Team dynamics: The five keys to building effective teams - Think with Google
Discover the dynamics of effective teams first-hand from Google. Learn how to ensure psychological safety and hybrid working norms for impactful results.
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성공적인 팀의 5가지 원동력(dynamics)
구글 내부 조사에 따르면 놀랍게도 성공적인 팀을 결정하는 것은 누가 팀원인지가 아니라, 어떻게 팀원들이 상호작용하고, 업무를 구조화시키며, 팀과 각자의 기여를 어떻게 바라보는지가 더 중요한 것으로 파악됐다. 전세계에 있는 구글 팀 중 탁월한 성과를 내고 있는 팀들은 공통적인 다섯 가지 원동력을 가지고 있었다.
1. 심리적 안정(Psychological safetey)
- 심리적 안정이란, 위험 감수(risk-taking)과 심리적 취약함(vulnerability)에 편안함을 느끼는 것과 밀접하게 연관이 있다.
- 심리적으로 불안정한 사람들은 위험을 감수하는 것이 무지하고 무능하며 문제를 일으키는 것으로 비춰질 것이라고 걱정하는 반면, 심리적 안정적인 사람들은 실수를 인정하고 다양한 문제에 대해 고찰하며 이를 해결할 수 있는 아이디어를 제시한다.
- 다섯 가지 원동력 중에서도 가장 중요한 요소로 작용한다.
2. 신뢰성(Dependability)
- 신뢰할만한 팀의 팀원들은 제 시간에 훌륭한 업무 결과를 낸다.
- 팀원들은 책임을 회피하려 들지 않으며, 오히려 진지하게 받아들이며 팀이 제대로 된 성과를 낼 수 있도록 중심을 잡는다.
3. 구조와 명료함(Structure and clarity)
- 팀원들은 분명한 역할, 목표, 계획을 가지고 업무를 진행한다.
- 팀원 개개인들은 본인에게 기대되고 있는 일이 무엇인지 이해하고, 더 나아가 팀이 어떤 목표를 명확히 인지하고 있으며, 어떻게 그 목표를 이뤄야할지에 대해 잘 알고있다.
- 구글은 OKR을 기반으로 개인과 팀 차원의 목표를 효과적으로 달성할 수 있도록 하고 있다.
4. 의미(Meaning)
- 성공에서 가장 중요한 것은 업무와 산출물 기저에 깔린 근본적인 목적을 파악하는 것이다.
- 이러한 목적은 개개인마다 완전히 일치하지는 않지만 일반적으로 재정적 안정, 가족 부양, 팀의 성공, 자아실현 등의 목적을 지닌다.
5. 영향력(Impact)
- 성공적인 팀의 팀원들은 자신이 하고 있는 일이 유의미한 변화를 가져올 것이라고 믿는다.(make a difference)
가장 중요한 원동력, 심리적 안정
성공적인 팀은 개방적인 분위기(a climate of openness)를 기반으로 팀원들이 실수를 인정하고 실수와 문제에 대해 솔직하고 진지하게 이야기를 나누는 환경을 만들어 나간다. 이러한 '심리적 안정'은 팀의 학습과 혁신의 속도를 급격하게 높여줄 수 있다. 실수에 대해 빠르게 대응하고 이를 대처할 뿐만 아니라, 이를 기반으로 조직적인 성과 또한 크게 높여준다. 예를 들어, 심리적 안정감을 지닌 조직에서는 목표치보다 17% 높은 성과를 보였으며, 반대로 심리적으로 불안정한 조직은 19%나 미달했다.
그렇다면 어떻게 심리적 안정을 보장할수 있는가?
1. 업무를 실행해야 하는 것으로 보는 것(execution)이 아니라, 능동적으로 학습하고 해결해나는 것으로 정의한다.
- 업무를 하는 과정에서는 항상 설명과 논의가 필요한 부분이 발생할 수 밖에 없는 것을 인지해야 한다.
