Why Great Teams Don’t Need to Like Each Other
Listen to the original audio · Transcribed with NVIDIA Parakeet · Why times can differ in your player
I'm Adi Ignatius. I'm Alison Beard and this is the HVR IdeaCast. Alison, how important is it to actually need to like The people you work with. Are you fishing for a compliment? No
Uh I will assume that you at least tolerate me. Of course, Adi. I love working with you. You make me laugh every day. Um, and I do think that that's incredibly important to go to work with people that you enjoy being with. It's one of the things that I've kept me at HBR for sixteen years and counting. And of course it's possible to work with people that you don't really like that you disagree with a lot, but it's definitely not as fun. I think it's probably less productive. I do get the sense that groups that get along perform better together. So that's what I had always assumed, but I think it's fair to ask the question, Are we focusing on the wrong things when we talk about building great teams, right? So
It might be less about liking each other and feeling like family and more about simply getting a line. So about the vibe being right. Not in a touchy-feely way, but in order to get things done. So vibe, that is the word that our guest today uses. Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist at Wharton and the author of Vibe, The Secrets of Strong Connections in a Lonely World, his new book about how we build and sustain meaningful human connections. He argues that strong teams don't need to be made up of friends, they need a shared purpose. Productive disagreement and relationships that help people do better work. And I imagine leaders play a huge role in creating that kind of environment.
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