The Right People: The Unspoken Foundation of Every Great Team

This is Part 2 of a series. Start with Engineering Team Success: A Relatable Story of Process Change.

If you read part one, you watched Jane transform her team from the inside out — cutting noise, hardening processes, building trust, and creating the kind of clarity that makes a team feel unstoppable. It was inspiring. It was hard. And it worked.

But here's the part we glossed over.

Not everyone on Jane's team was cheering. Not everyone bought in. And not everyone was meant to be on that bus.

The Bus

Jim Collins, in his landmark book Good to Great, made an observation that has stuck with leaders ever since: the companies that went from good to great didn't start with a where — they started with a who.

Think about that for a second. Most leaders inherit a team, get handed a roadmap, and immediately start sprinting toward the destination — without ever asking if they have the right passengers for the journey.

You can have the clearest vision, the most battle-tested process, and the best intentions in the world. Put the wrong people on the bus? You're not going anywhere fast. Put the right people in the wrong seats? You're leaving an enormous amount of value on the table.

Jane knew this. She had done the hard work of fixing how the team worked. Now she had to face the harder truth: not everyone on the team was the right fit for where they were heading.

What Makes Someone the 'Right' Person?

Here's where leaders get it wrong. When we say "right people," we almost always jump straight to skills. Does she know the tech stack? Can he architect at scale? Does the résumé check out?

Skills matter. Of course they do. But skills alone do not make someone the right person.

The right person is a combination of three things:

• Skills – The technical or functional ability (or clear capacity to develop it) to deliver value in their role.
• Attitude – Coachable, adaptable, and bringing energy that lifts the team rather than drains it.
• Alignment – Their values, motivations, and work ethic align with the team's culture and direction.

Of these three, attitude and alignment are the hardest to change — and the most important to get right. Skills can be taught. You can coach someone through a new technology, mentor them through a new challenge, and watch them grow. But you cannot teach someone to care. You cannot teach someone to be a team player. You cannot manufacture the hunger, humility, and self-awareness that a high-performing team demands.

The 'Wrong Person' Tax

Here is something nobody talks about enough: the cost of keeping the wrong person on the team.

It is enormous. And it is mostly hidden.

The wrong person taxes everyone around them. They slow decisions. They erode culture. They consume disproportionate time from leadership and senior talent — time that should be spent developing the team and driving value. And perhaps most insidiously, they send a message to the right people that mediocrity is acceptable.

Have you ever worked alongside someone who was disengaged, resistant to feedback, or politically motivated? You knew it. Your teammates knew it. Leadership often knew it too — but did nothing. How did that feel?

The right people are watching how you handle the wrong ones. Every single time.

Recognizing the Right Person

So what are you looking for? Here are the signals that matter most:

• They make the people around them better. Not just through their own output, but through how they collaborate, teach, and support. Rising tides lift all boats.
• They seek feedback and act on it. They are not defensive when challenged. They are genuinely curious about how they can grow. They do not make the same mistake twice.
• They own their failures. No finger-pointing, no excuse-making. They take responsibility, extract the lesson, and move forward. A blameless culture starts with blameless individuals.
• They are aligned with the mission. They understand why the work matters and can connect their daily effort to the larger goal. When priorities shift, they adapt without drama.
• They bring energy, not noise. There is a meaningful difference between a person who challenges constructively and a person who creates friction for its own sake. The right person challenges the work. The wrong person challenges the team.

Recognizing the Wrong Person

Just as important as spotting the right person is identifying the wrong one — and doing it early. Here are the red flags:

• Consistent resistance to change. Growth requires adaptation. If someone cannot evolve, they become an anchor in a moving ship.
• Chronic negativity or undermining. One person who regularly talks down the team's direction — in hallways, in Slack, in side conversations — can unravel months of culture-building.
• Low accountability. The person who always has a reason why something wasn't their fault. Always. Accountability is a non-negotiable foundation of trust.
• Protecting turf over team outcomes. When someone prioritizes their own recognition, comfort, or territory over the shared mission, it is a warning sign worth taking seriously.
• The 'brilliant jerk'. This one is dangerous because exceptional output can mask enormous cultural damage. A person who is gifted at their craft but dismissive, condescending, or demoralizing to peers is not an asset — they are a liability. Do not let output be an excuse for behavior. Most often, there output will increase while the team's output decreases.

Back to Jane

Jane's team had a brilliant jerk. Let's call him Marcus.

Marcus was one of the most technically skilled engineers on the team. His code was clean, his solutions were clever, and on paper, he was exactly what you'd want. But Marcus had no patience for junior engineers. He shot down ideas in planning sessions before they could be fully formed. He worked in a silo and hoarded knowledge. And when Jane introduced new standards and process, Marcus made it very clear — verbally and non-verbally — that he wasn't interested.

The team felt it. Morale sagged in his presence. Junior engineers stopped asking questions in group settings. Collaboration had a ceiling, and his name was on it.

Jane had a tough call to make. And she made it.

She had direct, honest conversations with Marcus. She gave him clear expectations and every opportunity to grow. She shared the impact of his behavior with genuine care and without blame. But when it became clear that Marcus had no interest in changing — that his alignment was simply not there — Jane made the decision to move him off the team.

It was uncomfortable. It wasn't clean. Some questioned the call. But watch what happened next.

The team exhaled. Junior engineers started and blossomed like flowers in the sun. Collaboration accelerated. In the following sprints, ideas flowed, decisions were collaborative, and output didn't drop — it increased.

Removing one wrong person created more value than that person had been delivering for months. Sometimes the best addition to a team is a subtraction.

Leadership's Role: Create the Environment, Then Protect It

Jane's job was never just to find the right people. It was to create the kind of environment that attracts and keeps them.

The right people want:

• Clarity – They want to know where the team is going and why their work matters. Ambiguity is demoralizing for high performers.
• Growth – They want to be challenged and have a clear path forward. If growth stagnates, the right people leave first — because they have options.
• Trust – They want to be trusted to make decisions within their domain. Micromanagement signals that you don't trust them, and the right people won't tolerate that for long. Check 'in', don't check 'on'.
• Standards – They want to work where quality is expected and the bar is held. Nothing demotivates a high performer faster than watching someone coast.

As a leader, your job is to set the environment and then fiercely protect it. Every person you bring onto the team is either raising the bar or lowering it. Be deliberate. Be selective. And when the bar is being lowered — act.

The Takeaway

Great processes are nothing without great people to run them. Jane's process improvements from part one were the foundation. But the right people? They were the ones who built on that foundation and made it soar.

Getting the right people on the bus is not a one-time event. It is an ongoing discipline:

• Hiring – Be patient. A wrong hire costs far more than the time it takes to find the right one. Don't rush this.
• Developing – Invest in your people. Don't just extract value, create it. Coaching, feedback, and real growth opportunities are how you keep the right people.
• Retaining – The right people have choices. Give them compelling reasons to stay — clarity, growth, trust, and standards.
• Letting go – This one is the hardest. But tolerating the wrong person is not kindness — not to them, and certainly not to your team. Act early, act with empathy, and act with clarity.

Without the right people, no process will save you. With the right people, even an imperfect process becomes unstoppable.

Jane knew this. Now, so do you.

GOOD LUCK!

Part 3 of this series will cover the missing ingredient that holds great teams together even when everything is going sideways: psychological safety.