What Makes A Great Team?

Work is teamwork. And it’s no secret that some teams truly are greater than others.

A recent meta-analysis combined research conducted on over 200,000 teams in a variety of industries in order to answer that question. Across 274 dimensions of performance and over half a million individual team members, the researchers found that, in most fields, performance differences of teams followed a power-law-with a small number of high-performing teams achieving most of the results. In other others, high performing teams didn’t just perform a little better, they performed up to ten times better than normal teams.

With results like that, it’s worth looking at what makes a team great. Fortunately, there are a few elements of team culture that are found consistently in consistently great teams.

In this article, we’ll outline 6 building blocks that make a great team.

Clarity

The first building block of a great team is clarity. Teams need to be clear on what’s expected of them, what tasks they’re assigned-what tasks others are assigned-and how all of that fits together. Clarity is key to getting anything done. Without clarity, the ambiguity of assignments can make it feel as if others aren’t pulling their weight. One teammate will be working diligently on a project not knowing that a different teammate is…