Key Takeaways from Google's Project Aristotle

About teamwork and collaboration, many organisations still struggle to turn intent into consistent action. In practice, employees often experience gaps in communication, unclear expectations, or silos that slow teams down and weaken outcomes.

So, what can you do to improve team communication at your workplace and close these gaps?

🔥Learn why Employee Communications are Better Internal Comms

In today’s fast-moving business environment, team management is increasingly complex. Hybrid work, growing teams, and constant change make it harder to keep everyone aligned. This raises a key question: what actually makes a team successful, and how do high-performing teams communicate effectively on a daily basis?

Thankfully, experts and large organizations are continuously studying what makes teams successful and the importance of team communication in the workplace. These insights help organisations move from guesswork to proven approaches that improve how teams collaborate.

Among these large organizations, Google studied 180 of their teams over multiple years and shared their findings publicly. The code-name of this research is, as you might have guessed, Project Aristotle—often referred to as the aristotle project in discussions around team performance and communication.

So, what are Google’s key findings, and how can you apply them in your own organisation? Let’s take a closer look at the key learnings we can take away from the Project Aristotle!

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Team Communication: Definition and Importance in the Workplace

Many businesses are launching programs to improve team communication. Indeed, great communication helps employees get a better understanding of how their work impacts the business’s bottom line, coordinate their efforts towards common goals, and drive innovation in the workplace.

When information doesn’t flow in the workplace and team members are not on the same page, work quickly becomes fragmented. Tasks overlap, priorities clash, and deadlines get missed. Over time, this creates confusion, slows decision-making, and increases frustration across the team. And we all know what happens then: team performance and productivity can drastically decrease before you know it!

So, What Are the Key Components of Great Team Communication and How Does It Work?

In essence, team communication includes all the information flows, conversations and dialogues happening within teams in the workplace. It’s not just about sharing updates—it’s about ensuring clarity, alignment, and mutual understanding at every step.

In other words, team communication includes:

• Written communication: paper documentation, electronic documentation, employee communications apps, emails, team chat and so on. These formats help capture decisions, share updates, and keep information accessible.
• Verbal team communication: team meetings, one-on-one interactions, water-cooler conversations, calls. These moments allow teams to clarify ideas, resolve issues quickly, and build stronger relationships.
• Active listening: great leaders listen to their teams, they show empathy and they make sure that each person on the team feels listened to. This builds trust and encourages people to share ideas openly.

Keep in mind that team communication takes many shapes and forms, from verbal communication to digital forms of written communication or things that are left unsaid. It also includes tone, body language, and timing. This is why it can quickly become complex, especially in distributed or fast-growing teams.

Poor communication often leads to misunderstandings, duplicated work, and missed context. Over time, this affects not just output, but also how people feel at work, lowering morale and weakening collaboration.

How Does Team Communication Impact Productivity and Performance in the Workplace?

Team communication plays a critical role in the workplace. It directly shapes how well employees collaborate, how quickly teams move, and how effectively goals are achieved. When communication is clear and consistent, teams can focus on delivering impact instead of fixing avoidable issues.

Broadly speaking, team communication impacts:

• Team collaboration
• Team performance
• Team cohesion
• Employee productivity
• Interdepartmental communication
• Employees’ wellbeing
• The quality of employee experience you’re delivering
• Employee engagement
• Trust in the workplace
• The quality of customer service your employees deliver
• The business’s bottom line overall

Now, the question is — who’s responsible for making sure that team communication is flawless?

The answer isn’t simple. However, one thing is clear: communication is a shared responsibility. Everyone on the team plays a role in improving how information flows and how conversations happen. Strong communication is built through daily habits, not just leadership direction.

Indeed, team communication doesn’t fall on the team leaders’ shoulders only.

While leaders set the tone and create safe spaces for dialogue—one of the key ideas highlighted in the aristotle project—every team member must contribute. They need to share updates clearly, flag blockers early, and keep others informed of progress.

