How’s My Team: Free Team Assessment
How’s My Team is a free, 5-minute assessment for anyone in a team. Rate 14 statements about how your team works and get an instant report across seven characteristics of effective teams, with a clear place to start improving.
No login or email address needed. Your answers stay in your browser; to keep your report, download and save the PDF.
An Archetype assessment tool
A 14-question team assessment for anyone in a team. It takes about 5 minutes and needs no login. Download the PDF at the end to keep a copy of your results.
Your name and answers stay in your browser. They are not stored or sent to Archetype.
Assess your team.
Rate each statement from 0 to 10. Be honest — there are no right answers, only useful ones.
0 of 14 answered
Archetype Assessment Tool
Team Assessment Report
How's My Team measures seven characteristics that research and practice consistently link to effective teams: purpose, goals, dependability, constructive conflict, psychological safety, belonging, and learning. Your scores reflect how you see your team right now — not a judgement, but a starting point for honest conversation.
Team Profile
Characteristic Detail
What's next?
If you'd like your team to be a better team, consider:
- Sharing this report with your team or team leader
- Having a team discussion about what you want to be or achieve as a team
If you'd like to talk about your team, we're happy to have a no-obligation conversation.
To share How's My Team with a team-mate, use the share buttons in your report or send them this link: www.archetype.nz/hows-my-team
What How’s My Team Measures
How's My Team scores your team on seven characteristics, using two statements for each:
Purpose & Meaning: whether the team can say why its work matters and uses that when it makes decisions.
Goals & Clarity: whether goals are specific, shared and revisited when circumstances change.
Dependability & Accountability: whether slipping work is addressed directly and everyone contributes.
Constructive Conflict & Decision-Making: whether disagreement is raised openly and hard conversations stay free of personal attack.
Psychological Safety & Trust: whether people raise mistakes and concerns, and ask for help, without fear of blame.
Belonging & Connection: whether people know each other beyond their roles and new members are brought in well.
Learning & Adaptation: whether the team reviews how it works and changes as a result.
How the scoring works
You rate each statement from 0 (not at all) to 10 (always). Each characteristic's score is the average of its two statements, shown as a score out of 100. Your overall score is the average of the seven characteristic scores.
90–100: Standout
75–85: Strong
55–70: Moderate
35–50: Weak
0–30: Urgent
Your report also names your lowest-scoring characteristic because it is usually the most useful place to start.
If any characteristic is in the Urgent band, your overall result is shown as no better than Moderate. If any is in the Weak band, it is shown as no better than Strong. The seven characteristics work together, so a gap in one tends to limit what the others can deliver, and an average would hide that.
Using your results with your team
How's My Team shows how one person sees the team. It becomes more useful when several people complete it:
Ask each team member to complete it on their own and download their PDF.
Compare the reports. Differences between people's views are often more revealing than the averages.
Choose one characteristic to work on and agree one small change to try.
Repeat the assessment in three to six months to see what has shifted.
If you'd like to talk about your team or learn about team development workshops, we're happy to have a no-obligation conversation.
For Leadership Teams
If you lead or sit on a senior leadership team, LeadershipTeamView assesses the seven domains that make leadership teams effective.
The research behind How’s My Team
Each of the seven characteristics in How's My Team is grounded in published research on teams. The strongest evidence comes from peer-reviewed studies and meta-analyses, which combine the results of many studies. Google's Project Aristotle and Patrick Lencioni's model of team dysfunctions are widely used in practice and are referred to below.
Purpose & Meaning - J. Richard Hackman's research at Harvard identified a compelling direction as one of the core conditions for team effectiveness: a team needs a clear, shared understanding of what it exists to achieve (Hackman, 2002; Wageman, Hackman and Lehman, 2005). Google's Project Aristotle, a study of 180 of its own teams, found that meaning (work that matters to team members) and impact (a belief that the work makes a difference) were two of the dynamics of its most effective teams.
Goals & Clarity - Goal-setting theory is one of the most thoroughly tested ideas in organisational psychology. Across decades of studies, specific, challenging goals led to higher performance than vague instructions to "do your best", particularly when combined with feedback (Locke and Latham, 2002). A meta-analysis of goal setting in groups found the same pattern in teams. It also found that individual goals focused only on personal results harmed team performance (Kleingeld, van Mierlo and Arends, 2011).
Dependability & Accountability - Project Aristotle found that dependability, meaning team members reliably complete quality work on time, was one of the dynamics of effective teams. Research on social loafing explains why it matters: a meta-analysis of 78 studies found that people tend to put in less effort when working collectively than when working alone, particularly when their individual contribution is not evaluated (Karau and Williams, 1993). Lencioni's model names avoidance of accountability as one of the five dysfunctions of a team.