- 미래는 불확실하기 때문에 다양한 사람들의 의견을 기반으로 문제를 해결해나가야 한다는 것을 명심해야 한다.
2. 스스로의 불완전성(fallibility)를 자각한다.
- 본인의 부족함을 인정하고 팀원들에게 팀원들의 의견들이 본인에게 중요하다는 것을 표현해야한다.
- 더 나아가서는, "제가 뭔가 놓치고 있을 수 있어요."나 "XX님의 의견이 필요해요."와 같은 말을 통해 동료들이 적극적으로 이야기를 할 수 있는 환경을 만들어 나간다.
3. 추상적인 궁금증은 질문을 통해 구체화한다.
- 구체적인 질문은 팀원들이 책임감을 갖고 답변할 수 있는 뼈대가 되며, 적극적인 논의를 통해 주인의식을 가질 수 있도록 해준다.
심리적 안정을 진단할 수 있는 7가지 질문들
1. 어려운 대화를 나누는 것이 힘들다고 느끼는가?
2. 비난당한다거나 존중받지 못한다고 느끼는가?
3. 건설적인 피드백을 전달하거나 받는 데에 공포를 느끼는가?
4. 다양한 아이디어를 제시하거나 바보같다고 느껴지는 질문을 말하는 데에 고민을 하는가?
5. 실수를 하거나 위험을 감수하면 안 된다고 느껴지는가?
6. 특정 소수의 인원으로 인해 팀의 논의와 의견들이 묵살되는가(marginalise)?
7. 팀원간 부정적인 경쟁 관계로 인해 문제가 발생하고 있는가?
Team dynamics: Five keys to building effective teams
Natasha Tamiru leads organisational transformation programmes at Google U.K. She helps Google’s largest advertising customers and agencies, as well as internal teams think about the role teamwork plays in driving transformation and innovation. This article was originally published in 2018, but has since been updated with new insights.
What kind of teammate are you? What kind of team are you on? And what makes a good team tick?
Those might seem like simple questions, but they’re harder to answer than you might think. And with teams needing to be more cross-functional than ever — from collaboration between departments and regions to hybrid working norms — the issues they raise are important.
In a world that’s constantly changing, effective teams may be the most vital ingredient for successful transformation and innovation.
Who is on a team matters much less than how team members interact, structure their work, and view their contributions.
A key part of my job is helping Google teams improve their effectiveness. And while everyone in the company agrees this is important, no one had put together the data to analyse what actually makes a team effective — until our people operations team decided to change that.
Defining the question, then finding answers
The team conducted internal research to find out what sets apart our most effective teams from the others.
To define what “effective” means in this context, the team asked three different groups of Googlers – executives, team leads, and team members – for their definitions of the word: executives said effectiveness was all about results; team leads defined it in relation to ownership, vision, and goals; and team members found team culture to be the defining attribute.
Those three distinct, equally valid perspectives on effectiveness helped the researchers frame their method. Having prepared more than 250 inputs looking at team dynamics and composition, they used their preparatory research to define three outputs, and finally applied their survey at scale.
The researchers interviewed more than 200 teams across all areas of the business, from engineering to product management, sales, and everything in between. They drew on other data sources too, involving more than 35 statistical models and the coding of over 170,000 words.
The five dynamics of effective teams
We had imagined that building an effective team would be like solving a puzzle – that the best teams would be those where outstanding individuals were put to work together. We even thought that there might be an opportunity to create a new algorithm that could predict how to assemble perfect teams.
Instead, the research revealed something surprising. At Google, who is on a team matters much less than how team members interact, structure their work, and view their contributions. And across all types of teams, from sales to engineering, from San Francisco to Singapore, five dynamics consistently differentiated top-performing teams from those at the bottom.
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Psychological safety: This was the most important dynamic in an effective team. Psychological safety is about risk-taking and being comfortable with vulnerability. People who don’t feel psychologically safe worry that taking risks will mean they’re seen as ignorant, incompetent, negative, or disruptive. Psychological safety means feeling confident about admitting mistakes, asking questions, or offering new ideas.