If something is unclear, they should ask questions. If they don’t understand why they are working on a task, they should speak up. If processes feel inefficient, they should give feedback. Open communication helps teams stay aligned and avoid costly mistakes.

How Does Team Communication Look Like Today?

Even though communication plays a critical role in team collaboration and performance, many organisations still face gaps and inconsistencies in how teams communicate.

Teams often struggle with unclear expectations, information overload, or too many disconnected tools. In some cases, employees hesitate to speak up, while in others, key messages get lost across channels.

It’s pretty clear to most businesses that team communication plays an essential role in the workplace, and yet many still struggle to build consistent, effective communication practices.

Why is that? What are the reasons why employees don’t seem to be satisfied with the communication they experience?

Is it because team leaders aren’t setting clear direction, employees don’t feel safe to contribute, or teams are relying on the wrong tools and channels? In reality, it’s often a mix of all three—and that’s exactly where insights from the aristotle project become highly valuable.

To get a better understanding of the role of communication in successful teams, let’s take a look at Google’s Project Aristotle. The company spent two years studying 180 teams across different departments, analysing how they worked, communicated, and delivered results. The findings are both practical and highly relevant for modern workplaces.

The Project Aristotle by Google

Google didn’t just change how we access and share information—it also invested heavily in understanding how teams perform. By looking closely at team dynamics, the company provided valuable insights that help HR and internal communications experts better understand how teamwork actually works in large organisations.

Instead of relying on assumptions, Google used data to explore what really drives performance inside teams and how communication influences outcomes.

How It Started

A few years ago, a group of Google employees launched the Project Aristotle initiative to study the dynamics of their own teams.

They analysed 180 teams of different sizes and applied multiple statistical models across a wide range of variables to answer a simple but important question: “what makes a team effective at Google?”.

Their goal was not just to identify top-performing individuals, but to understand why some teams succeed while others struggle—even when they have similar skills and resources.

To achieve this, researchers looked at patterns in behaviour, communication, and collaboration. They explored how team members interacted, how decisions were made, and how people responded to challenges.

As they dug deeper, they realised that success wasn’t driven by who was on the team, but by how the team worked together. In particular, shared norms—how people behave, communicate, and treat each other—played a critical role in shaping outcomes.

Google later shared these findings publicly so organisations could use them to improve team effectiveness and communication practices in their own environments.

Google’s Key Findings on What Makes a Team Successful

Even though Project Aristotle was launched in 2012, its core insights continue to shape how organisations think about teamwork today. Many HR, IC and leadership experts still rely on these findings to improve collaboration and communication in the workplace.

One of the most important takeaways is that factors like team size, seniority, or individual performance are not strong predictors of success on their own.

Instead, communication—especially how team members interact and how leaders communicate with their teams—has a much greater impact on overall performance.

The research showed that teams perform best when communication is open, consistent, and inclusive. When people feel heard, understand expectations, and can speak up without hesitation, teams move faster and deliver better results.

This is one of the key reasons why the aristotle project remains so influential. It shifts the focus away from individual excellence and towards team dynamics—highlighting that how people communicate is just as important as what they contribute.

And here’s why: Google found that the success of a team relies on five key elements which are psychological safety, dependability, structure and clarity, meaning and impact. Together, these elements shape how teams communicate, collaborate, and deliver results on a consistent basis.

Let’s take a closer look at these 5 elements:

1) Psychological safety

In a team with high psychological safety, employees feel safe to take risks around their team members.

They are confident that no one on the team will embarrass them for admitting a mistake, asking questions, or offering a new idea. This creates an open environment where people share feedback more freely and contribute without hesitation. As a result, communication becomes more honest, faster, and more productive.

2) Dependability

Team members have all the information they need and clear guidance to complete their tasks on time.

They know what is expected from them and can rely on others to deliver their part of the work. When this consistency is missing, even small delays can quickly impact the entire team. Strong communication helps teams stay aligned and ensures that issues are spotted and addressed early.

3) Structure and clarity

This element is quite self-explanatory — all team members need to understand what is expected from them, what the team goals are, and what the company’s vision and strategy are.

