Teamwork does not require people to like each other. It requires four behaviours: giving people information in time to use it, following through and flagging changes early, resolving disagreements without making others route around them, and considering who is affected before leaving work unfinished. Leaders should state that expectation and meet it first.
If you see me at the grocery store and do not feel like talking, that is fine. We do not have to be best friends.
But on Monday, when we both park our cars and walk into the building, neither of us has a choice about putting the other first.
That is the whole thing, and it takes about ten seconds to say. It takes considerably longer to get a team to actually live by it, because it asks people to accept an obligation they never consciously agreed to.
Nobody made you take the job
When I talk to a room about building great teams, I start with a question that sounds almost too simple. Has anybody made you get up today and go to work? Did anybody force you into that position?
Almost everyone says no. I chose. I accepted.
Here is how I look at what that acceptance means. As soon as you accept the position, you also accept being part of that team. Those are not two separate agreements. The second one comes with the first, whether or not anyone said it out loud at the time.
That is why I think we make teamwork harder than it needs to be. We look for programmes and events to manufacture something that was already in the deal.
What caring about a teammate actually means at work
Caring about each other at work sounds like a feeling. In practice it is a set of behaviours, and they are specific enough to hold people to.
- Giving people the information they need in time to use it.
- Following through on commitments, and speaking up early when something changes.
- Working through disagreements without making everyone else work around them.
- Considering who will be affected before leaving something unfinished.
None of those require you to like somebody. They require you to recognise that your work lands on someone else's desk, bench, or shift, and that how you hand it over determines whether their day works.
That third one is where most teams quietly lose time. Two people who will not resolve something between them create a permanent tax on everyone who has to route around the disagreement.
Teamwork does not require friendship
We have different personalities and different lives outside the building. That is normal, and it is not a problem to be fixed.
The grocery store is my test for this. If we run into each other on a Saturday and you would rather not chat, I genuinely do not mind. Nothing about our working relationship depends on it.
What I need is different. When we are both at work, I need you to care about what you need to do your job, and I need to care about what I need to do mine. We can count on each other without being close.
I say this because a lot of culture work aims at the wrong target. It tries to make people fond of each other, when what the operation actually needs is for people to be reliable to each other. Those are not the same thing, and the second one is both more achievable and more valuable.
We are all adults when we go to work. Clear communication and accountability are reasonable things to expect from adults.
Say the expectation out loud
This is an expectation I want leaders to state rather than assume.
Most people have never been told what being part of a team obligates them to. They have been told to collaborate, which is vague enough to mean nothing. Naming the four behaviours above gives people something they can actually do, and gives you something you can actually address when it does not happen.
It also removes an excuse. Once the expectation has been said clearly, nobody gets to treat a missed handoff as a personality difference.
If your leadership team has never agreed what it expects of people working alongside each other, our piece on communication working agreements for manufacturing leaders is a practical place to start.
The bells and whistles problem
When a company decides its teams are not working well together, the response is usually an event. A lunch. An offsite. A values exercise. Something visible that signals the problem is being taken seriously.
I have watched a lot of those, and they rarely change how Tuesday works. The reason is that they address atmosphere rather than obligation. People come back having enjoyed themselves, and the shift handover is still incomplete on Wednesday.
I am not against the lunch. I am against the lunch being the strategy. If the four behaviours are not clear and not held, no amount of goodwill generated in a room will survive contact with a bad week on the floor.
The simpler version costs nothing. Be direct about what accepting the job meant. Did I ask you to take this position, or did I force you? I asked. Did you accept it? You did. Then you accepted being part of this team, and here is what that involves.
That conversation is harder to have than booking a caterer, which is exactly why the caterer keeps winning.
Hold yourself to it first
As a leader, I have to meet the same expectations I am setting. That is not a nice sentiment. It is the only thing that makes the expectation credible.
If I want clear communication, I have to be clear. If I expect people to listen, I have to listen. If I ask people to flag problems early, I cannot react badly the first time somebody does.
Your team is watching how you handle this far more closely than they are listening to you describe it. A leader who announces a standard and then visibly operates below it has not set a standard. They have taught everybody that standards here are decorative.
Where this shows up in an operation
The cost of a team that has not accepted this is rarely dramatic. It accumulates in small places.
A shift handover that leaves out the thing the next crew most needed to know. A change that gets made without telling the department it affects. A piece of work passed along unfinished, with the gap discovered by whoever picks it up. A question that sits unanswered because the person who could answer it does not consider it their problem.
Each of those is minor on its own. Together they are why work takes longer here than it should, and why people describe the place as disorganised without being able to point at a single cause.
Fixing it does not start with a new system. It starts with the expectation being stated, modelled, and held.
When two people will not work together
This is the situation leaders most often avoid, and avoiding it is expensive in a way that is hard to see on any report.
Two people who have decided they cannot work with each other do not usually announce it. They route around each other. Information that should pass directly goes through a third person. Meetings get scheduled so both are not in them. Work that touches both gets slower for reasons nobody names.
Everyone around them adapts, and the adaptation becomes the normal way things run. New people arrive and learn the workaround without ever being told why it exists.
My position is that this is a legitimate thing for a leader to address directly, because it is not a private matter between two adults. It is consuming other people's time. The conversation is not about making them like each other. It is about the expectation that neither of them gets to make the rest of the team carry their disagreement.
What I would ask your team this week
Three questions are worth putting to any group that works together:
- Who receives your work after you are finished with it?
- What do they need from you that they are not currently getting?
- When a handoff goes wrong, do you talk to them, or about them?
I would put them to the leadership team first, then to each department, and I would compare the answers. The gap between what a team believes it delivers and what the receiving team says it needs is usually the most useful thing you will learn all quarter.
That last question tends to produce an uncomfortable pause, which is usually where the real conversation starts. For more on the handoff itself, see who is your internal customer.
We do not need everyone to be friends. We do need people to be able to count on each other.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do people have to get along to work well as a team?
No. Different personalities and separate lives outside work are normal. What the operation needs is people being reliable to each other, which is both more achievable and more useful than people being fond of each other.
What does being part of a team actually obligate someone to do?
Four things: give people the information they need in time to use it, follow through on commitments and speak up early when something changes, work through disagreements without making everyone else work around them, and consider who is affected before leaving something unfinished.
Why state the expectation out loud?
Because most people have only ever been told to collaborate, which is vague enough to mean nothing. Naming the behaviours gives people something they can do and gives leaders something they can address, and it removes the excuse that a missed handoff is a personality difference.
Does this apply to leaders too?
It applies to leaders first. If you want clear communication you have to be clear, and if you ask people to raise problems early you cannot react badly the first time someone does. A standard the leader visibly operates below is not a standard.
What does a team that has not accepted this cost a business?
Rarely anything dramatic. It shows up as incomplete shift handovers, changes made without telling the affected department, unfinished work discovered by whoever picks it up, and questions nobody considers theirs to answer.