Steven OnanaWe’ve all worked with talented people who somehow made a terrible team.
And we’ve worked with ordinary people who, together, accomplished extraordinary things.
So maybe we’ve been asking the wrong question.
Instead of asking why some employees perform better than others, perhaps we should ask why the same person can thrive in one team and struggle in another.
I’ve seen this throughout my career, both as an employee and as a manager.
And the more teams I’ve worked with, the more convinced I’ve become that we’re overlooking something important.
We keep evaluating the individuals. But who’s paying attention to what happens between them?
The Part of a Team We Don’t See
When we describe a team, we usually start with what is visible.
We talk about its size, structure, responsibilities, reporting lines, skills, and performance goals.
These things matter. But they don’t tell us how the team actually works.
Two teams can have nearly identical structures, similar resources, and equally capable people, yet produce very different experiences and results.
Why?
Because every team also has an invisible dimension.
It lives in the expectations people have of one another. In how disagreements are handled. In whether someone feels comfortable asking for help. In how information travels. In what happens when somebody makes a mistake.
It exists in the habits people develop together, often without realizing it.
Some teams develop habits that make collaboration easier. Others develop patterns that slowly create friction.
And those patterns can become so familiar that people stop noticing them.
This is what I mean when I say that a team is a human system, not simply a collection of individuals.
A system is more than its parts. The relationships and interactions between those parts influence how the whole behaves.
Teams are no different.
Great People Don’t Automatically Make Great Teams
We tend to assume that if we hire the right people, give them clear goals, and appoint a capable manager, strong performance should follow.
Sometimes it does.
But talent alone doesn’t guarantee effective collaboration.
Imagine a team of highly experienced professionals who rarely share information. Everyone knows their job, but important context stays trapped with individuals.
Problems are discovered late. People repeat mistakes that someone else already knows how to avoid. Decisions take longer than necessary.
Now imagine another team with less individual experience but a habit of sharing knowledge, raising concerns early, and helping one another solve difficult problems.
Which team is better positioned to learn and adapt?
The answer isn’t always obvious from their résumés.
And that’s the point.
Individual capability matters. But what a team can accomplish also depends on how those capabilities connect.
For me, a great team is one that can consistently deliver meaningful results while maintaining the collective ability to learn, adapt, and support one another.
That last part matters.
A team that produces exceptional results for three months while exhausting its members and undermining trust may be performing well today, but is it building the capacity to perform well tomorrow?
What Google Learned About Effective Teams
This question isn’t new.
Google explored something similar through Project Aristotle, a research initiative that examined what made some of its teams more effective than others.
The researchers studied 180 teams and investigated whether factors such as personality, background, individual performance, or team composition could explain the differences.
What emerged was an important shift in perspective.
The researchers identified five dynamics associated with effective teams:
- Psychological safety: People feel able to take interpersonal risks.
- Dependability: Teammates can count on one another.
- Structure and clarity: People understand expectations, goals, and responsibilities.
- Meaning: The work feels personally significant.
- Impact: People believe their work makes a difference.
Psychological safety emerged as particularly important in Google’s analysis.
Think about what that means.
The quality of a team’s interactions can matter as much as the individual abilities of its members.
Of course, Google’s findings don’t mean every team in every industry operates identically. But they offer a useful reminder: understanding team performance requires looking beyond individual talent.
Source: Google re:Work, Understanding Team Effectiveness.
Psychological Safety Isn’t About Being Nice
Psychological safety is sometimes misunderstood.
It doesn’t mean avoiding disagreement, lowering standards, or making sure everyone feels comfortable all the time.
In fact, healthy teams sometimes have difficult conversations.
The difference is whether people believe they can speak honestly without being humiliated, punished, or dismissed for doing so.
Can someone admit they don’t understand something?
Can a teammate challenge an idea?
Can people acknowledge a mistake before it becomes a bigger problem?
Can they ask for help without worrying that others will question their competence?
These moments might seem small. But repeated over time, they influence what information becomes available to the team.
And information is essential to learning.
When people stay silent, teams lose access to knowledge they already possess.
A Lesson I Learned Managing Teams
One of the most important lessons I learned while managing customer-facing teams was that knowledge often existed inside the team but wasn’t always moving between people.
Different account managers encountered different customer problems, product challenges, and unusual situations.
