The Best Person Is not Always the Best Teammate

The Most Talented Person on the Team

Back in college, I was part of a team of five people working on a project. I don't remember all the details of the project anymore, but I remember one person on the team very clearly.

He was probably the most competent person on our team. He could do a lot of things, and whenever there was something technical that needed to be done, he could usually handle it.

At first, I thought having someone like that on the team was a great thing. If you have a person who is really good at what they do, you would think the team would become better because of it.

But after working with him for a while, I started noticing something.

He was very quiet during our team meetings. He would join the meeting, listen to everyone, find out what his role was, and then do the work.

He rarely brought up ideas or suggested ways we could improve the project. He didn't really ask questions or discuss things with the rest of us.

And when he did speak up, it was usually to complain about something.

When Being Good Isn't Enough

There was another habit that made things harder for the rest of us. If he didn't like something in someone else's code, he would sometimes just change it himself.

He might have thought he was improving the code, and technically he might have been right sometimes. But the problem was that he didn't really talk to the person who wrote it first.

This started to annoy the other people on the team. It made it harder for us to have a conversation about how we wanted to build the project because sometimes someone would make a decision and then find out later that their code had been changed.

On top of that, his constant complaining started to affect the atmosphere of the team.

Nobody really wanted to work with him, even though everyone knew that he was the most capable person on the team.

And as the team leader, I started having a difficult decision to make.

The Decision I Had to Make

As the team leader, I eventually had to make a difficult decision. He was the most competent coder on the team, so letting him go meant that we were going to lose one of the people who could do the most work.

But I also had to think about the other four people.

If someone is very good at their job but makes everyone else feel bad about working together, how much is that skill really worth?

I decided to let him go.

It wasn't because I personally disliked him. I just felt that keeping him on the team was hurting the rest of the team more than his skills were helping us.

After he left, we did become a little slower. We had lost our most competent coder, after all.

But something else changed too.

Everyone seemed more relaxed. We talked more, shared more ideas, and felt less stressed when working together.

The project might have moved a little slower, but working on it became much more enjoyable.

What I Look for Now

That experience changed the way I think about choosing people to work with.

I still care about whether someone is good at what they do. Skill matters, and having someone talented on your team can be a huge advantage.

But I don't look at talent alone anymore.

When I choose someone to work with, I want to know who they are as a person too. Can I communicate with them? Can we disagree without making things personal? Are they willing to listen and learn?

I would rather work with someone who has a decent personality and is willing to learn than someone who already knows everything but is difficult to work with.

Skills can be taught. You can learn a new programming language, learn a new tool, or get better at something you don't know yet.

But changing the way someone treats the people around them is a much harder thing.

Who Do I Want to Build With?

When I think about it now, I don't really want to find the most talented person in the room. I want to find someone I can imagine building something with for a long time.

Someone who is willing to learn, willing to listen, and willing to work together. Someone who can bring their own ideas but is also open to hearing other people's ideas.

They don't have to know everything. I don't know everything either.

I think that is one of the reasons I value the willingness to learn so much. Skills can grow over time, and everyone has something they don't know yet.

When you are going to spend a lot of time building something with someone, I think who they are matters just as much as what they can do.

I would rather build with someone who is good enough today and wants to become better tomorrow than someone who is great today but makes everyone around them worse.