In 2008, Google launched an internal initiative called Project Oxygen, aimed at answering a question that had long perplexed both engineers and executives: Do managers actually matter? As a company built by technologists, Google once famously debated whether they even needed managers at all. But as the company grew, so did the complexity of its teams, and its People Operations team (what most companies call HR) took a data-driven approach to find out what actually made great managers effective.
Their conclusion was strikingly human.
After examining over 10,000 data points from performance reviews, surveys, and interviews, they distilled eight essential behaviors of high-performing managers. These insights went on to inform Google’s training, performance evaluations, and day-to-day team leadership practices—and their impact rippled beyond the tech giant. Because behind the data was a fundamental truth: good management is good coaching.
The Eight Behaviors That Matter
The eight behaviors that emerged from Project Oxygen weren’t revolutionary in themselves. They were simple, even obvious at times—but grounded in evidence:
Google’s leadership quickly realized that technical brilliance alone was not enough. The best-performing managers didn’t just direct; they enabled. They created environments of trust, interest, clarity, and challenge—key ingredients for what we now know as psychological safety.
Project Aristotle: The Missing Link
Not long after Project Oxygen, Google followed up with another initiative: Project Aristotle, which focused not on the manager, but on the team. What made some teams excel and others flounder?
The key finding was that team performance wasn’t primarily about assembling top talent. Instead, the most important factor was psychological safety—a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. When people felt safe to speak up, take chances, and admit mistakes, teams thrived. When that safety was missing, even the most talented individuals underperformed.
Together, Project Oxygen and Project Aristotle painted a complete picture: great managers create conditions for psychological safety, and psychologically safe teams perform at their best.
Why This Resonates With My Work
In my own experience as a coach and advisor, these principles aren’t just ideas—they’re operational tools I use every day.
I work with leaders across industries who often arrive with complex goals: faster delivery, better collaboration, improved innovation. Yet underneath these surface goals is a deeper pattern: the organization isn’t functioning well as a team. Communication is fragmented. People are burned out. Leadership is overly directive or entirely absent. This is where I apply the same lens that Google used: how are managers showing up, and is the team safe?
What I love about Project Oxygen is its reframing of leadership as coaching. Coaching, as detailed in Trillion Dollar Coach, isn’t a soft skill—it’s the core function of a great manager.
Bill Campbell, the legendary coach to Silicon Valley giants, including Google’s senior leadership, embodied this truth. His playbook revolved around creating high-performing, deeply bonded teams. He believed that every manager had to become a coach—and that no amount of strategic vision or technical brilliance could substitute for being there for your people.
Campbell’s approach aligns uncannily with Google’s eight behaviors. He taught that:
One-on-ones weren’t just status updates—they were moments for growth.
Listening and asking the right questions mattered more than telling people what to do.
Feedback had to be both honest and compassionate.
And most importantly, the team came first—always.
Coaching Is the Real Work
There’s a misconception that coaching is what you do after the work. That the job of a leader is to make decisions and drive outcomes—and that the human side is optional.
But as both Project Oxygen and Project Aristotle have shown, coaching is the work.
That’s why, in my own practice, I focus less on managing deliverables and more on shaping environments. I coach leaders to ask better questions, hold better one-on-ones, unblock people rather than dictate outcomes, and create the space where trust can grow. If those conditions are in place, the outcomes usually take care of themselves.
One technique I frequently use is adapted from Campbell’s playbook: starting one-on-ones with what he called “small talk”—but what was often deeply intentional conversation. Not about work, but about life. Because people don’t bring just their professional selves to work. They bring their doubts, their ambitions, their stress. When leaders make space for that, they become more than just managers—they become enablers of potential.
The Practical Payoff
You might wonder, is this just feel-good theory? Far from it.
Google saw measurable improvements in employee satisfaction, retention, and performance after embedding the eight behaviors into their training programs.
Bill Campbell’s methods helped build companies worth over a trillion dollars. And studies cited in Trillion Dollar Coach confirm that great middle management accounts for more variance in performance than even creative talent or capital investment.
In a 2017 study on manufacturing plants, performance-oriented management (clear goals, continuous feedback, coaching) explained more of the variance in success than R&D spending. In other words: how people are led matters more than what they’re building.
The Human Factor
If there’s one lesson I carry forward from both Google’s research and Bill Campbell’s legacy, it’s this:
People are the foundation of performance.
Not processes. Not roadmaps. Not strategy decks.
When people feel heard, respected, and supported, they go further. When they feel unsafe, micromanaged, or ignored, they withhold their best.
That’s why I bring a coaching lens into every engagement. I help leaders understand that how they lead is as important as what they lead. That trust isn’t a nice-to-have—it’s a productivity tool. That building great teams doesn’t mean assembling superstars, but fostering connection, challenge, safety, and clarity.
Final Thoughts: It’s Not Rocket Science, But It’s Still Rare
None of the principles behind Project Oxygen or Project Aristotle are secret or proprietary. They’re common sense. But as we all know, common sense is not common practice.
And that’s the challenge.
To become a truly effective leader today means embracing the mindset of a coach. It means getting past ego, embracing honesty, and being relentless about enabling others. It means building trust one conversation at a time. That’s the real work.
So when I help leaders grow their teams, I’m not introducing radical new theories. I’m helping them return to something deeply human: being present, being kind, being clear, and expecting excellence. Just like Bill. Just like the best of Google.
Because no matter how fast business moves, no matter how sophisticated the tools, people still power everything.
