Why Great Teams Don’t Need to Like Each Other

The hosts begin by questioning the common assumption that coworkers need to like one another for teams to perform well. Alison Beard says enjoying the people around her has helped keep her at HBR for 16 years, and both hosts agree that likability can make work more pleasant and may improve productivity. But they wonder whether leaders have focused too much on creating workplaces that feel like families or groups of friends. Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at Wharton and author of Vibe: The Secrets of Strong Connections in a Lonely World, argues that teams primarily need alignment: agreement on a shared purpose and values, not personal affection or complete agreement. He distinguishes four kinds of relationships: associates, who fulfill one another’s needs transactionally; allies, who share goals; pals, who share interests and have fun together; and companions, who share values and deep affection. Leaders often mistakenly try to turn every workplace relationship into a friendship or family bond. Grant says strong teams need allies, while being pals or companions is optional. He draws on research distinguishing social cohesion from task cohesion. Social cohesion means enjoying one another’s company, while task cohesion means being bonded to the group’s shared purpose. Across workplace and sports teams, he says task cohesion is more strongly connected to performance. A leader’s first job is therefore to create a common direction and values, rather than forcing people to socialize.

Grant says leaders should begin by asking: if the company or its work did not exist, who would be worse off? The people who come to mind reveal why the organization matters. He cautions, however, that simply explaining this impact themselves is less motivating than bringing in customers, patients, clients, or other beneficiaries who directly experience the work. Employees recognize that leaders have an incentive to make the mission sound important, whereas a beneficiary creates a more credible connection between an employee’s daily work and another person’s life. Grant calls this “outsourcing inspiration” to the people who rely on the organization. The conversation then turns to hybrid work and the supposed loss of spontaneous creative collisions. Grant says spontaneity itself is not the source of creativity. Interactions are useful because they expose people to perspectives they would not otherwise encounter and because informal conversations are not constrained by a rote agenda. Leaders can therefore structure opportunities for unstructured interaction. He cites an experiment in which salespeople were randomly paired with colleagues they did not know and asked to have a 30-minute lunch each week. Four months later, individual revenue had increased by 24 percent. The salespeople compared notes, exchanged tips, and learned how to do their jobs better. The meetings could happen in person or virtually; the important point was intentionally connecting people who would not otherwise interact.

Grant says organizations make two systematic onboarding mistakes. First, they wait until an employee’s first day to begin the process. His former doctoral student Konstantinos Kutiferis found that people often spend the period between accepting an offer and starting the job in organizational limbo: they are not formally members yet, but already want to learn and connect. Grant recommends “pre-boarding,” such as having the hiring manager contact the person two weeks before the start date to explain the culture, describe the value the new hire may add, and create an early sense of belonging. This accelerates cultural learning and makes new employees more proactive and effective. The second mistake is trying to “break people in” by teaching them to absorb existing values and norms. Grant refers to research led by his colleague Dan Cable, including an experiment at Wipro. Instead of merely receiving standard training or being indoctrinated into the company’s culture, new hires created a personal highlight reel of career peak moments and shared it with their teams. Six months later, those employees received higher performance reviews and were significantly less likely to quit. Grant says the reason was that they were invited to bring distinctive strengths rather than simply fit in. They felt seen and valued, which connected them more strongly to a meaningful contribution.

When Beard asks whether employers really want employees to bring their “whole selves” to work, Grant rejects both total self-disclosure and an expectation that people will always be at their best. He prefers the idea of bringing a professional self: employees must deliver on their job expectations and live by the organization’s values. Professionalism means producing results while maintaining good relationships, with clear behavioral standards for both upholding and violating the company’s principles. Grant also qualifies Gallup’s famous question about whether employees have a best friend at work. He says research by his colleague Segal Barsade suggests that just one friend may be enough to prevent people from feeling lonely; the survey may be measuring whether someone has any friend rather than a best friend. Personal connection becomes more useful when a team will remain together for months or years working on difficult problems, in which case occasional meals or socializing can help people know one another more deeply. Still, that is secondary to understanding individual contributions and how they connect to the team’s purpose. On hiring, Grant says leaders should distinguish givers from takers rather than simply hiring “nice” people. Agreeable takers can be persuasive fakers who kiss up and kick down, while disagreeable givers provide tough love, ask hard questions, and offer necessary criticism. Organizations often under-hire, under-reward, and under-promote these people because they mistake a difficult exterior for a lack of care.

