People prefer friendliness, trustworthiness in teammates over skill competency
I have worked in technology as an engineer for thirty seven years. Over that time I have worked with a number of genuinely intelligent people, way smarter than me. Some of them were an absolute joy to work with, and some of them were horrors. Technical product success was about evenly split between those two classes of coworkers, but the teams with the 'horrors' invariably shipped late, and the joyful teams invariably shipped product in a timely manner.<p>I think a big contributor in both cases is that people are late to report problems in the horror story cases because the inevitable public beat down was so dreadful, plus the decision times drawn out by inevitable arguments delayed progress.<p>Where on the generally joyful teams, people that were struggling would report that to get help early, and when the inevitable changes were required, the discussion and decision cycles were shorter, because, less shouting.<p>This is purely my life experience, nothing more, nothing scientific about it, but that is what I have encountered along the way.<p>If the team as a whole, trusts the members of the team, and the interpersonal stress level is low, work goes better.<p>I know that all just seems to make common sense, but it is amazing how one or two confrontational members, particularly at decision making/managerial levels, can hinder an organization.