By guest author Julia Rozovsky, Analyst, Google People Operations

Pod. Work group. Committee. Autonomous collective. Whatever you call it, you’re part of one at Google and probably wherever you work: a team. So if we know what makes managers great, why don’t we know what makes a team great?

A group of us in Google’s People Operations (what we call HR) set out to answer this question using data and rigorous analysis: What makes a Google team effective? We shared our research earlier today with the Associated Press, and we’re sharing the findings here, as well.

Over two years we conducted 200+ interviews with Googlers (our employees) and looked at more than 250 attributes of 180+ active Google teams. We were pretty confident that we'd find the perfect mix of individual traits and skills necessary for a stellar team -- take one Rhodes Scholar, two extroverts, one engineer who rocks at AngularJS, and a PhD. Voila. Dream team assembled, right?

We were dead wrong. Who is on a team matters less than how the team members interact, structure their work, and view their contributions.So much for that magical algorithm.

We learned that there are five key dynamics that set successful teams apart from other teams at Google:

If you answered “yes” to the five questions above, congrats! You’re probably on a high-performing team. And if not, not all hope is lost. This is a shortcut to help you figure out where to focus, how to get better, and a way to talk about this concept with your teammates in a structured way.

 Psychological safety was far and away the most important of the five dynamics we found -- it’s the underpinning of the other four. How could that be? Taking a risk around your team members seems simple. But remember the last time you were working on a project. Did you feel like you could ask what the goal was without the risk of sounding like you’re the only one out of the loop? Or did you opt for continuing without clarifying anything, in order to avoid being perceived as someone who is unaware?

Turns out, we’re all reluctant to engage in behaviors that could negatively influence how others perceive our competence, awareness, and positivity. Although this kind of self-protection is a natural strategy in the workplace, it is detrimental to effective teamwork. On the flip side, the safer team members feel with one another, the more likely they are to admit mistakes, to partner, and to take on new roles. And it affects pretty much every important dimension we look at for employees. Individuals on teams with higher psychological safety are less likely to leave Google, they’re more likely to harness the power of diverse ideasfrom their teammates, they bring in more revenue, and they’re rated as effective twice as often by executives.

Googlers love data. But they don’t want to sit idle with it. They want to act. So we created a tool called the gTeams exercise: a 10-minute pulse-check on the five dynamics, a report that summarizes how the team is doing, a live in-person conversation to discuss the results, and tailored developmental resources to help teams improve. Over the past year, more than 3,000 Googlers across 300 teams have used this tool. Of those Google teams, the ones that adopted a new group norm -- like kicking off every team meeting by sharing a risk taken in the previous week -- improved 6% on psychological safety ratings and 10% on structure and clarity ratings. Teams said that having a framework around team effectiveness and a forcing function to talk about these dynamics was missing previously and by far the most impactful part of the experience.

From sales teams in Dublin to engineering teams in Mountain View, we’ve seen that focusing on this framework helps all types of teams improve.

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Cross-posted at https://rework.withgoogle.com/blog/five-keys-to-a-successful-google-team/ on November 17, 2015

We spend a lot of time talking  about easy things we can do to make our lives betterand our careers take off. There are easy things to do, but the reality is, being at the top of your game doesn't come easily for almost anything. Sometimes, there are hard things you need to do if you want to be successful. Here are five hard things that will really help you.

I get emails all the time asking, "Should I get an MBA?" or "Should I go to graduate school?" The answer? "How in the heck should I know!" It all depends on your goals. Do the people who currently work in your dream job have MBAs? Or, do they have PhDs in art history? Or, did they go through coding camp? Look at what they've done and then make your decision.

Keep in mind that some doors will close when you get that extra training, just as some doors will open. If your goal is to be an HR manager, skip law school. People will say, "Why on earth did you go to law school if you don't want to be a lawyer?"

Even though Malcolm Gladwell's famous 10,000-hour rule for becoming an expert isn't necessarily true, it is true that most of us can't just walk in and audition for the local symphony. You need to practice, practice, practice and learn, learn, learn. People ask how I got this gig at Inc. Well, I learned and wrote and learned some more and wrote, and wrote and wrote. You need to too if you want to be successful in your field.

Yeah, sometimes a golden child can walk in off the street and rocket to the top, but most of us work our tail ends off. Claudia Goldin, a professor of economics at Harvard University, explained on a recent Freakonomics episode that what she called "temporal flexibility" explains most of the gender pay gap. People who want flexible schedules are less successful financially than those who give up flexibility. It's not bad if you value flexibility, but know what you're giving up if you do.

It always cracks me up when people put "Exercise!" on their list of simple things. Regular exercise is simple for some people and that's great. For the rest of us? Diet and exercise just aren't that simple. They can be really, really, hard. We can't control all aspects of our health-genetics and just pure bad luck-plays a role. Still, work to be healthy, whatever that means. If it means taking the right medicines, do that. If it means going to the gym three times a week, do that. If it means getting therapy to overcome your problems, do that. None of this is easy, but all of them help your career.

Again, this is easier for some people than it is for others. Some of us, uh, I mean you, love to hear the sound of our own voices. While you can have fabulous ideas, you need to listen to other people's ideas as well. You need to shut up and listen to feedback about your own ideas. You have to be humble enough to hear criticism.

Often, people who are used to being stars have a real problem when confronted with ideas that don't match their own. If you can't listen to what other people have to say, you can only climb so high.

Whether we are individual contributors or leaders of people/teams we all strive to be high performers right?

