One of the great joys of startup life is an increased sense of awe at the incredible complexity of the modern world. As you realise how difficult it is to bring into reality the simplest of ideas you begin to wonder how anyone got anything off the ground at all.

Invariably many of the biggest challenges come down to having to work with other people. This is essentially unavoidable.

People are complex. We all have our different experiences, strengths, weaknesses, opinions and ideas. We create narrative-based lenses through which we view the world in order to filter the chaos and complexity into something comprehendible. Each lens is unique and so the same words, ideas and concepts might mean different things to different people.

Image not my own. Original source here.

What's more, we are all falliable, which is why simply cloning ourselves would not be a solution to the problem, even if it were possible. We need other people to make up for our weaknesses.

That's why working as a team is the most powerful thing you can do to get things done. It also has the potential to be one of the most frustrating.

The perfect team, according to Google

Google's Project Aristotle is now the thing of legend. Its goal: to answer the question "What makes a team effective at Google?"

Now, given the fact that Google was only founded a few decades ago and humanity had already managed to get a lot done before then, it would be a stretch to consider Google's findings a completely new discovery. But it did create awareness of some of the fundamental challenges facing knowledge workers that can, and should, be overcome.

Of the Five Keys to Success, the one that gets the most attention is Psychological Safety:

Team members must be comfortable in taking risks and speaking their minds. They need to know that their team members will support their actions and not ridicule them. Everyone on the team has to feel as though they won’t be made examples of if something doesn’t go right which they suggested or promoted.

Patrick Lencioni describes this concept as "trust" and points to it as being the foundation of good teamwork in his classic The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.

Note: if you haven't read this yet buy a copy and cancel your weekend plans. It's essential reading for any leader.

Why this is so important

It turns out, no one person is right 100% of the time and no one person can predict the future 100% accurately. Shocking, I know.

Whenever you do anything new, you invite risk. Whenever you attempt to solve a new problem, it's not guaranteed your solution will work out. Each new customer, new campaign, new project are all like snowflakes - unique, delicate and beautiful in their own way.

The best outcomes are forged through the uncomfortable process of discarding ideas that are worse than other ideas. And sometimes you need to test the ideas before you can know whether they are good or not. This is why some appetite for risk is necessary for getting things done.

It's for this reason that individuals need to have the trust that people will still respect and value them: even if they suggest a bad idea; or if they challenge someone with more authority than them; and especially if the team goes ahead with their idea and it wastes a ton of time and money.

Trust and psychological safety within teams needs to be consciously created by its leader. If you're working with ambitious and competitive individuals, it's unlikely to form naturally.