Building Learning Teams

To succeed in today’s environment, teams must overcome adversity and grow stronger in the process. However, team development efforts often overlook the critical skill of learning together.

A while back, Google’s People Operations department attempted to determine what characteristics Google’s highest performing teams possessed. The results are relevant to anyone interested in team development. After two years of research, the report concluded that members of successful teams felt psychologically safe, could count on their team members, understood team goals, and felt their work mattered. Let’s summarize these as trust, communication, and shared purpose.

However, the study didn’t highlight a critical component that is required to sustain high performing teams - the ability to learn and grow together. Change is constant and it’s only a matter of time before every team is impacted by unforeseen events. High performing teams are only high performing until they’re not. Whether it’s a stock market crash, natural disaster, or unforeseen personnel turnover, uncertainty can derail any team.

In addition to developing a foundation of trust, communication, and shared purpose, we need to deliberately build our team’s ability to learn together. A straightforward way to do this is to share and discuss lessons learned regularly and openly. Most importantly, encourage team members to highlight mistakes and what they learned from them. Whether it’s co-workers or your family, making these sessions a regular occurrence ensures your team identifies and overcomes challenges early, growing stronger along the way.