In my experience it gets harder to do this as organizations grow and become less focused in their hiring strategy.
It really requires a high bar for every single hire. There’s a couple things I try to determine in every interview process:
* is this person comfortable in giving themselves an honest criticism of their own work? If they can’t comfortably find their own faults, they’re not likely to respect when others do it.
* can the person logically entertain an idea without emotionally committing to it? And if they have a bias, do they recognize it? Just with simple stuff: “I’m partial to [insert technology] because I have experience with it” is a great answer, and “[x technology] is what you need to do this” is a red flag.
Very much this - to an extent, you need some deep-divers in places but the non-cohesive teams, I find, end up with a similar performance but lower levels of employee satisfaction.
Having worked in a variety of settings and witnessing varying levels of team performance within those, this is what I, personally, have come to believe is true.
Technical ability and people skills are largely orthogonal. We are just more willing to tolerate poor people skills to get technical ability.
WTF? That's not how it works. The most highly skilled person in the world can also be the nicest person... or a dickhead, just like the nicest person in the world could also have really great skills, or not... there's no necessary relation between the two things.
The opposite is also true for similar reasons - a mediocre individual will be a bad fit in an unusually competent group.
This is almost the definition of cultural fit: people with complementary skills who are all working at more or less the same level.
No one likes outliers because they just don't fit. This has nothing to do with whether or not they're friendly or likeable people.
Not being social is orthogonal to that, and a different problem.
It has everything to do with perceived hierarchy and the level of power and influence they have. They're tolerable as leaders if they have some ability in that direction. But they're intolerable as equals - unless perhaps they can be sidelined into a niche where they won't bother everyone else.
As the unusually competent individual who rarely “fits in”, this hasn’t been my experience. Mutual respect and some humility can bridge any experience gap I’ve encountered. I’m always happy to teach. If someone doesn’t know something, it’s an exciting opportunity to learn.
If someone just doesn’t have the ability, I’ll be gently honest with them and work to find their strengths. Not everyone is cut out for deep work, but everyone has things they are good at.
To do this effectively, I carefully guard my time. I block out at least two 4-hour blocks during the week for my own responsibilities. Usually Tuesday and Thursday at the same time every day.
I manage this with a disability that limits me to 40 hours or less each week. I never overcommit and set expectations early and often. I’ve never been more productive in my career, even before my disability.
Where I live, everyone has this disability :D it's called the law.
That being said; a challenge to your statements:
>[. . .] instead we do what we feel is best for us personally, using a fairly emotional and error prone system of judgment [. . .].
My experience has shown that a very cohesive team who like and appreciate each other, but is made of middle-ability individuals is much, much more productive to my measure as the boss than a team comprised of high-ability, but un-cohesive (non-cohesive?) individuals.
Soft skills and the ability to work well together without judgment are both wildly important. In a team of antagonists, it is difficult, if not impossible, to feel comfortable enough to take chances.
Not sure what the challenge is in that statement, but it's in there somewhere.