The future of society will be driven by teamship, not leadership — the value created by the interdependency of talent, not by an individual — and it’s time for a new social contract for teams.    

Want to get something done? Form a squad, a troupe —a team. The basic organising principle of a productive society has always been a team. But today, teams are stuck. Twenty years ago, we were told there were five dysfunctions of a team. In a more volatile, networked, diverse, and inclusive world than the one Pat Lencioni wrote about all those years ago, we’re still settling for 10% when we should be shooting for 10x. The result? Teams are among the least curated and poorest performing attributes of business and society today.      

We’ve over-indexed on leadership and all-but-ignored the value that lies in the interdependency of talent in teams. We need to think about the social contract of teamship—not leadership—to solve the most pressing problems we face as the world continues to become more complex. When teams commit to adopting highly-collaborative behaviors that nurture psychological safety and build trust, we create a dynamic of constant and unbounded co-creation where each interdependent team member shares responsibility for crossing the finish line together.