Why Great Teams Don’t Need to Like Each Other

Alison Beard (0:02)

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I'm Alison Beard, and this is the HBR IdeaCast.

Adi Ignatius (1:11)

Alison, how important is it to actually need to like the people you work with?

Alison Beard (1:16)

Are you fishing for a compliment?

Adi Ignatius (1:18)

No, no. I will assume that you at least tolerate me.

Alison Beard (1:23)

Of course, Adi, I love working with you. You make me laugh every day.

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 has kept me at HBR for 16 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.

Adi Ignatius (1:51)

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 aligned. 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.

Alison Beard (2:33)

And I imagine leaders play a huge role in creating that kind of environment?

Adi Ignatius (2:37)

Yeah, definitely, from hiring to onboarding to everything else. So we will cover all of that, and why the friction that comes with real relationships may be something we should be embracing and not avoiding. So here's the conversation.

Let's set it up. Give us a sense of what the book is trying to do, what you're trying to address.

Adam Grant (2:58)

Well, I think we live in a world that's just starving for connection. People feel like they're isolated from their teams. They often feel disconnected from their bosses, certainly from their CEOs. And so I'm really excited about trying to understand how we can build and maintain and even scale our connections. As I've dug into that topic over the last few years, I've discovered basically we need four kinds of people in our work and our lives. And I've come to think of them as associates, allies, pals, and companions. So Adi, your associates are people who fulfill your needs. It's a pretty transactional relationship. Your allies are the people who share your goals. You're on a mission together.

Pals are people who share your interests and hobbies, and you just have fun together. And then companions are people who share your values, and you have deep affection for each other.

And I have watched so many leaders make the mistake of saying, look, if we want to strengthen our bonds in our company, if we want to build stronger cultures, then we all need to be friends or pals, or we need to build a company that's a family, which is about being companions. And those are not necessary steps. Sometimes they're even counterproductive. A great team and a great organization is made up of allies, but being pals or companions is optional.

Adi Ignatius (4:15)

What really matters then for teams to function effectively?

Adam Grant (4:18)

Well, it's not affection or even agreement. It's alignment that matters the most. And I think the evidence on this is so clear. If you look at the research on team cohesion, turns out there are two types of cohesion. There's social cohesion, which is what most of us think of when we think of cohesion. It's about singing kumbaya and wanting to hang out together after work and do happy hours. And then there's task cohesion, which is we say we share a purpose, and we're not necessarily bonded within a group, we are bonded to the group.