I've been part of building multiple software groups, most of them based on some version of "find the smartest people".

It's a horrible and toxic idea.

The past five years my ambition has been "build the kindest tech group".

That has led not only to smarts, but resilience.

All of those prior efforts did end up with some fantastic people, most of them kind.

The people were fine. But the idea itself causes friction and doesn't help those smart people do their best work or become their best self.

When you focus on smart you easily end up feeding the need to right. That usually means you end up "logic"ing people into submission.

Needing to be right, because you're smart, impedes growing righter.

It also block you from moving on comfortably with ambiguity.

Personally one huge hill to climb as a leader was understanding that having things my way (because I'm very smart) wasn't at all as important as people and teams finding their way.

I had to learn to be delighted by surprise. To say "cool, that's not what I would have done"

I had to give up on knowing everything and needing things to be like I imagined them.

That's really scary if you grew up in this game being praised for knowing the things.

When you let go of having to be right about all the things.

You open the door to trusting that others can also be right.

You also in a sense gain freedom.
The freedom to be imperfect. The freedom to learn. The freedom to ask questions, genuinely.