Project "Aristotle"

In 2012, Google launched an internal project "Aristotle" to study the factors that determine an ideal team. Researchers analyzed hundreds of work groups, studying everything from the frequency of shared lunches to the personal qualities of managers. It was assumed that the key to success lay in combining the best specialists or similar personalities.

"At Google, we are good at finding patterns, but in this case, there were none."

However, no pattern was found. Neither the combination of personality types, nor common interests, nor management style determined success. Teams with almost identical composition showed completely opposite results.

Therefore, the research team switched to testing other hypotheses, and here is what they found:

It doesn't matter who is on the team — what matters is how people interact. And the key factor for high performance turned out to be psychological safety. It directly determines people's willingness to express their point of view.


Realizing this, Google began mass training of managers in communication skills. The focus was on three areas:
1️⃣ Self-management skills: How not to retreat into "silence" or "attack" when afraid.
2️⃣ Skills for conveying "dangerous" topics: How to give feedback that builds rather than destroys.
3️⃣ Skills for helping others: How to bring the interlocutor back to constructive dialogue if they have already gone into defense.

In teams with a high level of psychological safety, the following was observed:
— productivity 19% higher;
— number of innovative solutions 31% higher;
— turnover 27% lower;
— engagement 3.6 times higher.

P.S. There are, of course, questions about how business results were measured, but there is something to think about.

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