Emmanuelle looks around the room at the sales team. She’s new at the company and still learning about the relationship dynamics between her coworkers. Tensions are running high as it was just announced that the team didn’t make their sales goal for the second month in a row. Not that she’s surprised.

This past month, the marketing assistant was asked to create a pitch deck from scratch for a potential client in Canada—a large hospitality brand. Emmanuelle found out later that he’d never created a pitch deck before yet wouldn’t ask anyone for help. The marketing manager knew that he wasn’t very experienced yet was too focused on meeting her personal goals to offer guidance.

The major blow came when the marketing assistant waited until the day before the account director was flying to Canada to meet the client, to hand over a few poorly organized slides that covered only a fraction of the information needed. Not to mention that the hyper-analytical language he used that wasn’t appropriate for a luxury hotel brand.

The poor account director had to pull an all-nighter to get the deck done himself, before pitching with red eyes on zero sleep. The result? That client is no longer a potential.

Why is This Team So Dysfunctional?

Emmanuelle has been racking her brain trying to figure out how to navigate this new playing field. What’s going on with this team? Why is it so dysfunctional?

Just because the necessity of teamwork has been preached to us since childhood doesn’t mean we’re inherently good at it—or even like it for that matter. Working with other people can be challenging, even more so in the workplace when stakes are high. So now that we’re off the little league field, what can we, as working adults, do to have a positive and winning team? According to Patrick Lencioni, there are five core areas where dysfunction can be seen in teams: lack of trust, fear of conflict, avoidance of commitment, lack of accountability and not results-focused.

In Emmanuelle’s case, her team has a major trust deficit. Teams that don’t have trust don’t function well. Let’s take a look at the importance of trust, what teams with and without trust look like, and how we can start building trust in our own teams starting today.

Great Teams Have Trust

Here are some facts about teams and trust:

• Interaction associates & human capital institute study shows high performing organizations have higher levels of trust than low performing organizations
• Interaction associates & human capital institute study shows high performing organizations have higher levels of trust than low performing organizations

So the studies tell us high performing teams have trust, but what exactly does a team with trust look like versus a team without trust?

Teams with and Without Trust: What They Look Like

Teams that don’t have trust:

• Conceal weaknesses and mistakes from each other
• Hesitate to ask for help or feedback
• Jump to conclusions about other’s intentions
• Don’t offer help outside of their own areas of responsibility
• Fail to recognize and tap into one another’s skills

Teams that have trust:

• Admit weaknesses and mistakes, ask for help
• Give one another the benefit of the doubt
• Take risks in offering feedback and assistance
• Accept questions and input about their work
• Appreciate and tap into one another’s skills
• Offer and accept apologies
• Look forward to opportunities to work as a group

From $200 a Week to a $30 Billion Valuation: What Airbnb Can Teach Us About Trust