Google experiment reveals the single most important quality for teamwork
In recent years, Google set out to build the "perfect team," as Charles Duhigg writes in The New York Times Magazine this weekend.
The tech behemoth launched a venture in 2012 called Project Aristotle, which gathered data by analyzing many studies and actually observing the way people interacted in a group, according to The New York Times.
Down the line Project Aristotle landed on the most fundamental component that ultimately makes a team successful: psychological safety.
Psychological safety enables employees to be comfortable opening up to their colleagues and taking risks.
The New York Times points to a study written by Amy Edmondson in 1999 which discusses the term. She writes that it's a "shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking." Additionally, it's "a sense of confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject or punish someone for speaking up."
In other words, that could mean feeling comfortable telling your boss that someone in your family is sick, or revealing what's truly bugging you outside - and inside - of the office.
The Times points to an example of one mid-level manager who confided in his employees that he had Stage 4 cancer. The team - which originally didn't work particularly well together - then continued to open up to each other about their own personal issues, and ultimately felt more comfortable discussing a survey about how the team worked together.
From The Times:
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 recriminations. 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.