A Key Ingredient of Teamwork

I've been seeing a lot of teamwork lately around NSM.  First there were the past few nights at the Element where the staff and volunteers came together to make some very cool creative elements happen.  Then there was Night Shift where our leader participation was amazing.  And then at Shift the middle school students put together 189 boxes of food for the Turkey Outreach.  All this got me thinking about the ingredients of teamwork.

Tonight as I was watching "The Italian Job" I was wondering why Donald Sutherland invited Edward Norton into his highly effective team.  Everyone else in the team was so loyal and they worked together so well but Norton was sketchy.  And of course he sabotaged the team. 

Trust is an absolute key ingredient for teamwork.  When there is a lack of trust team members won't try anything extraordinary for fear of criticism or betrayal.  Where there is fear there is not trust.  The fact is when we try extraordinary things we are bound to experience some failures.  But a good team will embrace those failures as learning experiences.

We at the NSM staff (Phillip, AJ, Brian and myself) have recently grown tremendously in the area of trust and teamwork.  I don't know if I can pinpoint when it started to happen (maybe taking a trip together for the Catalyst Conference?) but these things take time.  There are certain things that only time can accomplish and I know that trust is one of them.  Time alone doesn't do it though.  It also takes humility to share the success and failures.