Diverse teams are here to stay. So in this module, we'll look at some examples of best practices that encourage high performance on diverse teams. A high performing team is one in which there is one, a high quality output of product or service. Two, strong working relationships and information sharing among team members. And three, individual members of the team make meaning from the work. One important best practice of high performing teams is the willingness to be accountable for results. Even though its results were not so flattering, Google elected to share their diversity numbers to show how much farther they need to go to make opportunity more equitable within the company, to a more diverse group of employees. Google Senior Vice President of People Operations, Laszlo Boch, posted that 70% of Google's employees are men. 61% of its total workforce is white. Another 30% are Asian, 3% are Hispanic, and 2% are African American. Boch said that Google had been reluctant to publish numbers about the diversity of its workforce, but now realized that it was time to be candid about the need to better attract and retain a diverse workforce. Publishing demographic information about employees, held Google publicly accountable for improving diversity. Most critical to Google's future diversity efforts is that its leaders are willing to self reflect. Research supports that using structured reflection is a proven method for achieving high performance on your team. Another important aspect of high performance identified at Google is this idea of psychological safety. In order to find out what qualities were most common among its most productive teams, Google undertook a two year self study of over 250 attributes, over 1800 Google teams. Over 200 interviews and thousands of data points later, Google discovered that who was on a team was less important. What mattered more was how team members interacted, structured their work, and viewed their contributions in the context of the team. The positive relationships among team members and the ability of team members to speak their mind created psychological safety. In psychologically safe teams, there's a high degree of interpersonal trust and mutual respect. People are comfortable being themselves. Psychologically safe teams are more likely to prevent early problems and accomplish shared goals. Because team members are more likely to focus on the well being of the group. The lessons from Google for high performing teams are that, one, self reflection and public accountability are difficult, but necessary parts of creating diverse high performing teams. Number two, an environment of psychological safety is critical to high performing teams. Now let's dive into group norms that encourage high performance in diverse teams.
