What Sets Genius Teams Apart

Summary:  The most successful executive teams can achieve outsized outcomes, but they can also be challenging to manage and be a part of. The author, a psychologist who has worked with executive teams for over 20 years, explains what sets the best teams apart — their…more

What makes the most ambitious and capable executive teams different from the rest?

I have engaged with hundreds of leadership teams over more than 20 years as an executive advisor and organizational psychologist. A notable few stand out as what I call “genius teams.” These teams can handle more complexity than their peers. They accomplish more. They work faster. If such teams are managed artfully, they can deliver outsize results.

Genius executive teams are notable for three characteristics. First, each team member — no exceptions — brings an outstanding capability that complements the capabilities of other team members. Top percentile analytical capacity is certainly a factor, even a prerequisite, but these team members also bring virtuosity, expertise, tenacity, mental agility, and communications skills, just to name a few.

The second characteristic of genius teams is the scale of achievement they aspire to. Among the genius teams I’ve worked with, one is working on accelerating green energy transition, another has set out to make future generations more creative, and a third team is working to democratize investments.

Such stated goals can easily have a pompous and hollow ring unless they truly guide choices and actions. Critically, genius teams are agents of the breakthroughs: They actually do something — build companies, fund initiatives, and enact policies — to fix large-scale challenges and needs.

The third — and least obvious — component of genius executive teams is the almost constant generative tension that characterizes their interactions. The energy on the teams is sparked by benevolent friction, conflict, impatience, and even well-intentioned intolerance.

What truly sets genius teams apart from other high-performing executive teams is their ability to manage — and willingness to generate — this tension in the service of the larger challenges they’re drawn to solve. This article introduces the up- and downsides of this way of working and outlines how leadership teams can avoid the most common traps associated with it.

The Risks — and Rewards — of Generative Tension

When observing a genius team, you notice the vibrancy and suspense in the room. Something is at stake for everyone, and interactions teeter on the edge of confrontation. There is a high level of psychological arousal, with people leaning forward, speaking passionately, going to the drawing board, challenging one another. Dull moments are rare, and the mood feels almost temperamental. One team member likened their weekly meetings to a chemistry experiment — mixing potent ingredients and then shaking hard to see what happens.

This generative tension is a vital part of genius teams’ way of working and their drive to succeed. It is also the biggest risk factor if not recognized and managed properly. It can become misdirected, and result in collateral and reputational damage, derailment, and burnout. Genius team members frequently report that they feel emotionally drained and exhausted at the end of the day, even though their days are full of enviable events, victories, and breakthroughs.

One member of a genius team in the finance sector described how she decided to resign after feeling “tired to the bone” for months due to the intensity of the group collaboration. She later described her period on the team as the most rewarding of her career, but also the most wearing.

At the other end of the spectrum, however, a lack of tension is equally damaging. I worked with another team of extraordinarily capable executives, and their suppression of tension was the single biggest barrier to performance and growth. Their meetings became “so boring that I wanted to scream,” as one leader told me. “You know the oxygen has left the room when all we do is ramble on about our separate domains while people read the news and do a bit of online shopping, pretending to take notes. Whenever we approach a contentious issue and the temperature rises, it gets postponed or left unresolved.” Despite having an impressive roster of people around the table, the magic rarely happened.

The key for genius teams – most of which are self-managed – is to find the sweet spot where tension is neither tepid nor toxic.

How do they strike that balance?

The Art of the Good Fight

The genius executive teams I’ve observed have learned how to constantly managing messiness, chaos, conflict, and energy in a way that is stimulating, meaningful, and constructive, while preserving the integrity of the individual team members. They handle confrontation, contradictions, dysfunctions, and setbacks with a purpose, which means navigating three simultaneous tensions:

Being at ease with discomfort and conflict.

Most executive teams understand the value of task conflicts: professional and sometimes intense exchanges about priorities, key choices, or problem-solving. Mature teams recognize that task conflicts create better solutions and outcomes.

In contrast, many teams are allergic to relationship conflict: personal and emotional tensions, confrontations, or attacks on “who you are” and “how you act.” They see this as a source of frustration and a waste of time. As a result, relationship conflicts play out in the shadows rather than in the open.

Genius teams are different in that they don’t shy away from either task or relationship conflict. Their level of task conflict is higher than in other executive teams, because these discomforting moments motivate them and inspire new ideas.

However, what really sets genius teams apart is the intensity of relationship conflict. With their high-stakes pursuit of major breakthroughs, they’re not interested in overly polite or accommodating behavior, and the atmosphere can feel almost inconsiderate. Emotional volatility — overly direct feedback, last minute alterations, sudden exhaustion — is surprisingly high.

In one team I worked with, this played out by partners openly challenging each other over contributions that were seen as flawed, sloppy, or showing a lack of conscientiousness. “Why is the material so disastrous? Let’s stop here and start over when you have fixed it,” a leader of a team said five minutes into one meeting.

These teams have no tolerance for presentations that are considered “blindingly obvious.” As a leader of a globally recognized company said when I observed his team: “I cringe whenever I hear someone say, ‘I fully agree’ in meetings. We are here to improve on ideas, not to find comfort in consensus.”

