Daniel Coyle’s 2019 book The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups, is replete with case studies of high-functioning teams and their leaders from every field of endeavor. Coyle is able to distill the essential elements shared across these teams that contributes to their success. So often it has to do with trust and the pyschological safety of its members, similar to the findings of Google’s multi-year research project on high-functioning teams. Once again, when team members are less focused on managing other’s perceptions and freer to test run new ideas and challenge others, they will outperform other groups time and time again.
Google's Aristotle Project
In 2012 Google launched a research project to study what contributed to their highest performing teams. The research was conducted over 5 years and included hundreds of teams and a storehouse of data. The biggest take-away from the project was that the highest performing teams exhibited what Google described then as psychological safety. When team members felt safe to be themselves, spend less time managing perception of others and work through conflict directly, they delivered more effectively on their mission. What most often contributed to this team attribute is the leader’s willingness to own his/her mistakes, reveal intent, share context and lead with authenticity (ie., more vulnerability).
Team of Teams
General Stanley McCrystal, who led American troops in Iraq under President Obama, reinvented methods for collective sense- and decision-making in highly volatile, constantly changing conditions. He has since left the military and consults with companies around the world who know that older leadership models have become increasingly defunct and new ways of leading are required for these times.
McCrystal’s approach focuses on developing coherent team dynamics with the highest levels of trust, pushing decision-making much closer to the level of execution, and the practice of transparency by senior leadership to be much more forthcoming with the information needed for everyone to make better decisions. Sharing information on a ‘need to know’ basis was no longer working. Transparency has become an essential pathway to growing organizational resiliency. This methodology aligns very closely with my approach to team building and leadership development.
Team of Teams: https://www.mcchrystalgroup.com/docs/default-source/playbooks/team-of-teams-summary.pdf?sfvrsn=8f00a506_7