Great Teams Have Friction

Great teams have friction.

They argue.

They disagree.

They challenge each other.

They compete with each other.

And that’s exactly how it should be.

Somewhere along the way, people got the idea that a great team is a group of people who always get along.

That’s bullshit.

A team where nobody challenges anybody, nobody questions decisions and everybody is more concerned with keeping the peace than getting better is not a great team.

It’s a comfortable one.

Comfort is where standards go to die.

The best teams I’ve ever been around have people who genuinely want to be the best at what they do.

They take pride in their work.

They hate losing.

They don’t want to be the weak link.

…and when you put a bunch of people like that together, there’s going to be friction.

Good.

That friction is often what makes everybody better.

…but there’s a very important distinction that separates healthy competition from a team that’s eventually going to destroy itself.

You can compete with the people on your team, but you can never compete at the expense of the team.

That means you can want to outperform the guy next to you.

You can challenge him.

You can push him.

You can hold him accountable when he’s not executing at the level you know he’s capable of.

…but when he needs help, you fucking help him.

When he wins, you celebrate it!

When he knows something you don’t, you learn from him.

…and when the team needs you to sacrifice something personally to win collectively, you do it without hesitation.

Because the second your personal recognition becomes more important than the team’s success, you’re no longer competing for the team.

You’re competing against it.

That’s ego.

Ego has destroyed more talented teams than a lack of talent ever will.

Great teammates understand something most people don’t.

Making the people around you better does not make you less valuable.

It makes the entire team more dangerous.

The standard rises because everybody is pushing everybody.

Nobody gets to coast.

Nobody gets protected from the truth.

Nobody has to pretend that mediocre work is good enough just to avoid hurting someone’s feelings.

…but underneath all that friction is an understanding that everybody is fighting for the same fucking thing.

That’s what makes it work.

The competition is real.

The respect is real.

And especially…

The loyalty to the team is never in question.

If you want to build something extraordinary, you need people who care enough to challenge each other and have enough character to never let their own ambition hurt the people standing beside them.

You don’t need everybody to agree.

You need everybody committed.

Because the goal was never to be the best individual on a losing team.

The goal is to build a team so fucking good that everybody wins.