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What Makes a Good Team?

Team Cohesion in Communication Acting and Communicating as a Cohesive Team What Makes a Good Team?

There have been many theories over the years about what makes a good team. In 2012, Google launched “Project Aristotle”^[1] which tracked the success of teams, looking at their composition and for patterns of behavior most commonly seen in successful teams. They discovered that it wasn’t ‘who’ was in the team that mattered, in terms of friendships, backgrounds or skills, but the underlying team culture. The highest performing teams displayed two particular traits:

Team members spoke in roughly the same proportion – i.e., everybody gets an opportunity to talk.
They were above average at picking up on, and respectful of how, others were feeling, reading body language cues.

These two things create something called psychological safety^[2] which is when team members feel able to ask questions, admit mistakes and express ideas without worrying about negative repercussions. Psychological safety is important because it creates motivated teams, where everybody makes an important contribution and feels comfortable to voice their opinion or raise concerns.

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