Project Aristotle

As leaders we can all become slightly obsessed about how you ensure you have a happy, productive, high performing team.

Imagine having an almost endless supply of money, a brand that everyone wants to work for and having the ability to headhunt whoever you want from anywhere in the world, problem solved, right?

This, more or less, was Google's situation, and yet...

They still had some underperforming teams, and a surprisingly wide range of performance outcomes across all of their teams. On the face of it that didn't make sense, how could you have all these resources, all these great people and yet still have, at times, sub optimal performance and outcomes?

Some of you may already know of the research project that followed but I have to admit I only read up on this last week, and that was definitely behind the pace!

So, I thought I would share the details for anyone else like me who missed it the first time around, or who might benefit from the reminder of something that provides a really powerful summary of what creates high performance teams.

Back in 2012 Google set out to do the work most companies could never afford to do, and Project Aristotle was born. They set out to understand what was driving high performance and what therefore was missing from some of their teams.

They measured:

• Team Performance: Metrics such as productivity, meeting deadlines, and quality of work.
• Collaboration: Frequency and effectiveness of team communication.
• Engagement: Employee satisfaction, morale, and turnover rates.
• Innovation: The number and impact of new ideas generated.

They also gathered team member feedback through surveys and interviews, focusing on interpersonal dynamics, communication patterns, and decision-making processes.

Across 180 teams they crunched the numbers, they monitored everything, they were curious, they spoke to endless members of their teams and eventually they came up with why their best teams performed well whilst others didn't.

Project Aristotle established the following 5 baseline necessities for a high performing team:

1. Psychological Safety: a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking e.g. admitting mistakes, offering ideas, raising concerns without fear.

2. Dependability: Team members reliably complete tasks and meet deadlines.

3. Structure and Clarity: Clear roles, plans, and goals within the team.

4. Meaning: The sense of purpose or personal significance team members derive from their work.

5. Impact: The belief that the team’s work matters and contributes to the organisation’s goals.

Psychological safety was of particular note, for Google they felt it was the number 1 determinant of success.

They found that:

In teams without psychological safety, members often stay silent, fearing judgment or conflict. This self-censorship leads to missed opportunities, unspoken ideas, and unresolved tensions.

By contrast, teams with psychological safety benefit from:

• Open Communication: Members freely share concerns, feedback, and ideas, leading to faster problem-solving.
• Risk-Taking: Without fear of negative consequences, team members experiment and innovate more boldly.
• Error Learning: Mistakes are openly acknowledged and analysed, creating opportunities for improvement rather than blame.

All together this, for me, is one of the clearest and best supported breakdowns of what conditions create high performance.

The question of course is HOW do you move your team from where you are now, to being where Project Aristotle tells us we want to be.

So for what it's worth, here come my top 5 first steps:

1. Don't allow perfection (which you will never achieve) be the enemy of progress, even if you only move 10% closer to the results of Project Aristotle you will be better off. So, just try, whatever happens you will learn and develop.
2. Check/define your mission, why does your team exist and why does that provide meaning? Hire to this and keep and communicate a consistent focus on it.
3. Clear, concise and consistent expectation setting for all, at all levels from the moment someone joins you. Give everyone the security of knowing what is expected of them and what they can expect from the team and organisation around them.
4. Define your values and behavioural expectations. For leaders, actions speak infinitely louder than words. Your behaviours, intentional or not, are sending a message as to what your values really are, and how you expect others to behave.
5. Create a culture of feedback starting from the top. 360 degree surveys for leaders. For others start small, at each meeting / get together, give each other one thing that they are doing brilliantly, and one thing they could work on to improve. Plus one thing the team as a unit is doing brilliantly, and one thing it could do to improve.

There are of course dozens of other actions you could take, but if you start with being clear on your meaning / purpose, the values and behaviours you agree to as a team, having crystal clear expectations of what you all bring to the team, and creating an open dialogue of feedback you will be ahead of the majority of teams in your organisation and your competitors

If you want to delve deeper on Project Aristotle see: Google re:Work - Guides: Understand team effectiveness

The above link also provides further reading and additional ideas as to how you could move your team closer to the ideal highlighted above.

I am very lucky to spend my time with individual leaders, exec teams and emerging leadership groups working together to better achieve the outcome of a high performing team.

I'm always happy to talk about what that might look like for you and your team, so if you'd like to speak, please book a call here: https://calendly.com/davidhaylor-haylorleadership/30min

Or if you want to learn about my most popular workshop in regards to leading in a multigenerational and hybrid environment: Leading Gen Z | Haylor Leadership

Good luck, I guarantee there are hundreds of leaders today who are facing the same challenges you are, so share that challenge and there will be plenty of people happy to help.

Good leaders change the world for the better, thank you for being one of those leaders!