Members of trusting teams accept questions and input about their areas or responsibility, appreciate and tap into one another's skills and experiences, and look forward to meetings and other opportunities to work as a group.

If you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time.

Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare.

The vast majority of organizations today have more than enough intelligence, experience and knowledge to be successful. What they lack is organizational health.

If the CEO's behavior is 95 per cent healthy while the rest of the organization is only 50 per cent sound, it is more effective to focus on that crucial and leveraged 5 per cent that makes up the reminder of the CEO's behavior.

Trust is the foundation of real teamwork (there is nothing touchy-feely about this).

As difficult as it is to build a team, it is not complicated. In fact, keeping it simple is critical, whether you run the executive staff at a multi-national company, a small department within a larger organization, or even if you are merely a member of a team that needs improvement.