Grant calls cultural fit a double-edged sword. He cites a 15-year study of biotech startups showing that companies prioritizing cultural fit over skills or star potential had dramatically lower failure rates and reached IPO faster. But after going public, those companies grew more slowly because they had become too homogeneous and lacked people who could stretch the group’s thinking. The same alignment that helped them survive early could later create groupthink. His proposed solution is to identify a small number of non-negotiable core values and then hire for “culture add” everywhere else. Drawing on work by his colleague Drew Carton, Grant recommends a maximum of four core values. Longer lists are hard to remember, interpreted inconsistently, and difficult to rank when values conflict. If excellence, integrity, and generosity are core values, someone who violates them should not be hired or promoted. Beyond those principles, however, leaders should ask whether a candidate fills a gap and enriches the culture rather than clones every existing norm. Grant describes helping the U.S. women’s national soccer team replace generic values such as winning, teamwork, respect, and accountability with language drawn from its own stories. The team chose “leave it better,” “bloodbath mentality,” and “don’t be an asshole,” among its four ranked values. The phrases made expectations more distinctive: improve the team, play through blood even in practice, respect staff and junior players, and avoid prima-donna behavior or hazing. Grant says the values helped the team rekindle its identity after player turnover and a coaching change.

Grant says building a great team is not about minimizing differences; it is about channeling them toward a higher purpose. He distinguishes relationship conflict—personal hostility, resentment, and comments such as “I hate your guts” or “you smell”—from task conflict and process conflict. Task conflict concerns decisions, strategies, and visions; without it, teams miss opportunities and threats. Process conflict concerns who should do what and when; without it, organizations assign roles poorly and create ineffective workflows. The leadership challenge is to encourage task and process disagreement without allowing it to become relationship conflict. Grant cites Corinne Bendersky’s work showing that simply prefacing a disagreement with “Can we debate this?” activates the expectation that disagreement is legitimate and potentially constructive. He illustrates the value of candor through Metallica. After several destructive fights—including one physical incident—the band became so afraid of breaking up that members avoided confrontation and developed a passive-aggressive dynamic. Group therapy helped them recognize that constructive criticism can be an investment in a relationship. Instead of saying, “This piece is crap,” a member could say, “I want us to produce the best possible sound. I’m not sure what we created will measure up, and I know you share that standard. Let’s discuss how to reach it.” Grant says the goal is not brutal honesty, since people who advertise that trait may simply enjoy being brutal; it is clarity combined with kindness.

Grant worries that AI companions may encourage people to abandon human connection. People in Western countries are spending more time alone, and some users say they would rather talk with an AI chatbot than a friend. He says chatbots are appealing because they flatter users and tell them what they want to hear, whereas human relationships are messy and involve friction. That friction tests relationships, creates shared resilience, and signals that the people involved consider the relationship important enough to keep working on. For Grant, human connection remains one of the things AI cannot replace. Beard describes “politeness cultures” where employees avoid questioning the status quo. Grant’s test is whether people say different things behind one another’s backs than they say face-to-face—whether there is a “meeting after the meeting.” Leaders should identify disagreeable givers who challenge the organization because they care about it and empower them. Merely asking for criticism is often unconvincing because employees do not know whether the leader will listen or punish the messenger. A stronger approach is for leaders to criticize themselves publicly by naming a weakness, a 360-degree finding, or something they need to improve. This demonstrates that they can handle the truth and encourages others to acknowledge their own limitations. As an immediate action, Grant recommends not just thanking people who deliver difficult feedback but promoting them. He points to the Mac team’s award for the person who most courageously challenged Steve Jobs. Jobs promoted each annual winner, making clear that productive dissent was valued. Grant says leaders should similarly identify culture carriers who expose the gap between who the organization claims to be and who it actually is, then give them a larger platform and greater authority.