Every great team she has ever seen shares one trait: they are comfortable with discomfort. Claudia Barriga-Larriviere has spent nearly 20 years building people and culture inside startups and global enterprises — and she thinks most of the AI conversation is quietly dodging the hard, human questions. In this episode of Building Tech Teams, James MacDonald sits down with Claudia Barriga-Larriviere — people-and-culture leader and founder of Startup Flamingo — for a practitioner-to-practitioner conversation on how capable people actually build teams. They get into self-awareness as a muscle rather than a gift, why Australia's love of harmony quietly kills direct feedback, and the difference between a team that is genuinely high-performing and one that is just stressed and running fast off a cliff together. Then it turns to AI — not as weather to brace for, but as a tool you have to point somewhere. Are your people more productive, or just faster? What do you lose when you automate the uncomfortable parts of the job — the feedback loop, the one-on-one, the human connection — and who is a flattened, agent-run org actually built for? Claudia makes the case that AI should augment an already good team, that you have to build that team first, and that the leaders winning this moment are the ones asking better questions instead of racing to be first. It's a conversation about discomfort, storytelling, balanced teams, and keeping the human in a human organisation.

Chapters

0:35 — The one trait every great team shares: comfortable with discomfort (plus self-awareness)
1:46 — Is self-awareness born or built? Temperament, empathy and psychological safety
3:28 — Why leaders dodge the hard conversation
3:59 — Cutting her teeth on GFC redundancies: directness and an American education
6:04 — Australia's harmony problem vs direct feedback
6:43 — What "high performance" actually means (and what it doesn't)
7:42 — The feedback loops we outsource because they're uncomfortable
9:17 — Protect the plan, or chase the Nazis? An Indiana Jones lesson for leaders
11:18 — Read fiction: storytelling, empathy and depersonalising feedback
14:35 — Praise the person, critique the work — and when to call it out
16:55 — Overconfident founders and the case for yin-and-yang teams
18:39 — Powers of Two: debunking the lone genius (Lincoln, Lennon & McCartney, Jobs & Woz)
23:13 — Hire for change, not to fit in
24:20 — The maths of a founding team: builder, organiser, learner
26:41 — Glue vs grease: does your team need cohesion or speed?
28:53 — Project or person? The metabolism of a team
29:47 — AI is a tool, not the weather
33:16 — The narrative vs the technology — and the Tickle Me Elmo problem
41:14 — Slow down to speed up: when the market rewards layoffs
42:32 — The CPO's dilemma: more productive, or just faster?
45:04 — When is the risk no longer worth it? (You're paying by the token)
48:21 — Longevity isn't impact: off-ramps and the retention vanity metric
49:52 — Is AI making the manager redundant?
52:54 — The automatic ball thrower: what you lose when you automate connection
58:31 — AI augments a great team — but you have to build that team first
59:18 — Departing advice: play the tape to the end, and be in the business you're in
1:03:32 — Purpose over "who gets there first" — go touch some grass

About the Guest

Claudia Barriga-Larriviere is a people-and-culture leader with nearly 20 years building teams across startups and global enterprises, and the founder of Startup Flamingo.

Links

Claudia Barriga-Larriviere — Startup Flamingo: startupflamingo.com
James MacDonald — LinkedIn · NTP Talent (NewyTechPeople): ntptalent.com.au

Hosted by James MacDonald, Managing Director of NTP Talent.

Building Tech Teams is produced by Day One®, trusted partners in the technology space and the production partner behind Blackbird Ventures' Wild Hearts. Sister shows include First Cheque, Oversubscribed and In The Blink of AI. Episodes are cross-promoted across the network.