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.

Team members who are not genuinely open with one another about their mistakes and weaknesses make it impossible to build a foundation for trust.

Achieving vulnerability-based trust (where team members have overcome their need for invulnerability) is difficult because in the course of career advancement and education, most successful people learn to be competitive with their peers, and protective of their reputations. It is a challenge for them to turn those instincts off for the good of the team, but that is exactly what is required.

The team you belong to must come ahead of the team you lead: this is putting team results (e.g., organizational needs) ahead of individual agendas (e.g., the team or division you lead, your ego, your need for recognition, your career development, etc.) Confidentiality is respected downward more than it is respected upward. Organizational alignment is a direct result of this hierarchy (if it were the other way around, organizational alignment would be very difficult to achieve).

Like a good marriage, trust on a team is never complete; it must be maintained over time.

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

Really great people rarely leave a healthy organization.