Google set out to answer the question “What makes a team effective at Google?”. How did they go about it? As you might guess for a data-oriented company like google, they tasked an entire team of researchers on their People Analytics department (don’t you wish YOU had a People Analytics department?) to find the answer in an initiative dubbed Project Aristotle.

The short version is that they studied 180 teams, ran double-blind interviews, combined subjective and objectives measures, and ran all kinds of sophisticated statistical analysis. And the winner is (drumroll please…)

Psychological Safety

And what is ‘psychological safety’? The condition where team members feel safe to take risks and be vulnerable in front of each other.

How can leaders (and team members) cultivate psychological safety? Amy Edmondson’s book Teaming, and her TED talk, give some concrete advice.

1. Frame the work as a learning problem, not an execution problem.

2. Acknowledge your own fallibility. (be vulnerable)

3. Model curiosity and ask lots of questions.

Framing work as a learning problem acknowledges the inherent uncertainty in conducting complex work. It acknowledges that we don’t have all the answers in the beginning and expect that iteration and experimentation will be required. Sounds kinda Agile, doesn’t it?