Here’s Why You Don’t Want Your Teams to Get Along All the Time

Most leadership teams prioritize cohesion and cultural fit, but this approach kills innovation. Here’s why, and how to fix it.

When I was building my company, I discovered something surprising about building teams: The good ones don’t get along. At least not all the time.

Our best strategic decisions, the real breakthroughs, came from heated debates between team members with fundamentally different perspectives—not from meetings where everyone quickly agreed.

And when it comes to the leadership teams that I coach, the ones that consistently generate superior strategic options share one trait: they’ve deliberately designed productive tension into their composition while maintaining alignment around core values and company purpose.

Here’s how to build that healthy tension in to your team.

1. Industry experience diversity

Teams composed entirely of industry veterans develop blind spots because they share the same assumptions about what’s possible and normal. When everyone thinks customer problems should be solved the same way, we miss breakthrough approaches that adjacent industries use successfully. Audit your team for cross-sector representation and deliberately include members who can challenge industry orthodoxy with fresh problem-solving approaches from different sectors.

2. Cognitive style variation

Analytical thinkers, intuitive decision-makers, and creative problem-solvers process information differently and reach different conclusions from the same data. Teams dominated by analytical minds excel at optimization but struggle with pattern recognition and breakthrough thinking. Assess your team’s thinking patterns and ensure representation across analytical depth, intuitive insight, and creative solution generation to avoid strategic blind spots.

3. Cultural background differences

Different cultural perspectives shape risk assessment, hierarchy expectations, and communication approaches in ways that reveal strategic assumptions teams don’t realize they’re making. Homogeneous cultural groups miss market opportunities because they assume their perspective represents universal customer behavior. Evaluate your team’s cultural composition and consider how different cultural lenses might challenge current strategic assumptions and reveal hidden market segments.

4. Generational perspective ranges

Different generations bring distinct perspectives on technology adoption, work values, and market evolution that fundamentally impact strategic planning effectiveness. Groups skewed toward one generation miss emerging trends or overestimate technology adoption rates in their target markets. Review your team’s generational spread and ensure representation across different technology comfort levels and workplace expectations that affect strategic decision-making.

5. Geographic experience spanning

Urban and rural perspectives, along with different regional market contexts, create fundamentally different assumptions about customer behavior, distribution challenges, and operational requirements. Teams with narrow geographic experience develop strategies that work in familiar markets but fail in different contexts. Assess your team’s geographic diversity and include perspectives from different market contexts relevant to your strategic expansion or customer base.

6. Company size experience mixing

Startup, enterprise, and mid-market operational perspectives create different approaches to resource allocation, risk management, and growth strategies that significantly impact strategic effectiveness. Individuals with similar company size backgrounds miss operational insights that could dramatically improve strategic execution. Evaluate your team’s company size backgrounds and ensure representation across different operational scales to optimize strategic approaches.

7. Risk tolerance level spectrum

Conservative and aggressive decision-making preferences balance strategic options between sustainable growth and breakthrough opportunities, but teams skewed in either direction miss critical strategic possibilities. Those that are risk-averse miss competitive timing advantages while risk-aggressive teams overlook sustainability concerns. Audit your team’s risk tolerance distribution and ensure representation across the risk spectrum relevant to your strategic objectives and market position.

Action Items

Leaders who master strategic diversity create teams that generate more strategic options while maintaining operational effectiveness through shared values and purpose. The competitive advantage comes from superior strategic thinking, not perfect team harmony—breakthrough ideas require productive tension.