One person would discover an effective approach, while someone sitting nearby might spend hours struggling with a similar issue.
It wasn’t necessarily because people were unwilling to help.
Often, we simply hadn’t created enough opportunities for useful knowledge to move.
So I started making more room for peer-led problem solving.
Instead of always being the person expected to provide the answer, I encouraged teammates to bring difficult problems into shared discussions.
Someone would describe a challenge. Others would ask questions, share experiences, and explore possible approaches.
My role was often to facilitate rather than solve.
What struck me was how much practical intelligence was already present in the group.
The team didn’t always need another training presentation.
Sometimes it needed a better way to learn from itself.
That experience changed how I thought about leadership.
A manager’s job isn’t simply to make people better at their individual jobs. It’s also to help create conditions where people can become more effective together.
The Invisible Conditions That Shape Work
If we want to understand why a team is struggling, we should examine the conditions shaping its everyday interactions.
Consider a few questions.
Organization: Do people understand priorities, responsibilities, and how decisions get made?
Balance: Is the workload manageable and distributed in a way that allows people to sustain their performance?
Openness: Can people raise concerns, challenge assumptions, and share ideas?
Trust: Do words and actions align? Can teammates rely on one another?
Fairness: Are expectations, opportunities, and responsibilities handled fairly?
Recognition: Do people feel that their contributions are noticed and valued?
Connection: Do people feel they belong, and make an effort to understand one another?
These conditions don’t operate independently.
A lack of clarity can create frustration. Frustration can weaken trust. Weak trust can reduce openness. Reduced openness can prevent problems from being addressed.
And the cycle continues.
The reverse is also possible.
Greater clarity can improve coordination. Better coordination can strengthen dependability. Dependability can build trust. Trust can make honest communication easier.
Small patterns can reinforce one another in either direction.
That’s what makes the system perspective so useful.
Instead of immediately asking, "Who isn’t doing their job?" we can also ask, "What about the way we work is making this difficult?"
The first question searches for an individual explanation.
The second opens the possibility of understanding a larger pattern.
Sometimes individual accountability is necessary. Looking at the system doesn’t eliminate personal responsibility.
It simply helps us avoid assuming that every problem begins and ends with a person.
Why This Matters Even More in the Age of AI
As artificial intelligence changes the way work gets done, I believe this perspective will become increasingly important.
We often discuss AI in terms of individual productivity.
How much faster can someone complete a task? How many hours can automation save? Which skills will become more valuable?
Those are legitimate questions.
But there’s another dimension.
What happens to the team when the way work gets done changes?
If AI takes over tasks that once helped junior employees develop judgment, how will they learn?
If different teammates adopt new tools at different speeds, how will knowledge move between them?
If workflows change faster than formal training programs can keep up, how will teams adapt together?
Technology can improve individual capability without automatically improving collective effectiveness.
And sometimes, changes that help one person work faster can create new coordination problems for everyone else.
That’s why I think the future of work isn’t only about smarter tools.
It’s also about developing teams that can learn, adapt, and make good decisions together as the work itself evolves.
Maybe We’re Asking the Wrong Questions
When performance drops, organizations often respond with familiar solutions.
More training. New targets. Better hiring. Additional oversight. Another engagement initiative.
Some of these interventions are necessary and valuable.
But before choosing a solution, perhaps we should ask what is actually happening between the people doing the work.
Are expectations clear?
Is useful information moving?
Do people trust one another enough to surface problems early?
Does the team have enough control to improve the way it works?
Are we addressing the conditions creating friction, or repeatedly asking individuals to compensate for them?
A team is not a machine that performs predictably once we’ve assembled the right parts.
It’s a living human system, constantly shaped by relationships, experiences, decisions, and habits.
And when we begin to see it that way, we open up a different conversation about performance, leadership, and the future of work.
Maybe the next breakthrough in team effectiveness won’t come from finding better people.
Maybe it will come from understanding how to help the people we already have work better together.
One More Thing...
I’ve been thinking about another question.
We talk constantly about team performance. But what does it actually feel like when a team finds its rhythm, and why can that feeling disappear so quickly?
That’s where I’m going next: What Is Team Momentum, and Why Do Some Teams Lose It?
Follow me on LinkedIn as I explore the questions, contradictions, and human realities shaping the way we work.
Less Blame. Better Work.