Connection is Crucial to Building Better Teams

In order to thrive, teams must engage with, understand, and feel psychologically safe around their fellow employees. Google research concluded that psychological safety, more than anything else, is critical to making a team work. The research project, code-named Project Aristotle, stresses the importance of building better teams, and that—like Aristotle himself said—“the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

• Psychological Safety = Team climate characterized by interpersonal trust and mutual respect in which people are comfortable being themselves and feel confident taking risks within the team

-Teams with high psychological safety

exceeded targets by 17%

-Teams with low psychological safety

missed targets by 19%

Many of today’s most valuable businesses have realized that employee performance optimization isn’t enough. As commerce becomes increasingly global and complex, the bulk of modern work is more and more team-based. Improving individual employees isn’t as effective as developing team connection and communication. “If a company wants to outstrip its competitors, it needs to influence not only how people work but also how they work together.”