What makes a good team (Google says)

In a 2/25/2016 article in the New York Times, Charles Duhigg (of The Power of Habit fame) describes an extensive exercise called Project Aristotle that Google conducted to see what makes teams work. None of the usual suspects (brilliant participants, matched communication styles, similar interests, personal friendships) resisted the power of big data analysis. So the researchers moved to look at so-called group norms, how the teams interact with each other. And they found two factors that do predict team success:

• Team members speak in about the same proportion overall.
• Team members, on average, are good at reading nonverbal cues

In brief, good teams can create psychological safety for its members.

I wonder how many of us are fostering psychological safety. Do share your experiences…