You can see relationship conflict playing out in body language of genius team members when they get annoyed: heavy breathing, moving in their chairs, changing positions, walking around in the room while others present, heavy sweating, eating frantically, or raising their voices. At best this approach is perceived as very straightforward, and at worst it feels inappropriately blunt or even offensive.

“The lid comes off at least once a day,” said one leader, “but at least we have learned to put it back on fast.”

That last part is key: While genius team meetings can be grating, confrontational, even personal, they are clear on the rules of engagement: They’re both tough on problems and tough on people. This fundamentally requires participants to understand and acknowledge that a tough vetting process around ideas is the team’s way to ensure that ultimate decisions vastly improve on the initial proposals.

To “put the lid back on fast,” genius teams actively monitor and manage the tension in room, sometimes by simply asking: “What is going on with us right now?” They use humor as a coping mechanism: “Please make sure that our CFO is banned from sending more e-mails this week,” remarked a team member, after learning that a colleague had e-mailed a harsh message to an entire department using only upper-case letters.

Individuals on these teams also informally check in with each other in a “post-game repair cycle” of five-minute chats, text messages, a phone call in the evening to evaluate and recalibrate relations. This works almost like a psychological debriefing in which participants replay and recount events in order to put them in context and reinterpret them constructively. These conversations often feed into future sessions, and over time, help articulate the team’s rules of engagement.

To be clear, rules of engagement such as “expect us to be tough on you,” are not an excuse for abusive language or public teardowns. The art of the good fight is about finding the way to both stimulate professional dissent on issues in a constructive way and drive personal growth and development through direct and unfiltered feedback without becoming mercenary.

Leveraging discomfort and conflict to drive performance is a balancing act that requires self-regulation and guardrails. For the team members it also requires the ability to set — and respect — boundaries.

Setting boundaries in a no-limits culture.

At their best, genius teams operate in a near limitless flow of ideas, opportunities, and initiatives. “In many ways I feel that we possess a special superpower: that ours is a particularly meaningful purpose,” one person told me. “We are making a contribution to the world. One that is worth getting out of bed for in the morning and worth fighting for. I think that’s exactly what we need to stay motivated for decades.” And, she added, it’s the reason she could bear the never-ending stresses of the job.

Another team member told me that he was motivated by creating a company so spectacular that he could one day take his children on a sailing trip to see their “monuments” — all the places the team helped build around the globe.

This strong sense of purpose means genius teams will direct all their energy towards dealing with roadblocks or potential failures. “We always find a way” or “We never give up” are phrases that they use a lot.

The flip side of no-limits culture is that you are never done, never good enough, and rarely feel closure. When a team I worked with was showered with acclaim for a major accomplishment, a team member said: “Thanks, that’s fine, but we are not done yet. So, let’s wait before we praise ourselves and start celebrating.” This “never done” attitude is a tall order and one reason why burnout is a real risk on genius teams.

The “always-on, always the next big thing” atmosphere is exciting — and exhausting. Pauses and closure are rare. Even when genius teams manage to plan to celebrate milestones, or set aside time to evolve, I have observed that these events tend to get rescheduled last minute, because business always comes first, and business is always urgent.

To avoid getting absorbed and depleted, the genius teams I’ve worked with are clear about boundaries. Genius teams face endless demands on their time: official representation, speeches, stakeholder relations, and networking. So, the teams have to be deliberate and disciplined about creating a shielded environment with room for open, private, and honest dialogues, “without an audience,” as one team member said.

The key to is to settle on when to pause: Where and when do we stop for a break? How do avoid wearing ourselves and each other down? How do we take a step back when things get too intense or overwhelming? And how do we get back on track after?

Coping with blurred bonds

On many genius teams, I have observed a blurring of professional and personal bonds. This complicates the art of the good fight, because deep personal bonds are part of the teams’ secret. So, the easy answer to “just keep it professional” is useless.

What makes genius executive teams resilient in the long run is that they feel in it together and accept and mitigate each other’s eccentricities, derailers, and shortcomings. They have a very strong and mutual “we” feeling. This contagious sense of community and connection is one of their most notable qualities and one that becomes more evident and profound when observing teams over many years.

A genius team that “had spent lots of time in the foxhole together,” in the words of one member, regularly spoke of a deep sense of connection: “If I don’t see my colleagues for a long time, I get demotivated. It’s as simple as that. I hate it when we are not in the same country or when we travel alone for longer periods.”

Further, part of the reason why genius teams do not break up when emotions run high is that they understand each other’s life stories and the relationships that shaped them.

Most of the team members I have engaged with point to one or more formative apprenticeships in the early stages of their lives and careers as key drivers of their world view, their courage to break with convention, and their sense of purpose. Whether from the private or professional sphere, these kinds of relationships go beyond mentorship — more like path finders and life-long guardians. I have noted that the members tend to bring their “guardians” into their team circles, speaking about them almost like informal, extended team members. One member said, metaphorically, of one such person, “He is always in the room with us.”