Without clarity, teams waste time on misaligned priorities or rework. Clear communication helps everyone stay focused and reduces unnecessary friction.

Team leaders need to effectively communicate with the team members key elements such as:

• Their KPIs — they can be set at the individual or group level, and they must be specific, challenging and attainable.
• Their role within the team
• How team members rely on each other

4) Meaning

Great leaders are those who inspire others!

You can’t make a team successful if you don’t motivate and help the team members find a sense of purpose in their work.

Put differently, employees deliver better work when they understand why it matters. When communication connects daily tasks to a larger goal, it becomes easier for people to stay engaged and committed.

Read on: What Are The Top Leadership Skills That Make a Great Leader?

5) Impact

Each team member’s work is making a difference. Employees need to understand how their daily jobs impact the business’s bottom line.

When people can clearly see the results of their work, they are more likely to stay motivated and aligned with team objectives. Communication plays a key role here by regularly showing progress, outcomes, and contributions.

This element is as important as the other ones listed above. Remember, to make your team successful, you need to make sure that each employee on the team finds meaning at work and sees their impact.

Key Learnings from the Project Aristotle

So, what does the Project Aristotle mean for your business, what are the key learnings you can take away from it?

Essentially, the findings show that communication is the cornerstone of every successful team.

Indeed, each of the five elements that make successful teams — psychological safety, dependability, structure and clarity, meaning, impact — is strongly connected with team communication. Without clear, consistent communication, none of these elements can function effectively.

The aristotle project makes one thing clear: if you want stronger performance, you need better communication at every level of your team.

Think about it: you can’t provide a team with psychological safety, make sure that everyone has a clear understanding of how they impact the business’s bottom line, or ensure that employees find their jobs meaningful if the team isn’t communicating effectively.

Transparent and open communication is key when it comes to building a great team. It helps reduce uncertainty, builds trust, and ensures that everyone understands what is expected from them.

Employees need to know what their colleagues are working on, how their jobs are interconnected, and how their combined efforts and hard work are driving results. When teams have this visibility, they collaborate more easily and avoid duplicated work or misaligned priorities. After all, Google didn’t name their project after Aristotle’s famous quote “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” by accident!

As you might imagine, communication skills are some of the most valuable soft skills in the workplace. Being able to communicate clearly, listen actively, and share feedback constructively has a direct impact on how well teams perform.

3 Things You Can Do Now to Make Your Teams More Successful

Improving team performance doesn’t come overnight!

You’ll need to rethink the structure of your teams, your internal communication as well as your company values. Small changes in how teams communicate can quickly lead to better alignment and stronger results.

It’s most likely that improving the performance of your teams involves organizational change. And let’s be honest, driving change in the workplace is basically like climbing a mountain!

Read on: Change Management: Definition, Best Practices & Examples

However, there are a few changes you can implement already now to boost the performance of your teams and strengthen communication habits.

Let’s take a look at these changes that will help you take your business to the next level:

1. Think of your team as a sports team

The analogy here may sound a bit funny but it’s one of the change management experts’ favorite ones!

Think about it: just like an athletics team or any other sports team, your team needs a clear structure to deliver results. Everyone must know their role, understand how they contribute, and be ready to support others when needed. If some of the team members don’t play their role or fail to align with others, the system can quickly break down.

Let’s imagine for a moment that you’re a coach and your team made it to the Olympic Games relay finals — which is quite a big deal — but your team takes the second place on the podium because runners didn’t understand each other while passing the baton in the last meters of the race.

Many baton pass failures happen because of a lack of communication and coordination. Relay races require team members to be connected and well synchronized at every step.

And guess what? The same goes for your team!

Essentially, you’re not just a team manager, you’re a coach! You need to communicate your strategy with your team, reinforce expectations, motivate your employees, and make sure that everyone is on the same page. That’s the only way you can build a successful team—just like highlighted in the aristotle project.

2. Use your employees’ preferred communication channels and devices

Team communication is key to success. And you can’t expect your employees to effectively communicate with each other if you don’t implement the right communication channels at your workplace.

