Trust is the foundation of real teamwork. And so the first dysfunction is a failure on the part of team members to understand and open up to one another. And if that sounds touchy-feely, let me explain, because there is nothing soft about it. It is an absolutely critical part of building a team. In fact, it’s probably the most critical.

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.

A functional team must make the collective results of the group more important to each individual than individual members' goals.

Really great people rarely leave a healthy organization.

Open, frank communication is the lynchpin to teamwork. A fractured team is like a fractured bone; fixing it is always painful and sometimes you have to re-break it to heal it fully - and the re-break always hurts more because it is intentional.

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.

Building a cohesive leadership team is the first critical step that an organization must take if it is to have the best chance at success.