Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't

Anything that separates us from the impact our words and actions have on other people has the potential to lead us down a dangerous path.

As much as we like to think that it is our smarts that get us ahead, it is not everything. Our intelligence gives us ideas and instructions. But it is our ability to cooperate that actually helps us get those things done. Nothing of real value on this earth was built by one person without the help of others.

Disposability, another symptom of our excess, was now an industry to be pioneered.

Real, live human interaction is how we feel a part of something, develop trust and have the capacity to feel for others. It is how we innovate.

When a company declares that its cause is to become a global leader or to become a household name or to make the best products, those are selfish desires with no intended value to anyone beyond the company itself (and often not even everyone in the company). Those causes can’t inspire

“When you have people who trust you, they’re going to do a better job for you to earn or keep that trust.” In the more than ten years since the chain-link

The true social benefit of trust must be reciprocal.

We no longer see each other as people; we are now customers, shareholders, employees, avatars, online profiles, screen names, e-mail addresses and expenses to be tracked. The human being really has gone virtual.

Those are the experiences we remember as some of our best days at work. It was not because of the hardship, per se, but because the hardship was shared. It is not the work we remember with fondness, but the camaraderie, how the group came together to get things done.