The People You Work With Matter To Your Career Success

I’ve spent a lot of my career working with people. Thousands of them, actually. I’ve hired people, fired people, promoted people, coached people, and spent more hours than I care to admit sitting in conference rooms, airports, restaurants, and hotel bars with people I’ve worked alongside.

Over the years, I’ve learned a lot about what makes a great team, what makes a great company, and what makes a career enjoyable. One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that the people you surround yourself with at work matter a hell of a lot more than you probably realize.

Think about how much time you spend working. If you’re like most professionals, you’re spending somewhere between 40 and 50 hours a week doing your job. That’s more time than you probably spend with your friends, your extended family, or doing the things you actually enjoy. When you start doing the math over the course of a year, it’s pretty incredible how much of your life is spent alongside your coworkers. So, here’s a question worth asking yourself. Do you actually like the people you’re spending all that time with?

I’ve worked with some incredibly talented people throughout my career. People who were brilliant at what they did, who could solve problems faster than anyone else, and who could produce results that most people could only dream about. I’ve also worked with people who were incredibly talented but absolutely miserable to be around. They complained about everything, created unnecessary drama, made simple things complicated, and somehow managed to suck the energy out of every room they walked into. I’ll tell you something I’ve learned over the years. I’d rather work with someone who’s an eight out of ten at their job and a ten out of ten as a human being than someone who’s a ten out of ten at their job and a complete pain in the ass to be around.

There’s something really special about working with people you genuinely enjoy. You look forward to the meetings. You enjoy the conversations. You can laugh about the ridiculous things that happen throughout the day, and when things get difficult, which they inevitably will, you know you’ve got people around you who are going to help figure things out. I’ve been fortunate enough to experience this throughout my career, and some of my favorite professional memories have absolutely nothing to do with the results we produced. They have everything to do with the people I was producing those results alongside.

One of the things I’ve always enjoyed about leadership is the opportunity to build teams. When you’re responsible for hiring people, you’re doing a lot more than filling an open position on an organizational chart. You’re introducing someone into an environment where other people are going to spend a significant amount of their lives. You’re influencing the conversations they’ll have, the relationships they’ll build, and the experiences they’ll remember. I’ve always believed that hiring for character, attitude, and personality is just as important as hiring for capability. You can teach someone a process, a product, or a skill. It’s a whole lot harder to teach someone how to be a decent human being.

I also think we underestimate how much our coworkers influence our overall happiness. You can have a great salary, a fancy title, a beautiful office, and a company with all the benefits in the world, but if you dread interacting with the people around you every day, eventually none of that stuff is going to matter. I’ve watched people leave incredible opportunities because they couldn’t stand their boss or the people they worked with. I’ve also watched people turn down more money to stay somewhere because they genuinely loved their team. There’s a reason people make those decisions, and I think as we get further into our careers, we start to appreciate that reason a whole lot more.

Now, I’m certainly not suggesting that everyone you work with needs to become your best friend. You’re going to encounter different personalities, different opinions, and people who approach situations differently than you do. That’s part of working in any organization, and frankly, some of those differences are what make teams better. You should be able to disagree with someone, challenge their thinking, and have difficult conversations without it becoming personal. But there’s a pretty significant difference between working with someone who challenges you and working with someone who makes your life miserable. One helps you grow. The other makes you question why you got out of bed that morning.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become a lot more intentional about the people I want to spend my time with. I want to work with people who are smart, curious, ambitious, and willing to roll up their sleeves when things get difficult. I want to work with people who can laugh at themselves, admit when they’re wrong, celebrate someone else’s success, and enjoy the journey while we’re building something together. I want to be able to grab dinner with someone after a long day of meetings and genuinely enjoy the conversation without feeling like I’m still sitting in a meeting. That matters to me. In fact, at this stage of my career, it matters more than it ever has.

I'd rather work with someone who's an eight out of ten at their job and a ten out of ten as a human being.

Your career is going to have its ups and downs. You’re going to have great quarters, terrible quarters, promotions, setbacks, unexpected opportunities, and moments where you wonder what the hell you’re doing. Twenty years from now, you’re probably going to forget most of the meetings you attended, the presentations you delivered, and the spreadsheets you spent hours working on. But I can almost guarantee you’re going to remember the people. The ones who made you laugh, the ones who had your back, the ones who challenged you, and the ones who made showing up to work something you actually looked forward to. We spend far too much of our lives working to spend that time surrounded by people we don’t enjoy. Find people you like, build something meaningful together, and have a little fun along the way. That’s a pretty good way to spend a career.