Many of the teams I have worked with also share more painful aspects of their lives, such as growing up in families with alcohol abuse and violence, dominating, absent parents (stereotypical as that may sound), or merely frayed family histories. These personal histories can be devastating, but they all carry and contain similar narratives: “I survived, and I will never let this happen to me again.” Those experiences tend to color people’s behaviors: I heard sighs of relief about people “escaping their upbringing” — but also a deep hunger. As a one team member pointed out, “We didn’t have any money where I grew up. I decided that I would never pass on that feeling to my children. Never.”

I also saw a certain ambivalence in the strong personal bonds. On the one hand, work permeates many aspects of these teams’ private lives. The members go on vacation together with their partners, they open their homes for each other, and they are there when something happens to each other’s children or when their parents get sick. On the other hand, there is a limit to the personal bond. The line between informal inclusion and exclusion is fine. Team membership is not unconditional. As I mentioned earlier, there is low tolerance for laziness, lack of preparation or commitment, and intellectual sloppiness.

To be clear, this is not a lack of empathy or ethics. Genius teams have a wide tolerance for legitimate needs to recharge, recover, or deal with private emergencies. But even though relationships are much more than a means to an end, the work and the quest of the team ultimately comes first. This can be grating even for seasoned team members, because work conflicts can feel like a breach of personal trust and emotional attachment.

There are no easy steps to cope with the blurring of professional and personal bonds. The nature of the relationships, and the internal alliances, affiliations, and animosities will evolve and change over time — sometimes in unpredictable ways.

Therefore, genius team members must fundamentally understand and accept the ambivalent and imperfect nature of their relationships to each other — caring, but conditional; a job, but also a life commitment; a giving community, but also a volcanic place to be. The territory comes with lots of emotional dilemmas and contradictions that are rarely fully resolved.

Even on executive teams that think of personal and professional relationships as separate realms that ought not blend, this almost never holds up in practice. Consequently, certain informal patterns and roles are cast and harden quickly: Who are close? Who are at odds? Who are insiders and outsiders? Who are drifting apart?

Such “hard casts” can easily preempt effective collaboration and discussion, because outcomes and decisions are determined by alliances ahead of meetings, outside the group, or below the surface. To counter this, the genius teams need group sanctuaries — occasions to check out of the rhythm and turmoil of working together. The purpose of the sanctuaries is to understand, unsettle, and consciously reset such patterns before they become hard-wired.

Parsing what personal friendships and tensions might mean for professional collaboration is partly a reflective and intellectual exercise. But often the breakthrough comes through play or with breathing room — whether it’s visiting a coffee bar together and sharing personal stories, building LEGOs, solving mathematical riddles, or cross-country skiing. The key is for the group members to take on different roles and connect around totally different challenges. After a day of “planned playtime,” genius teams tend to speed up their initiatives with energy and enthusiasm, but they also seem more at ease with dealing with setbacks, conflicts, and disappointments.

The sense of purpose, intellectual stimulation, and financial rewards of being a genius team are clear. But the risks are obviously high too: working on the edge of burnout, with a shortage of psychological safety, and with near-constant tension.

Therefore, genius team members occasionally ask themselves, “Is it really worth it?”

Looking at eye-catching achievements of genius teams, other executive teams may ask themselves a similar question: Are such ways of working something to aspire to — or something steer clear of?

We can draw three lessons from observing genius teams.

The first lesson is that imperfection and tension are indeed essential to “the magic” of teamwork and the ability to make big breakthroughs — even if it feels uncomfortable, tiring, and comes at a price. Yet, teams should not accept the premise that there is simply a price to pay for working on a grand mission. The line between a good, constructive fight and an insidious, destructive fight is thin. The teams must be mindful of the trap doors that are part of “the magic” and mitigate the risks. To avoid combusting, teams need to apply the same level of genius — although a different kind of genius — to their own inner workings as they do to the grand challenges they aspire to solve.

The second lesson, therefore, is that genius teams must aspire to a certain level of psychological mastery and self-insight. They must constantly monitor and regulate the generative tension — on their own or with outside help. When is it not enough? When is it too much? To hold themselves to the task, one team decided that their regular team off-sites should be considered as “sacred and firm as their board meetings” — not as nice-to-have playtime that could be shuffled around on short notice due to “urgent business.”

The third lesson is that genius teams must find ways to stay ethical. As these teams rise and shine with their outsize successes, their original modesty and rebel dreams may wane, and omnipotence may creep in. Staying grounded, staying humble, and staying in tune with the world around them is no small feat when you are showered with recognition and privilege. One genius team member made it a principle to always “fly economy” to avoid becoming numb to these trappings.

So, any executive team that sets out to emulate the “genius teams” collaboration style must also learn to manage the tensions with psychological mastery and put in place ethical checks and balances to avoid crossing lines. Otherwise, the outcome can easily be unhealthy and toxic instead of a path to greatness.

Genius teams are different. They are frustrating and rewarding to work on and work with. They are flawed and fierce. The fundamental — and somewhat sobering — recognition that every genius team must make is that there is no perfect balance, no “fix” or miracle cure, no frictionless end state, no resting point. Over time, however, genius teams can refine their ability to manage tension and turn it into something good.

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