But what are the key characteristics of a high performer & how can we all become better at our work performance? Even making that the elusive high performance.

 In the Harvard Business Review article “What high performers want at work”(Willyerd, K. November, 2014) the author tells us high performers deliver 400% -yes 400%- more productivity than the average performer. We also assume that high performers should be more satisfied in their roles, and this is true, however did you know that “one in five high performers are likely to leave in the next six months”.

Even more sobering, one in four will leave in the short term!

Interesting isn’t it?

 As leaders, business owners, learning and development professionals, coaches and HR professionals we put plenty of time and energy and discussion into trying to release that potential of our higher performers (or retain them or replicate them) but 20-25% are already looking to leave? And maybe to a competitor! Why?

 The article states, compensation (base and bonus) is one of the biggest drivers and the second one is feedback. Did the manager spend enough time giving quality feedback and did he/she do it in a quality way?  I'll discuss this further below point 2. Super article! (Check out the article in further reading below)

 So here are some certainties we know about High Performers versus average performers:

Hi-Pers take pride in driving their own development. They read, take courses, participate in professional groups, network and distill from every situation something that helps them learn and move forward. Every day is a learning day. Daniel Pink’s super book Drive-what really motivates us states Mastery, Autonomy and purpose are the three real motivators. Hi-Pers chase one or all three of above.

2. Hi-Pers want constructive feedback on what can get them performing better

As per Willyerd’s article we all remember feedback sessions from leaders who were invested (or not) in us. Was it all negative or was it the positivity sandwich with two ends of negativity and a middle bit of postivitiy? (We all remember those!)

What kind of coaching questions did they use? How did they get you to perform better or to a higher standard? What kind of praise did you receive? Was there candor or fakeness? How are you currently coaching your high performers?

  3. Hi-Pers are uber focused

As Stephen Covey once said “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing”.

High Performers have maniacal focus, they know what they want, they know what results they need to achieve, they keep the main thing the main thing. Distractions don't last long. 

Dr. Isaiah Hankel wrote a great book called “Black Hole Focus”. He says“Change the questions that you are asking yourself and you will change your focus”

Hi-Pers are always asking themselves good questions.

He also says for “black hole focus” that we shouldn’t be afraid to let our previous or old priorities go – this helps the current focus be more focused!

4. Hi-Pers are role models for performance

The rest of the team look up to high performers and admire them. Mark and Bonita Thompson wrote a NY Times best selling book called Admired.

Mark has worked and coached Jobs, Branson, Schwab (three of the biggest names in business ever- I was impressed too!) and the book is a plethora of good advice on how to “double your value”.

Hi-Pers already are admired and working on adding value.

High Performers have a vision/ambition/ of where they want to be. They are driven.

At my first sales job many years ago, one of my first leaders-Sandra- used to call her high performers “Rock Stars”. In high performance teams there is always one or two that perform at a different level. Rock star/s. The team might aspire to that level or not, but high performers most definitely have an impact on the group dynamic. So the hi-per keeps raising the bar for performance once she knows the others are hunting for the top spot or watching. Sure maybe it’s a much used cliché “Winners mindset” or maybe it is just the ability to compete and stay number 1 that counts!

5. Hi-Pers lead without a title

If you’ve never read Robin Sharma’s epic “The Leader who had no title” get your hands on a copy. Sharma says everyone can be a leader. You don't need the fancy title, office, expense account etcetera to be a leader. 

Hi-Pers don’t need a title to lead. We see this in professional sports and the workplace all the time, we see it in life-- those people who impact our communities without being elected. They just go “do it”. I am sure you know one!

Those folks who invest in others without the title, they develop folks around them without formality and do it because they are leaders and care about the collective performance. Invaluable to any high performing team. 

6. Ownership and Pride:

Another Ryan, Ryan Caldbeck wrote an article for Entrepreneur.com in 2014 titled 5 attributes to look for in high performing employees. One of them was ownership and pride. He quotes Runners World editor David Willey“Run the mile you are in” and says "applies not only to distance running; it applies to life, and it applies to how you will succeed -- or not -- as a teammate in business." (Article below)

All the high performers I’ve ever met or observed (in whatever code: sports/work) take immense pride in their performance and own it 100%. The Irish Rugby Legend, Paul O’Connell is an example here. Paul -as captain of the national team -would “always” take ownership of the team’s performance – pride was there no matter what the result. There was never deflection or blaming others. Level 5 leadership as Jim Collins’ “Good to great” put it. For those of you reading this who don't know this guy- have a look at the interview : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6BV1cVcfDw. "So Proud, so proud of that team" Language of a high performer. (It will be some q in O'Mahony's bookstore in Limerick, Ireland whenever Paul's book comes out!!) 

‘Run the mile you are in’ is now on my office whiteboard – great motivational start to 2-16!

7. Hi-Pers Think Big and act bigger

Jeffrey Hayzlett has just written a great book called Think Big, Act Bigger.

Hi-Pers, Hayzlett says take a no-nonsense approach to life and business.High Performers goal set, they work hard and think big.

If your goals aren't scaring you they aren't big enough is another way to look at it! 

8. Hi-Pers pay attention to their good and bad habits

Hi-Pers have good habits to drive their performance. Sounds simple but habits have a huge impact on our performance no matter what our field. Marginal gains in performance all come back to habit. 

Charles Duhig’s book was just a super read. The Power of Habit. Worth a look. Charles is the expert on "habit" and it is a fascinating piece of work. 

9. Finally and in my opinion they have massive amounts of integrity. We all know what that is right?