Building a Dream Team

Hi, I’m David Timis and my mission in life is to prepare people for the future of work.?

In this week’s edition of the newsletter the theme revolves around building a dream team. Many organisations recruit highly intelligent, quali?ed people with the assumption that they will automatically combine their collective brainpower and work together as a team. However, recruiting talented individuals isn’t enough to build a successful team. Organisations from different sectors and industries often find themselves in the position of having a talented roster of employees that are not working well together as a team. Therefore, building a dream team takes a lot more thinking and planning than meets the eye. But, that being said, given the importance of team building for society at large there is a lot of research attempting to identify the ingredients that separate the most successful teams from average ones. And, in this newsletter, I’ve highlighted some of these ingredients in the hope that they will help people and organisations build dream teams. The following insights and thoughts about what it takes to build a dream team are inspired from the world of sports and the tech sector, which are some of the best settings for studying high-performing teams.?

Timeless Insight

“Think of your teams the way that sports managers do: no one person possesses everything required to produce success, yet everyone must excel.” – Ray Dalio

I’ve been a football (a.k.a. soccer) fan ever since I can remember. I’ve started playing on the terraces in the neighbourhood I grew up in, which didn’t have a proper football pitch set up, so my friends and I had to sneak into the local school after classes to play on their ground. Playing this sport with my friends provided me with some of my best childhood memories, but as I grew up, it also provided me with some of my earliest lessons in how to build a team. So, what separates the best teams from the average ones? The first thing you might think of is that the best teams have the most talented players (e.g. PSG or Manchester City). Indeed, various studies have shown that teams with more star players do perform better, but only up to a certain point, after which the bene?ts of having more star players on the team wear off. What matters more than any individual talent is the overall group dynamics within the team. For instance, a group with good group dynamics is one in which each member of the team is allowed to speak their mind freely and to participate equally in the group’s conversations. Another sign of good group dynamics is when the leader displays the kinds of behaviours they expect within the team. Various studies have found that if the leader is willing to listen to others more constructively, rather than dominating the conversation, the team can begin to nurture those dynamics. So, the best teams aren’t the ones with the most star players or the most domineering leader, but the ones with good group dynamics and a humble leader.??

Food for Thought

Putting together a few people in a room, expecting them to function as a team, is difficult. The larger the group, the more difficult collaborating and finding common ground becomes. Think about it, even going out with friends and deciding where to dine can be challenging, since each person in the group has their own food preferences and dietary requirements. Then how can one aspire to build a dream team with shared interests and common goals?

We’ve already identified in the Timeless Insight section of this newsletter two key ingredients that can be found in the best teams - having good group dynamics and a humble leader. However, there are more ingredients that separate the best teams from average ones. And, back in 2012, 谷歌 embarked on a quest to identify these ingredients in the hope that they will help the tech giant build a dream team. The experiment was called “Project Aristotle”.

After years of analysing the data collected from interviews with people from more than 180 teams across the company, Google identified the key ingredients that the most successful teams have in common, which can be fostered and nurtured by other teams as well. Surprisingly, these ingredients were not related to the personality type, skills, or background of the people in the teams studied. They were connected to the overall group dynamics:?

1. Psychological safety - Everyone feels safe in taking risks around their team members, and that they won’t be embarrassed or punished for doing so.

Key question to ask yourself in order to see if your existing team has this ingredient: Can we take risks on this team without feeling insecure or embarrassed?

2. Dependability - Everyone completes quality work on time.

Key question to ask yourself in order to see if your existing team has this ingredient: Can we count on each other to do high quality work on time?

3. Structure and clarity - Everyone knows what their specific expectations are. These expectations must be challenging yet attainable.

Key question to ask yourself in order to see if your existing team has this ingredient: Are goals, roles, and execution plans on our team clear?

4. Meaning - Everyone has a sense of purpose in their work (i.e. financial security, supporting family, helping the team succeed, etc.).

Key question to ask yourself in order to see if your existing team has this ingredient: Are we working on something that is personally important for each of us?

5. Impact - Everyone sees that the result of their work actually contributes to the organisation’s overall goals.

Key question to ask yourself in order to see if your existing team has this ingredient: Do we fundamentally believe that the work we’re doing matters?

If you answered “yes” to the five questions above, congratulations, you’re probably already working on a high-performing team. And if not, not all hope is lost. This is a useful exercise you can do with your team that can help you figure out where to focus and how to get better. Who is on your team matters less than how each team member interacts with one another, how they structure their work and responsibilities, and how they view their contributions.?

The most important of the five dynamics that came out of the Google study was by far psychological safety, since it’s the key ingredient underpinning the other four. Why is that? Taking a risk around your team members seems simple at first. However, do you remember the last time you were working on a project? Did you feel like you could ask what the goal was without the risk of sounding silly or did you opt for continuing without clarifying anything??

It turns out, most people are reluctant to engage in behaviours that could negatively influence how others perceive their competence. In other words, most of us are afraid, especially in a work context, to lose face.? And, although this kind of self-protection is a natural strategy in the workplace, it is detrimental to teamwork. The safer the team members feel with one another, the more likely they are to admit mistakes and to take on new roles.

Individuals on teams with higher psychological safety are less likely to leave an organisation, they’re more likely to harness and nurture the power of diverse ideas from their teammates, they bring in more revenue, and they’re rated as being twice as effective by their managers. Therefore, when building a dream team, creating an atmosphere of psychological safety is probably the most important step you can take to set your team up for long-term success.?

Article of the Week?

The science of creating a dream team

Caricature of the Week

Source: Condé Nast

Thank you for reading and keep on growing!

David

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