Building a culture of trust can be a powerful way to improve performance. Neuroscientific research shows that trust reduces social frictions and promotes cooperative behavior among colleagues — and that managers can create high-trust, high-performance teams.

Learn about Google’s internal research effort to understand what makes an effective team, and what your organization can do to build great teams.

This National Small Business Week, we celebrate the millions of small and mighty businesses who are innovating and driving the economy around the world. Find out what re:Work offers to help you make great people decisions for your company.

On the 2.5-years-long Mars mission, it will take 22 minutes to send a message from Earth to the spaceship and then 22 more minutes to respond. To deal with these types of hurdles, NASA trains space and ground crews extensively on communication skills.

“CAPCOMs can really make your day.” This simple journal entry by an astronaut aboard the International Space Station (ISS) shows just how important communication can be to the success of a team orbiting hundreds of miles above the Earth.

To become our better selves it helps to visualize our best selves. Research shows that by reflecting on the type of people we want to be, we wind up feeling more psychological safety and elevating not only our own performance, but that of our entire team.

The personalities on Saturday Night Live’s first season seem like they could have been a disastrous team. But SNL not only had a great first season, it’s also become a successful institution despite constant cast changes. So how did they do it?

When Google set out to understand what makes for an effective team, the researchers thought team composition would be most important. But it turned out that how a team interacts is far more important than who is on the team.

Speaking up at work can be difficult. People worry that their boss or colleagues won’t like what they have to say. As a result, people hold back on everything from good ideas to great questions. But by fostering psychological safety, all employees can feel safe to speak up.

From Olympic hockey teams to presidential cabinets, we tend to focus on the individuals when trying to predict team performance. But research shows that measuring collective intelligence is a far better indicator of success than any individual's performance.

When trying to get creative with a team of creatives, how does Hollywood brainstorm? Wendy Calhoun, who has written for Empire, Justified, Nashville, and more, explains the creative process that happens in writers’ rooms.

The Justice League has it wrong. The best teams aren’t necessarily all the superstar (or superhero) performers. They are the ones with the most diversity, research shows.

Think your office is crowded? Imagine being locked in a four-bedroom house with six of your colleagues for TWO AND A HALF years. That’s what getting to Mars will take and it will require a lot of teamwork.

Collaborative teams do much of the work at organizations everywhere, but what makes a team effective? Google’s People Analytics group set out to answer this question and it turns out the how matters more than who.

Google’s People Analytics researchers Julia Rozovsky and Abeer Dubey will be talking about their study of effective teams live on Wednesday, June 22 at 11am PT. Tune in to see their presentation and ask your questions.

In 1957, British naval historian and management satirist C. Northcote Parkinson painted a cynical picture of a typical committee: It starts with four or five members, quickly grows to nine or ten, and, once it balloons to 20 and beyond, meetings become an utter waste of time.

Pod. Work group. Committee. Autonomous collective. Whatever you call it, you’re part of one at Google and probably wherever you work: a team. So if we know what makes managers great, why don’t we know what makes a team great?