Constructive Conflict & Decision-Making - Research distinguishes disagreement about the work (task conflict) from personal friction (relationship conflict). A meta-analysis found that relationship conflict is consistently linked to poorer team performance, but task conflict is not. Task conflict was more positive when it stayed separate from relationship conflict, in senior leadership teams, and for decision quality (de Wit, Greer and Jehn, 2012). That is why How's My Team asks both whether disagreements are raised openly and whether hard conversations stay free of personal attack. Lencioni's model describes fear of conflict as a dysfunction that leads to weak commitment to decisions.
Psychological Safety & Trust - Amy Edmondson of Harvard Business School defined team psychological safety as a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. In her study of 51 work teams, psychological safety was linked to learning behaviour, such as asking for help, seeking feedback and discussing errors, and learning behaviour in turn was linked to team performance (Edmondson, 1999). A meta-analysis covering more than 22,000 people and nearly 5,000 groups linked psychological safety to task performance and to helping behaviour beyond people's formal roles (Frazier and colleagues, 2017). Google described psychological safety as the most important of the dynamics in Project Aristotle. The two How's My Team statements reflect the behaviours Edmondson describes: raising mistakes and concerns without fear of blame, and asking for help.
Belonging & Connection - Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary's widely cited review concluded that the need to belong is a fundamental human motivation (1995). In teams, a meta-analysis found that cohesion was positively related to performance, more strongly for how the team works than for its final results, and more strongly where members depend on each other's work (Beal and colleagues, 2003). Research on newcomers shows that feeling socially accepted, together with role clarity, is linked to new members' performance, commitment and intention to stay (Bauer and colleagues, 2007). That is why How's My Team asks how well new members are brought in.
Learning & Adaptation - Edmondson's research showed that team learning behaviour, such as reflecting on results and discussing errors, is the link between psychological safety and performance (1999). Research on team reflexivity, a team's habit of reviewing its goals, strategies and ways of working and adapting them, finds consistent links with performance. A meta-analysis of debriefs found that they improved performance by about 20 to 25 per cent on average (Tannenbaum and Cerasoli, 2013).
Sources
Bauer, T. N., Bodner, T., Erdogan, B., Truxillo, D. M. and Tucker, J. S. (2007). Newcomer adjustment during organizational socialization: A meta-analytic review of antecedents, outcomes, and methods. Journal of Applied Psychology.
Baumeister, R. F. and Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin.
Beal, D. J., Cohen, R. R., Burke, M. J. and McLendon, C. L. (2003). Cohesion and performance in groups: A meta-analytic clarification of construct relations. Journal of Applied Psychology.
de Wit, F. R. C., Greer, L. L. and Jehn, K. A. (2012). The paradox of intragroup conflict: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology.
Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly.
Frazier, M. L., Fainshmidt, S., Klinger, R. L., Pezeshkan, A. and Vracheva, V. (2017). Psychological safety: A meta-analytic review and extension. Personnel Psychology.
Google re:Work. Guide: Understand team effectiveness (Project Aristotle).
Hackman, J. R. (2002). Leading teams: Setting the stage for great performances. Harvard Business School Press.
Karau, S. J. and Williams, K. D. (1993). Social loafing: A meta-analytic review and theoretical integration. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Kleingeld, A., van Mierlo, H. and Arends, L. (2011). The effect of goal setting on group performance: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology.
Leblanc, P.-M., Harvey, J.-F. and Rousseau, V. (2024). A meta-analysis of team reflexivity: Antecedents, outcomes, and boundary conditions. Human Resource Management Review.
Lencioni, P. (2002). The five dysfunctions of a team. Jossey-Bass.
Locke, E. A. and Latham, G. P. (2002). Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation: A 35-year odyssey. American Psychologist.
Tannenbaum, S. I. and Cerasoli, C. P. (2013). Do team and individual debriefs enhance performance? A meta-analysis. Human Factors.
Wageman, R., Hackman, J. R. and Lehman, E. (2005). Team Diagnostic Survey: Development of an instrument. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is How's My Team free?
Yes. There is no charge, no login and no email address required.
How long does it take?
About five minutes. There are 14 statements to rate.
What happens to my answers?
They stay in your browser. They are not stored or sent to Archetype, and they are cleared when you close or reload the page. Download the PDF if you want to keep your report.
Can my whole team take it?
Yes. Share the link and ask each person to complete it on their own. Each person gets their own report, which you can compare in a team discussion.
What is a good score?
Scores of 75 or more fall in the Strong or Standout bands. More useful than the overall score is your lowest-scoring characteristic, which is usually the best place to start.
Who is Archetype?
Archetype Leadership + Teams is a New Zealand consultancy that develops teams, leaders, leadership teams, and boards.