Ask any engineering leader what makes a successful hire, and you’ll likely hear about technical skills, years of experience, and prestigious company names on a resume. For years, I believed the same thing. If a developer came from an enterprise company with a reputation for engineering excellence, they moved to the top of my list.
I was building good teams. But I wasn’t building great ones.
The turning point came when I realized that the frameworks I’d relied on – the ones focused on credentials and hard skills – were actually limiting our potential. The teams that truly excelled shared characteristics that had nothing to do with where someone went to university or what was listed on their LinkedIn profile.
Over 10 years of building fintech teams, I’ve learned that truly high-performing teams operate on different principles and have some distinguishing factors.
The Six Characteristics That Define Truly High-Performing Teams
1. Strong Personal Interest in the Product
The first and most powerful characteristic is genuine, specific interest in what you’re building. For developers, this might be professional curiosity – someone fascinated by real-time data processing or AI challenges. Or it might be personal – an engineer who personally invests in markets, bringing natural enthusiasm to a trading platform, or someone passionate about social impact working on a donations system.
This matters because strong personal interest is self-sustaining. You don’t have to constantly motivate team members who are genuinely excited about what they’re developing.
2. Non-Professional Connections Between Team Members
High-performing teams have relationships that extend beyond work. I’m not saying everyone needs to be best friends but having shared hobbies, similar backgrounds, and common interests creates additional connections that make collaboration smoother. The more connections that exist across the team, the better.
3. Domain Knowledge
In fintech specifically, domain knowledge is non-negotiable. If you’re working on capital markets projects, people need to know what derivatives, options, and futures actually mean. This knowledge needs to be distributed across the team. The more team members who understand the industry and market, the better. When everyone has baseline domain expertise, you eliminate the massive overhead of constant translation and explanation.
This is critical in fintech because the domain is complex and specialized. You can’t just pick it up casually. The time required to gain this knowledge is substantial, and if you’re spending that time during the project, you’re not performing at your highest level.
4. Critical Thinking Skills
This is one of my non-negotiable hiring criteria. I’m talking about the ability to think deeply about problems from multiple angles, to question assumptions, and to draw conclusions based on thorough analysis. The person should be able to go beyond a specific task and understand how their work fits into broader team goals and business objectives.
Usually, I test this skill during interviews by giving candidates situational tasks with minimal detail. People with strong critical thinking will ask extensive questions, gather information, and only then synthesize conclusions. If they jump straight to solutions, it shows a weak critical thinking potential.
5. Business Orientation
Many technically excellent teams fall short here: they focus on task completion rather than business results. Business-oriented team members evaluate success based on whether what they built delivered real value.
During the interviews, ask candidates: “What does a successful project mean to you?” Some will talk about completing tasks and hitting deadlines. Others will talk about outcomes – value delivered to users, business metrics that improved, and problems solved for clients. The distinction matters enormously.
6. Self-Reflection Culture
When results don’t meet expectations in high-performing teams, people’s first question is: “What did I do, or not do, that affected this result?” They look at their own actions first because that’s what they can actually control.
This culture has to be built intentionally. People naturally resist being told they underperformed. But when they arrive at those realizations themselves through honest self-assessment, it drives real improvement.
What I Got Wrong About Hiring
For years, I prioritized hiring people from larger, more prestigious companies. I was partially right and significantly wrong.
The problem is that in large companies, roles are narrower. A project manager at a major enterprise tech firm might excel at 20% of what we need them to do. Meanwhile, someone from a smaller company had already proven they could operate across the full range of responsibilities.
I learned that company pedigree is nice to have, but it’s definitely not a must-have.
My other major evolution was moving from emphasizing hard skills to prioritizing mindset. I started focusing on different questions: Do this person’s eyes light up when they talk about their work? Are they willing to step outside their defined role when situations demand it? Can they adapt to rapidly changing circumstances?
Building the Culture That Sustains Performance
Hiring the right people is only the beginning. Here’s what makes them actually perform:
1) Transparency and ease. Everyone should understand where the project stands, what the risks are, what wins and setbacks we’ve encountered. Combined with an easy-going atmosphere – humor and lightness even during tough moments. When the atmosphere is tense, people become risk-averse. When there’s space for levity, people stay creative.
2) Clear goals. Every person needs to understand what we’re trying to achieve, why it matters, and where we are right now. This seems basic, but it requires constant communication. People might know their individual tasks, but can they explain how their work contributes to the overarching goal? That’s the leader’s job to clarify and reinforce.
3) Data-driven feedback: Good feedback is built on specific, measurable information with both qualitative and quantitative metrics. “You’re doing great” is useless. Instead, focus on very specific outcomes of your team members’ work.
4) Eliminate Micromanagement: Beyond the junior level, we’ve deliberately eliminated micromanagement. We have goals, we have tasks, everyone knows what success looks like – now go make it happen. Then we’ll review results and adjust. This only works if you’ve hired the right people and built the right culture.
The One Thing I Wish I Knew Earlier
Stop optimizing for credentials and start optimizing for curiosity and ownership.
The people who’ve made the biggest impact on my teams were those who asked the best questions, took ownership of problems, and stayed curious even after years in the industry.
The teams that will define the next decade of fintech will be built on passion, clear communication, and cultures where people challenge themselves more than anyone else challenges them. And that’s what separates high-performing teams from good teams.
