The Hidden Engine Behind Great Teams

How shared purpose and trust outperform raw talent

In my earliest days as an engineering leader, I believed that hiring top talent was the cornerstone of success. And to an extent, that belief served me well—at least, initially. But over the years, as I’ve led teams through crises, cultural transformations, and the quiet day-to-day grind, I’ve come to a more nuanced realization: technical brilliance without cohesion is like an orchestra where everyone’s playing a different score.

Team unity is not a luxury—it’s the foundation.

The Myth of the "Perfect Team Member"

One of the traps I’ve seen leaders fall into (and, candidly, I’ve fallen into myself) is over-indexing on skill during hiring. While I still believe in stretching people’s technical capabilities and setting a high bar for excellence, I now see how attitude, empathy, and shared values carry disproportionate weight in whether a team succeeds.

I’ve built teams where, on paper, every individual was outstanding. And yet, progress felt slow, communication fractured, and ownership ambiguous. Why? Because we weren’t truly aligned. We were a group of individuals working in parallel—not a team pulling in sync.

Cohesion can’t be bought with compensation or demanded through deadlines. It has to be cultivated—intentionally, patiently, and with a level of emotional intelligence that doesn’t always come naturally to those of us from deeply technical backgrounds.

Leading Through Alignment, Not Authority

What I’ve learned is that unity doesn't come from forcing agreement. It comes from clarity, trust, and shared purpose.

That begins with vulnerability. I’ve started sharing my personal leadership philosophy openly with my team—not because I think I have all the answers, but because it creates a space where others feel safe to do the same. When people understand not just what we’re building, but why we’re building it, and who we’re building it with, something fundamental shifts.

We begin to speak in terms of “us,” not “I.”

Culture Is Built in the Smallest Interactions

When I inherited a fragmented team culture—a group operating more like silos than a unit—I didn’t fix it with grand vision statements. I fixed it (or at least started to) by listening. By remembering birthdays. By noticing when someone seemed quiet on a call. By consistently recognizing the small wins, not just the big launches.

In distributed or hybrid environments, unity is even more elusive. The absence of informal hallway conversations means we must be deliberate about injecting humanity into our workflows. A Slack shoutout. A Friday team check-in that isn’t about tickets. Asking not just “What are you working on?” but “How are you feeling about the work?”

These moments are not detours from productivity. They are the foundation of sustainable performance.

Delegation as a Trust Mechanism

Delegation used to feel like a tactic to manage bandwidth. I now see it as a deeply symbolic act of trust. When I ask a team member to lead a retrospective or take point on a stakeholder issue, it’s not about unburdening myself—it’s about signaling that I see them as a leader, too.

That shift matters. Because when team members see themselves not just as executors but as owners, unity stops being something they’re told to do—and becomes something they feel responsible for.

From "Us Versus Them" to "We Are One"

One of the most meaningful transformations I’ve witnessed was repairing the strained relationship between Engineering and Operations. It required empathy on both sides, but it started with us. We had to show, through actions—not words—that we were committed to collaboration, not just pushing features.

It’s tempting to think of unity as internal. But in practice, unity within a team radiates outward. When we’re aligned, other departments notice. Trust becomes contagious.

Unity as a Leadership Legacy

I don’t want to be remembered as the manager who shipped the most features. I want to be remembered as the leader who built a team that wanted to work together, that challenged each other respectfully, that trusted each other instinctively.

Unity isn’t a KPI, but it’s a force multiplier. And as I continue my journey—reflecting daily, embracing feedback, and working on my own blind spots—I’m learning that fostering cohesion isn’t something I do on top of my leadership duties.

It is the work.