I think one part of the trick is that you find high-functioning people but in less-overlapping domains.
In one of the more successful teams I was on back in the day, I was a JavaScript developer and was paired with some Flash developers on a project where we had a lot of back and forth calls crossing the boundary. I'd ask them to implement a way for me to call their logic and then they'd ask me for a way to call my logic. We were both super-responsive to the other because neither side had much interest in imposing our preferences in the other's very distinct domain.
On the flip side, we were both quite capable in our own right and thus able to agree on the overall architecture pretty quickly. With some people, you'd probe, "it seems like you should have a way to do X, right?" and they'd respond immediately, "that's definitely not possible, you'll have to work around that". So you'd push, "do you want to check?" but they'd decline so you'd take it upon yourself to dig in and point them to relevant documentation. With these guys, their response to the first question was, "Of course we can do that and you can do Y for us, right?".
In one of the more successful teams I was on back in the day, I was a JavaScript developer and was paired with some Flash developers on a project where we had a lot of back and forth calls crossing the boundary. I'd ask them to implement a way for me to call their logic and then they'd ask me for a way to call my logic. We were both super-responsive to the other because neither side had much interest in imposing our preferences in the other's very distinct domain.
On the flip side, we were both quite capable in our own right and thus able to agree on the overall architecture pretty quickly. With some people, you'd probe, "it seems like you should have a way to do X, right?" and they'd respond immediately, "that's definitely not possible, you'll have to work around that". So you'd push, "do you want to check?" but they'd decline so you'd take it upon yourself to dig in and point them to relevant documentation. With these guys, their response to the first question was, "Of course we can do that and you can do Y for us, right?".