Building a strong team is both possible and remarkably simple. But it is painfully difficult.
Trust is knowing that when a team member does push you, they’re doing it because they care about the team.
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.
Remember teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.
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.
The key ingredient to building trust is not time. It is courage.
A core value is something you’re willing to get punished for.
An organization has integrity – is healthy – when it is whole, consistent, and complete, that is, when its management, operations, strategy, and culture fit together and make sense.
People will walk through fire for a leader that’s true and human.
I’ve become absolutely convinced that the seminal difference between successful companies and mediocre or unsuccessful ones has little, if anything, to do with what they know or how smart they are; it has everything to do with how healthy they are.
Most of the CEO’s who fail think they will find the solution to their problems in Finance, Marketing, Strategic Planning, etc., but they don’t look for the solution to their problems inside themselves.
Really great people rarely leave a healthy organization.
Team members who are not genuinely open with one another about their mistakes and weaknesses make it impossible to build a foundation for trust.
The only real payoff for leadership is eternal.
All things to all people is nothing to everyone.
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.
The vast majority of organizations today have more than enough intelligence, experience and knowledge to be successful. What they lack is organizational health.
Success comes only for those groups that overcome the all-too-human behavioral tendencies that corrupt teams and breed dysfunctional politics within them.
As a leader, you’re probably not doing a good job unless your employees can do a good impression of you when you’re not around.
Team members have to be focused on the collective good of the team. Too often, they focus their attention on their department, their budget, their career aspirations, their egos.