Dependability: On dependable teams, members reliably complete quality work on time. They don’t avoid their responsibilities and they take them seriously, helping to keep the team on track. As simple as it sounds, it proved vital to team effectiveness.
Structure and clarity: This means that a team has clear roles, goals, and plans. Individuals understand what’s expected of them, what they and their team is aiming for, and how they are all going to get there. Google uses objectives and key results (OKRs) to help set and communicate specific, challenging, and attainable short- and long-term goals, at both an individual and group level.
Meaning: For individuals on a team, finding a sense of purpose in their work or its output is vitally important for team effectiveness. That meaning is personal, so it varies from person to person, but might include financial security, their ability to support their family, their commitment to the success of the team, or their individual self-expression.
Impact: Do you fundamentally believe the work you do makes a difference? This subjective judgement marks out the most effective teams and can be based on seeing how one’s work contributes to an organisation’s goals and what it has helped to change.
Take a moment to think about what could have been on the list, but didn’t make it. “Consensus-driven decision making” or “workload” didn’t make the cut. Neither did “being co-located”, which, since we first published this article, has taken on a whole new meaning.
Psychologically safe teams accelerate learning and innovation by acknowledging mistakes and exploring new ideas.
Perhaps most remarkably, the number of top performers on a team, and the general intelligence of a team, emerged as a poor indicator of a team’s effectiveness. While we found both attributes in some of the best teams, we also found them in some of the weakest.
Psychological safety: what matters most
Of the five dynamics, one stands out ahead of the others. Our researchers found that the best teams created a climate of openness where team members admit to their errors and discuss them more often. In other words, they exhibited high levels of psychological safety, a concept originated by Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson.
Psychologically safe teams accelerate learning and innovation by acknowledging mistakes and exploring new ideas. And not only are they more adaptable, they can also impact the bottom line. Our research revealed that sales teams with high ratings for psychological safety actually brought in more revenue, exceeding their sales targets by 17%. Teams with low psychological safety fell short by up to 19%.
So how can leaders create psychological safety in your teams and organisations? Edmondson gives us three recommendations:
Frame the work as a learning problem as opposed to an execution problem: Be clear that there are areas that still require explanation and that everybody's input matters. Admit that the future is not certain and you need to have everybody's brains and voices in the game.
Acknowledge your own fallibility: Tell team members that you need and respect their input. As a wider attitude, this can be expressed in many ways, but even simple statements, such as "I may miss something” or “I need to hear from you”, can really encourage peers and subordinates to speak up.
Model curiosity by asking a lot of questions: This creates a need for the team to develop a voice. It gives your team the responsibility to generate answers, engage in a discussion, and take ownership of the process.
How we interact with each other as a team is more important than the people on that team. But would you recognise whether your team had strong or weak psychological safety? How could you tell? Have a go at the short questionnaire below for an idea of how you measure up. And if you want to know more, pick up a copy of Teaching by Amy C. Edmondson or Humble Leadership by Edgar Schein for the expert take on psychological safety.
7 questions to help gauge the level of psychological safety in your team:
Do you struggle to have tough conversations?
Do you feel judged and team members disrespect each other?
Do you fear asking for or delivering constructive feedback?
Are you or others hesitant about expressing divergent ideas or asking “silly” questions?
Do you feel you cannot make mistakes or take risks?
Are team discussions dominated by a few strong voices that marginalise other people’s perspectives?
Are your team members competitive with each other?
Building effective teams in a hybrid world
Since we first published this article, results of our study have evolved — not least because of the global shift towards hybrid working models. While distributed work has always been a reality at Google — our teams work collaboratively across the world — it’s now become a key factor in how we approach team effectiveness.
New analysis showed us that distributed work can be as effective as working in the same office, but isn’t always as easy or enjoyable for people. So what can teams do to optimise the distributed or remote work experience? That’s what we set out to explore in this follow-up article.
