Is Your Team More Than the Sum of Its Parts?
I've worked with a mix of high- and low-performing groups, always looking to promote improved outcomes. Team dynamics is frequently among the most critical factors and yet often overlooked by leaders who can influence positive change.
Establishing clarity, alignment, focus and trust creates resilience against obstacles and maximizes results, while the absence of these predictably derails performance even with capable people.
Leaders can actively shape these dynamics—here's how.
The Importance of Team Dynamics
We all intuitively recognize the impact of how groups operate, yet organizations routinely underestimate their importance or tolerate harmful behaviors. Research confirms specific positive dynamics lead to faster delivery, better results and higher employee morale.
Google's Project Aristotle researched effectiveness across 180+ teams and 250+ variables. They concluded “what really mattered was less about who is on the team, and more about how the team worked together.”
Similarly, Teresa Torres' benchmark survey on The Impact of Working in a Product Trio found satisfaction in product triads was directly correlated with time spent collaborating and how often they reported equal say in decision-making.
Both studies confirm: these interactions drive effectiveness and satisfaction. Here's how to leverage this insight.
What Makes an Effective Team?
The classic HBS article The Discipline of Teams captures the essence perfectly:
“A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, set of performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.”
Let's break down this definition:
Complementary skills: Members bring different functional training, strengths and perspectives. In product development, almost everything has cross-functional interdependency. This requires a blending of business, design and technology considerations.
Common purpose: This is a shared understanding of why the team exists and what they're trying to achieve. With this, it can grow into a strong cross-functional partnership and commitment. Without this, they typically struggle to maintain focus or develop expertise in a targeted area.
Performance goals: To translate purpose into their immediate work, teams should have clear, measurable objectives that the entire unit is working toward, not just scattered project metrics. These help them prioritize ambitious targets, create urgency and track progress while keeping the big picture in mind.
Mutual accountability: Everyone should feel responsible for the success or failure—not just their own contributions. They problem solve together closely to improve how they operate and how they can be more effective together.
When these elements are missing, you probably don't have a fully functioning team—you merely have a group of individuals. In a team the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In a group, the whole is often less than the sum.
Google's study highlighted similar themes for effectiveness. They found that the most important dynamics were, in order of importance: psychological safety, dependability, structure and clarity, meaning, and impact. Psychological safety alone accounted for much of the variance in performance, with groups scoring high in this dimension showing significantly better productivity, innovation, retention, and morale.
These factors align with our four key attributes:
Psychological safety → Mutual accountability, which increases with honest feedback and supporting risk-taking
Dependability → Shared performance goals, which is enhanced with reliable completion of commitments
Structure and clarity → Both complementary skills and performance goals, with clear roles and expectations
Meaning and impact → Common purpose i.e. a shared understanding of why work matters and how it contributes
The research found that how teams collaborate matters even more than who is on the team.
Four Practical Approaches to Transform Group Dynamics
Staff for and leverage complementary skills: Bring together complementary skills and collaborate to blend those together.
Establish dedicated cross-functional triads. If you don’t already have this, align product management, design, and engineering plus supporting specialists, ensuring they have the core group needed to pursue their mission.
Encourage ongoing cross-functional collaboration. Each of the roles can add value and benefit from participation throughout the process, from research to planning to evaluation. Go beyond narrow traditional role definitions to build shared context, develop buy-in and maximize contribution towards mutual goals.
Establish common purpose: Ensure they internalize why they exist and are motivated to pursue material improvements.
Clarify their charter. Everyone should understand their collective "why"—the specific problems they're addressing and how their work connects to broader company vision and business outcomes.
Establish long-term inspiration. Help develop an ambitious approach for how their specific area will enable the company vision.
Commit to shared performance goals: Connect work to measurable outcomes and ensure all members are working towards achieving these together.
Translate purpose into specific goals. Define clear metrics and near-term targets to measure progress and maintain focus on what matters most.
Align individual and common goals. When personal objectives match group outcomes, collaboration naturally increases and performance improves. Make this alignment a key factor in performance management and recognition so incentives are aligned.
Create mutual accountability: Build in continuous improvement and address behaviors inhibiting performance.
Prioritize relationship building and forums to improve team dynamics. Make time to build personal connections that strengthen trust. Implement regular mutual feedback mechanisms such as retrospectives where everyone reflects and learns together.
Address harmful behavior promptly. Accountability requires immediate action on toxic behavior before it spreads. Left alone, it destroys psychological safety and performance.
Leadership’s role in this is essential: How leaders interact with their peers becomes a model for the entire organization. Actions matter far more than directives. They also play a critical role in establishing norms and incentives by reinforcing positive behaviors while correcting negative behaviors.
Winning together
I’ve seen effective and ineffective groups in most organizations, but the company which was most consistently strong in this regard is DoorDash. They lived and reinforced their company value “one team, one fight” consistently:
Screening for cultural alignment during hiring, focusing on humility and how candidates work with others
Operating with shared goals and problem solving towards these together across product triads, marketing and operations
Emphasizing shared outcomes and putting the company first in performance management and promotion decisions
As an example, a squad maintained strong momentum even while their product manager was on maternity leave. The designer, engineers, and a partner from operations leaned in to fill the gap and meet their objectives. They continued to deliver meaningful value because everyone understood what needed to be done, why it mattered, and were willing to jump in and help.
As a sports fan and former soccer coach, I think about this as analogous to the concept of an "assist.” The player making the assist doesn't score the goal directly but contributes to the conditions for success. A well formed team with strong chemistry can defeat a group of all-stars with a “locker room cancer.”
The bottom line
Investing in building positive dynamics isn't optional—it's a direct driver of improved business results and employee satisfaction.
What group performance strategies have worked for you? Share in the comments.
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