3 Elements Of A Great Team Culture

Why are some teams more motivated, more innovative, and more successful than others?

Why do some groups of talented and seemingly compatible people fall short against lesser teams with less suitable members?

And why are we still so surprised about which team members excel, and which ones fail?

We know that high-performing teams deliver higher value results more consistently. But how do you build that high performing team? We have a tendency to believe that successful teams are created by recruiting top-talent and raising the average of talent on a team. But recent research suggests that talent isn’t as portable as we once thought, and that recruiting star players might be more trouble than it’s worth.

More often than not, great teams don’t become great because they recruit top talent or pay top dollar. Instead, building the best team is about shaping the habits and culture that bring out the best in each team member.

Fortunately, organizational psychologists have been studying what explains the culture of great teams for over a decade now. And while each study, each paper, and even each psychologist has slightly different terminology for their findings, you can find a way to summarize what they found into just three elements.