How to build great teams

How to build great teams


Times are hard amid the tech talent freeze, but assembling a great team – not just a collection of talented individuals – could help any business ride out the storm. This week, we examine the case that teamwork makes the dream work.

What makes a team effective?

Google’s People Analytics team embarked on a project called Project Aristotle (named after the famous quote, ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts’) to answer a simple question: what makes a team effective at Google? The findings may be of interest to any hiring leader looking to build a strong and cohesive team culture.

It’s often difficult to talk about teamwork without descending into clichéd babble, or as the write-up puts it, an “existential thought exercise”. But Google’s researchers sought to put some flesh on the bone and define what teamwork actually means.

First, they encountered a challenge. When the researchers captured different perspectives on teamwork from executives, team leads and others, “their answers showed that each was focused on different aspects when assessing team effectiveness”. For example, “executives were most concerned with results (e.g., sales numbers or product launches), but team members said that team culture was the most important measure of team effectiveness”.

To overcome this, the researchers studied a whopping 180 teams (including 115 engineering project teams and 65 sales pods) and collected answers from a whole bunch of themes – personality traits, emotional intelligence and group dynamics – while taking into account variables like tenure, level and location.

And what did they discover was the key to an effective team?

“What really mattered was less about who is on the team, and more about how the team worked together”.

Following their research, Google’s team helpfully ranked which dynamics make for an effective team (in order of importance) in this snazzy graphic:

No alt text provided for this image

As a talent leader, how can you use these conclusions to assess behavioural dynamics, eliminate distrust, and ultimately build a successful group chemistry where everyone can fire on all cylinders?

‘The new science of building great teams’

Elsewhere, a piece in the Harvard Business Review by Alex ‘Sandy’ Pentland, who leads MIT’s Connection Science and Human Dynamics research laboratories, describes a similar study on teamwork.

This time, the research aimed to identify the “elusive group dynamics that characterise high-performing teams”, and concluded that the way people interact with one another, or “sociometrics” such as tone of voice, and how much colleagues talk, listen and interrupt, are more important than many understand. In fact, here’s what Sandy lists as the defining characteristics of a successful team:

No alt text provided for this image

The importance of team dynamics in a downturn

The cooling of the tech industry continues apace, with much-publicised layoffs at Netflix, Zwift and Carvana, among others, and a hiring freeze at the likes of Meta, Twitter and Wayfair. But perversely, does the hiring slowdown present an opportunity to press the reset button on how we think about team building??

A piece on LinkedIn titled ‘The upside of a downturn’ suggests that in these uncertain times, companies can “reduce the pace of hiring, focus more on quality, and gain access to people who weren’t necessarily ‘recruitable’ before”. We’ve covered how to poach an A+ talent before in our guide to hiring executive talent.

Moreover, it’s worth having a read of Andreessen Horowitz’s blog post, ‘Navigating down markets’, for some wisdom on how companies can recalibrate their goals and “control [their] burn multiples”.

No alt text provided for this image

There’s no ‘i’ in ‘team’ (although there is in ‘recession’), but it’s clear that creating a strong team dynamic, with a consolidated-yet-committed workforce, can help an organisation achieve its goals. When you’re hiring, is it enough to simply appoint the A-player with all the credentials if they’re never going to gel with the team as a whole?

Recruiting fail

When booking a virtual meeting, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. But tell that to these guys, who turned a simple calendar invite into a puzzle more complicated than a Rubik’s cube.

No alt text provided for this image

Share this newsletter

Once again, it’s been a ball. Do share this newsletter with your digital nearest and dearest. We’ll see you next time!

要查看或添加评论,请登录

Nasser Oudjidane的更多文章

  • The disappearing white collar job

    The disappearing white collar job

    Will white collar workers survive the robot onslaught? This week’s Hiring Highlights has all the latest twists in the…

  • Talent spotting and culture

    Talent spotting and culture

    We often think about ‘who’ we want to hire, but what about ‘how’ we hire? This week we explore different hiring…

    1 条评论
  • How to build a better HR

    How to build a better HR

    HR is continually evolving like a Pokémon, and as Hiring Highlights celebrates its 60th birthday, we explore how talent…

    1 条评论
  • Algorithm ‘n’ blues

    Algorithm ‘n’ blues

    In this tech-saturated age, it’s easy to forget that not every worker is armed with a laptop, flat white and a…

  • Creativity at a time of destruction

    Creativity at a time of destruction

    The age of cheap money has come to a juddering halt, so how do you hire good people without impacting profitability?…

  • The march of the robots

    The march of the robots

    We all know that AI is changing our world faster than a rocket-powered cheetah. But how will it really affect…

  • The future of recruiting

    The future of recruiting

    In this week’s Hiring Highlights, we pit recruiters against investors in a battle royale to determine who talks the…

    3 条评论
  • How to hire in the age of lean

    How to hire in the age of lean

    At a time when companies are getting lean, mean and listening to Al Green, what are the implications for talent…

  • On tackling the talent shortage

    On tackling the talent shortage

    There are plenty of fish in the sea, or are there? These days, finding brilliant (and available) talent is like…

  • On competency based hiring

    On competency based hiring

    You can’t put a price on competence, but strange as it may sound, we don’t always value the people who are…well, good…

社区洞察

其他会员也浏览了