszlo told the assembled group: “The biggest thing you should take away from this work is that how teams work matters, in a lot of ways, more than who is on them. . .
“The data shows there’s a universality to how good teams succeed,” he said.
“It’s important that everyone on a team feels like they have a voice, but whether they actually get to vote on things or make decisions turns out not to matter much. Neither does the volume of work nor physical co-location.
“What matters,” Laszlo commented, “is having a voice and social sensitivity.”
He then shared five key norms:
- Teams need to believe that their work is important.
- Teams need to feel their work is personally meaningful.
- Team members need to know they can depend on one another.
- Teams need clear goals and defined roles.
- Most importantly, teams need psychological safety.
3: And who is responsible for creating psychological safety? The team leader.
“There are lots of small things a leader can do,” says Abeer. “In meetings, does the leader cut people off by saying ‘Let me ask a question there,’ or does she wait until someone is done speaking? How does the leader act when someone’s upset?
“These things are so subtle, but they can have a huge impact,” he notes.
The Project Aristotle team then spent the next three months traveling to Google’s various divisions to share their findings and coach team leaders.
“Google’s top executives released tools that any team could use to evaluate if members felt psychologically safe and worksheets to help leaders and teammates improve their scores,” Charles writes.
They also distributed checklists that Google leaders could use:
- Leaders should not interrupt teammates during conversations, as it establishes a norm of interrupting.
- Leaders should actively show they are listening by summarizing what was said to reinforce understanding.
- Leaders should openly acknowledge gaps in their knowledge to build trust and openness.
- Leaders should ensure that every team member has an opportunity to speak before the meeting ends.
- Leaders should create a safe space for upset team members to share their frustrations and encourage respectful responses.
- They should call out intergroup conflicts and resolve them through open discussion.
“There were dozens of tactics on the checklist,” Charles writes. “All of them, however, came back to two general principles: Teams succeed when everyone feels like they can speak up and when members show they are sensitive to how one another feels.”
Implementing psychological safety at Google began to produce tangible results.
“Seeing this data has been a game changer for me,” Sagnik Nandy, chief of Google Analytics Engineering, one of the company’s biggest teams.
“Engineers love debugging software because we know we can get 10 percent more efficiency by just making a few tweaks. But we never focus on debugging human interactions. We put great people together and hope it will work, and sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn’t, and most of the time we don’t know why.
“Aristotle let us debug our people,” Sagnik comments. “It’s totally changed how I run meetings. I’m so much more conscious of how I model listening now, or whether I interrupt, or how I encourage everyone to speak.”
If you are a leader, whether at work, in your community, at church, or at your family’s dinner table, be aware of the message your actions and behavior send.
“Are you encouraging equality in speaking, or rewarding the loudest people?” Charles asks.
“Are you modeling listening? Are you demonstrating a sensitivity to what people think and feel, or are you letting decisive leadership be an excuse for not paying as close attention as you should?”
At times, it may feel easier to cut off debate, make a rapid decision, or consult with an expert.
Yet, “study after study shows that while psychological safety might be less efficient in the short run, it’s more productive over time,” Charles explains.
“When people come together in a group, sometimes we need to give control to others,” he notes. “That’s ultimately what team norms are: individuals willingly giving a measure of control to their teammates.
“But that works only when people feel like they can trust one another. It only succeeds when you feel psychologically safe,” Charles states. “As a team leader, then, it’s important to give people control.”
He continues: “As a team member, you share control by demonstrating that you are genuinely listening—by repeating what someone just said, by responding to their comments, by showing you care by reacting when someone seems upset or flustered, rather than acting as if nothing is wrong.”
Charles’s big takeaway? “When you defer to others’ judgment, when you vocally treat others’ concerns as your own, you give control to the group and psychological safety takes hold.”
More tomorrow!
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Reflection: Am I creating an environment where people feel safe sharing ideas, admitting mistakes, and disagreeing respectfully?
Action: Choose one conversation this week where I focus on listening more carefully, inviting quieter voices into the discussion, and demonstrating genuine curiosity about what others think and feel.
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