In my career, I’ve had the pleasure of working with a lot of great people. Working with these folks makes almost everything easier. You get energy from being around them. You get excited about what you’re working on together, and you want to do good work yourself.
There’s often a complementarity to it, too. Someone sees a way forward that you hadn’t considered, or is good at something you struggle with. You can rely on each other’s strengths. That makes a difficult problem more enjoyable to work through, and it gives you a reason to look forward to working together again.
I think a large part of what separates someone who is good from someone who is great is how they handle autonomy. Great people thrive when they have room to figure things out. Give them a clearly expressed, shared goal, and they take responsibility for finding a way towards it. They can reflect on their own work and change direction when something isn’t working. They also help others do the same, coaching a colleague or working through a decision together without waiting for someone in charge to step in.
Working with great people typically makes complex situations easier. Take a project where the goal is clear, but you’re still figuring out what will work. A decision in one part of the project affects what’s possible elsewhere, and some of your early assumptions turn out to be wrong. Great people can work through that together. They notice when their approach creates a problem for a colleague and figure out how to adjust. You need fewer rules and less supervision because the people doing the work can make those decisions as they go.
When people need more direction, finding the best way towards that goal increasingly becomes leadership’s job. Leaders have to work out the approach and then get everyone to follow it. Rules and procedures become a way to do that. I think this is much harder: fewer people are figuring out what should happen, and more effort goes into steering everyone else.
I think both the work and the pleasure of working together suffer. It’s harder to get that feeling of being part of a team you want to show up for when so much of the work depends on being told what to do next.
I honestly believe that, in the end, insisting on great people makes the biggest difference. If I can give any advice, it’s to make sure you surround yourself with great people.
