How to Build a Kickass Team

Most managers waste time trying to “fix” people. That’s backwards. Great teams don’t happen because everyone is well-rounded. They happen when strengths are played like a stacked hand  -  and balanced across the org.

Here’s how to stop micromanaging feelings and start assembling your version of the A-Team.

Stop Trying to “Fix” People

Let me tell you about Kyle. Kyle was a brilliant front-end developer at a startup I helped scale. But he was disorganized, missed deadlines, and forgot to update JIRA. His manager kept coaching him on “time management.” They even brought in a productivity coach. Nothing changed.

What did work? Giving Kyle a project manager who thrived on details and took pleasure in tracking timelines. She loved the rigor Kyle hated  -  and Kyle loved the creative freedom she gave him. Boom. Velocity doubled.

Trying to round out Kyle was a complete waste of time. Supporting him with someone whose strength filled his gap? That changed everything.

Strengths Are Not a Vibe  -  They’re a System

This stuff isn’t magic. It’s pattern recognition, plus structure. Here’s how we think about it when building and coaching teams that actually perform:

• Map each person’s dominant working strengths. Not just skills. Think energy zones: What lights them up? What drains them?
• Align roles to natural strengths. If someone’s an incredible closer but hates prospecting, don’t stick them in outbound sales.
• Hire for complementary gaps, not clones. If the whole team scales the same mountain, who's walking guard?
• Design duo or squad structures that offset weaknesses. Give the visionary a detail junkie. Give the hype machine a realist.
• Stop wasting energy on forcing square pegs into round holes. Shift that energy to managing the team as a whole system.

The result isn’t a team of “perfect” individuals. It’s a machine that’s reliable because of how its parts fit together  -  not in spite of it.

How This Shows Up in High-Performing Teams

I see this all the time with execs I coach or companies I advise. The best teams don’t obsess over fixing individual flaws. They build multi-player mode  -  where strengths stack like a good D&D squad.

At TripAdvisor, when I helped grow Hotel eCommerce revenue from zero to $200M+, we built cross-functional pods. Each pod had a product person good with ambiguity, an engineer who thrived in focused sprints, a data analyst who lived in dashboards, and a marketer who could sell it. Nobody had to be great at everything. They had to collaborate well and trust each other.

Compare that to teams where everyone’s “pretty good” at a wide range of things. Those teams hesitate more. They compete internally. They burn energy trying to define who owns what. That’s friction disguised as flexibility.

It’s not just a high-growth company thing. I’ve worked with public organizations going through digital transformations. Same rule applies. You don’t need unicorns. You need clarity and fit.

Avoid the Checkbox Mentality

The mistake I see most often: people treat team-building like a hiring checklist. “Oh, we need someone who can do X, Y, Z…” That's technically true, but strategically limiting.

Instead, ask:

• “What outcomes are we responsible for?”
• “What mix of strengths get us there efficiently?”
• “Where are we trying to overcompensate for bad structure instead of leveraging real strengths?”

Sometimes what looks like a people problem is really a role misfire or a structure issue. A top performer can look average in the wrong chair.

If this idea resonates, try exploring how you’re structuring your product squads. Here’s a solid deep dive: Product Team Structures.

The Anti-Weakness Chart

To make this tangible, here’s a generic example to use when we’re mapping strengths and gaps on leadership or cross-functional teams:

You see how these play off each other? It’s not about covering for weaknesses reactively  -  it’s about proactively designing for fit.

Mix Strengths Like a Mad Scientist

Here’s an unexpected insight: You don’t always want balance in each team. Sometimes you lean into dominance, and counterbalance elsewhere.

Say you’re doing early product discovery. You want a team that lives in chaos: visionaries, divergent thinkers, cross-discipline ninjas. A team full of “maintainers” will suffocate the process.

But when it’s time to scale? Now you need execution strength. Precision. Systems thinkers. Give the visionaries a break and let the operators run the show  -  they’ll ship it clean.

In other words: context matters. Don’t build teams you can't rebalance later. Be fluid. That's what made TripAdvisor’s marketplace growth scale sustainably  -  we treated teams like modular systems, not static departments.

What Happens When You Get It Right

Here’s what I’ve learned: when people get to operate in a zone of strength, three things unlock fast:

1. They move faster with less friction.
2. They do deeper, better work because they’re energized.
3. They collaborate more because they know others have their blind spots handled.

One growth leader I coached was grinding to manage multiple ICs while running strategy and doing exec comms. It wasn’t working. We mapped her energy and realized: she's best in high-leverage convos and strategy work. So we hired a player-coach team lead underneath her who loved IC growth work  -  and the org got way more productive, way faster.

This goes beyond “delegate what you don’t like.” It’s “structure roles around actual strengths”  -  and it unlocks trust, speed, and retention. It’s how you go from decent to unstoppable, without burning people out.

If you're curious how this fits into bigger organizational design, dig into shaping supply and demand in product orgs.

Build Your Own Strengths Map

You don’t need a PhD in org design to start this. Here’s how to put it into action starting tomorrow:

1. Map your team’s top energy-driving strengths
2. Identify roles or responsibilities that rub against each person’s energy
3. Plug any gaps in collaboration or coverage
4. Create complementary pairs or trios, not isolated roles
5. Adjust expectations  -  stop trying to make each person great at everything

Whether it’s using Gallup StrengthsFinder, simple self-reports, or energy-mapping exercises, the tool doesn’t matter as much as the habit. It forces the right conversations. It makes strengths visible. It removes ego from the equation.

More importantly  -  it makes hiring and structure feel like intentional strategy, not HR roulette.

Final Thought: Build the Team You’d Want to Be On

Most of us were trained to focus on repairing flaws. In school. In jobs. Even in performance reviews.

But building great teams isn’t about correcting every shortcoming. It’s about creating a system that hums  -  not because every part is perfect, but because the parts play well together.

So, next time you’re wondering why something’s not clicking? Don’t ask “what’s wrong with this person.” Ask: “What are they unusually strong at  -  and how do we build around that?”

That’s how strong teams become legendary ones.