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

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.

When there is trust, conflict becomes nothing but the pursuit of truth, an attempt to find the best possible answer.

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

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.

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.

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