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Last week I posted an article on leadership lessons we can learn from our friendly bees. That got me thinking over the weekend about the teams we lead.

Now, there are shelves full of books on teams and teamwork, motivational posters with stock images of rowers, and those tired old sayings like “there’s no ‘I’ in team”. But I kept thinking—what actually makes a great team?

Over the past 40 years, I’ve had the privilege of working with some truly brilliant teams (you know who you are). I’ve often said I just surrounded myself with people smarter than me. But it wasn’t just about their skills—that wasn’t what made the team great.

I never set out to build perfect symphony orchestras. My teams were more like jazz bands—everyone could play their instrument well, but they could also improvise. They had flair. They had rhythm.

I chatted with a few friends about the teams they’d led or worked in, and I got the usual textbook answers. You know the ones. But I couldn’t help feeling there was more to it.

It’s not just about having the best people—it’s about having the best dynamics. It’s about how they interact.

Over the weekend, I rewatched Ocean’s Eleven and thought: these lot would be outstanding in a corporate strategy team.

Hear me out.

Building the best team isn’t a million miles away from assembling the perfect crew to rob a Las Vegas casino or crack open a Swiss vault. There’s always the hacker, the getaway driver, the wildcard, the inside person—and, of course, the slightly unhinged genius who somehow brings it all together.

And this isn’t just Hollywood nonsense. It’s actually a pretty solid metaphor for high-performing teams: complementary skills, deep trust under pressure, and just enough chaos to keep things interesting.

As I mentioned above, traditional hiring often focuses on getting the smartest people in the room. But Google’s Project Aristotle found that what really drives performance isn’t individual brilliance—it’s how the team communicates, empathises, and collaborates (Rozovsky, 2015).

If you stick eleven perfectionists in a room, you don’t get the Ocean’s Eleven of innovation. You get a group of academics arguing over font choices.

Google’s research echoes what Page (2007) found: diverse teams—especially those with diverse ways of thinking—are better at solving complex problems than homogeneous groups of high-ability individuals.

Years ago, I joined a company where, during my first executive meeting, everyone introduced themselves. All but me had studied at Cambridge. I felt like I’d walked into a club I wasn’t supposed to be in. Maybe that should’ve been a cue to stop hiring from the same university, background, or personality type.

In heist terms: you need the explosives expert and the yoga-practising cat burglar who can slither through laser grids. In business? You need the spreadsheet whisperer and the designer who dreams in metaphors and Post-it notes.

Every successful team has a “glue person”. Not the loudest, not the flashiest—but the one who clocks when John’s about to quit or Jane’s gone quiet. The one who remembers everyone’s birthdays and makes sure the card’s been signed. Gladwell (2000) called them “connectors”. Google calls them a core part of psychological safety. I call them “the person you want when the printer’s jammed five minutes before the pitch, and your marketing materials are stuck in a courier van 200 miles away.” They’re the calm, sensible, slightly motherly member of the team.

Ignore these people at your peril. Promote them at your own salvation.

High-performing teams often create rituals around collaboration. The All Blacks—the legendary New Zealand rugby team—clean their own changing room after every match. It’s symbolic. A reminder that no one is above the team (Kerr, 2013).

Looking back, I realise the teams I worked with developed rituals too. They weren’t labelled as such at the time. It might’ve been the Monday morning “what’s coming up?” huddle, or the weekly award for the biggest failure (celebrating learning, not punishment). But these habits broke down barriers. They normalised vulnerability. They allowed us to share problems—work and personal—and made it OK to say “I’m not quite myself today”.

Ultimately, building the best team isn’t like writing a perfect algorithm. It’s more like casting the right mix of loveable misfits—people who shouldn’t work on paper, but somehow just click.

You’re not hiring job functions. You’re casting characters.

So, the next time you’re assembling a team, ask yourself:

• Do they think differently?

• Do they challenge each other respectfully?

• Could they survive a group project without bloodshed?

• And—most importantly—would I be happy stuck in a lift with them?

Because I’ve always believed: the best teams don’t just deliver. They click.

And sometimes, just sometimes, they even get away with the metaphorical heist.

References

• Catmull, E. (2014) Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration. New York: Random House.

• Gladwell, M. (2000) The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. Boston: Little, Brown.

• Kerr, J. (2013) Legacy: What the All Blacks Can Teach Us About the Business of Life. London: Constable.

• Page, S.E. (2007) The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

• Rozovsky, J. (2015) ‘The five keys to a successful Google team’, re:Work. Available at: https://rework.withgoogle.com/blog/five-keys-to-a-successful-google-team/ (Accessed: 1 May 2025).