By “the right communication channels”, we mean the channels your employees actually use and trust. These should fit their daily workflows and make it easy to share updates, ask questions, and collaborate without friction.

When communication tools are aligned with employee preferences, messages are more likely to be seen, understood, and acted on. This reduces miscommunication and helps teams stay connected—an essential factor also highlighted by the aristotle project.

Internal communication experts share their top priorities for 2020

Today’s business environment is changing; millennials and Gen Z employees are entering the workplace. They bring different expectations and habits when it comes to communication, speed, and access to information.

They’re not fond of spending a couple of hours every day looking for the information they need. They expect quick access, clear updates, and content that is relevant to their role. They also value communication that is direct, transparent, and easy to engage with.

They want to have personalised news feeds that allow them to get the information they need right away. This reduces friction, saves time, and helps them focus on their work instead of searching for answers across multiple tools and channels.

If you want to build successful teams, you’ll need to make sure you have the tools that allow you to segment your content based on your employees’ roles within the organisation, their location and the languages they speak. This ensures that every message feels relevant and useful, rather than generic or overwhelming.

Again, it’s all about using the right communication channels—those that fit your employees’ workflows and make it easy to share and receive information. This is also closely aligned with what the aristotle project highlights: effective teams rely on clear, accessible communication that supports collaboration.

3. You’re not alone! Ask support from the HR and Internal Comms teams

You can’t build successful teams alone! Successful communication strategies are always the result of great teamwork across functions.

When it comes to team communication, make sure you involve HR and internal comms in your strategy. They bring structure, expertise, and a broader perspective on how communication works across the organisation.

Obviously, as a team manager, you’re going to design your communication strategy and ensure that all team members are working towards common goals — the business goals you’ve shared with them.

But you’ll need to craft your team communication with the support of the HR and IC teams. They can help you define clear messaging, choose the right channels, and ensure consistency across teams.

That way, you make sure that 1) your team communication is aligned with the company’s long-term vision and strategy and 2) your team communication enables collaboration with the other teams within the organisation.

This second point is as important as the first one. Indeed, you can have a communication strategy that works well for your team, but it may not fit the overall IC strategy, which can lead to silos or confusion.

You need to ensure that your team and the other teams are on the same page. That means sharing information openly, aligning on priorities, and avoiding conflicting messages across departments.

Again, you’re working towards a common goal — making the business successful! And as the aristotle project suggests, strong communication across teams is what turns individual efforts into collective success.

Remember, building a successful business is a team sport, not an individual sport. You either win together or lose together!

Curious to learn more? Check out our report on IC trends in 2023

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FAQ: Project Aristotle and Team Communication

What is the aristotle project and why does it matter for teams?

The aristotle project is Google’s research into what makes teams effective. It found that success depends less on individual talent and more on how people communicate and work together.
For organisations, this means focusing on communication, trust, and clarity rather than just hiring top performers. Strong internal communication setups—like those supported by a social intranet—help teams stay aligned and perform consistently.

How can I apply Project Aristotle in my organisation?

Start by improving how your teams communicate daily. Encourage open conversations, define clear roles, and make sure everyone understands team goals. These are central ideas behind the aristotle project.
You can support this with structured employee communications and practical guidance from resources like this employee communications guide, which helps teams share information more effectively.

Why is psychological safety so important for team performance?

Psychological safety means employees feel comfortable speaking up, sharing ideas, and admitting mistakes. It was identified as the strongest predictor of team success in the aristotle project. nce.com/post/project-aristotle-google-s-data-driven-insights-on-high-performing-teams)
When people feel safe, communication improves naturally. Teams solve problems faster and collaborate better. You can explore how to build this culture in more detail in this guide to psychological safety.

What tools help improve team communication in practice?

Modern teams need tools that make communication simple, targeted, and accessible. A platform built for internal communication or employee engagement helps reduce silos and keeps everyone informed.
Combined with a strong employee experience strategy and a focus on wellbeing (learn more), these tools make it easier to apply the principles of the aristotle project at scale.