You have to build trust among team members so that people feel free to admit what they don't know, make mistakes, ask for help if they need it, apologize when necessary, and not hold back their opinions.
Interpretation
Building trust in a team encourages openness and collaboration.
This quote emphasizes the importance of trust within a team, highlighting that when team members feel secure, they are more likely to be honest about their limitations, seek assistance, acknowledge errors, and share their thoughts openly. Such an environment fosters growth, accountability, and effective communication, leading to a stronger, more united team dynamic.
In practice
In a team-building workshop, you might use this quote to illustrate the importance of trust.
I know that any group of people can become a team if they do the right things, but I came to realize over time that if you acquire or develop the right kind of people, that process of building a team is going to be much more effective and easier.
The truth is that intelligence, knowledge, and domain expertise are vastly overrated as the driving forces behind competitive advantage and sustainable success.
The kind of people that all teams need are people who are humble, hungry, and smart: humble being little ego, focusing more on their teammates than on themselves. Hungry, meaning they have a strong work ethic, are determined to get things done, and contribute any way they can. Smart, meaning not intellectually smart but inner personally smart.
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.
Teamwork remains a sustainable competitive advantage that has been largely untapped because it is hard to measure (teamwork impacts the outcome of an organization in such comprehensive and invasive ways that it's virtually impossible to isolate it as a single variable) and because it is extremely hard to achieve (it requires levels of courage and discipline that few executives possess) - ironically, building a strong team is very simple (it doesn't require masterful insights or tactics).
Clients don't expect perfection from the service providers they hire, but they do expect honesty and transparency. There is no better way to demonstrate this than by acknowledging when a mistake has been made and humbly apologizing for it.
This assumption of Negro leadership in the ghetto, then, must not be confined to matters of religion, education, and social uplift; it must deal with such fundamental forces in life as make these things possible.
Over the years I have become convinced that we learn best - and change - from hearing stories that strike a chord within us ... Those in leadership positions who fail to grasp or use the power of stories risk failure for their companies and for themselves.
The legislator learns that when you talk a lot, you get in trouble. You have to listen a lot to make deals.
If you're a set of guys looking to start a company, think about women you could team up with - they will see things differently and solve problems you didn't even realize you had.
Earn the right to be heard by listening to others. Seek to understand a situation before making judgments about it.
The day has to come when it's not a surprise that a woman has a powerful position.
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