A wider view: Forming effective teams isn’t rocket science, but it’s harder than you think.

When it comes to forming effective teams at work, it seems we could learn a lot from 3^rd graders. As it turns out, the supportive environment that’s fostered in elementary school is probably the best way to get the most from a team.

These two articles talk about Project Aristotle – an endeavor launched by Google to determine what makes a successful team. They learned that it didn’t matter how diverse of a background the team had and it didn’t matter what skills mix the team had.

What did matter was two things: 1) Level of participation – if everyone was able to participate, the team did well, and 2) The feeling by each team members that his or her ideas would be heard and not ridiculed.

Pretty simple stuff, but sometimes getting back to the basics is the answer.

Psychological Safety

Project Aristotle