There are only a few ingredients in French bread: flour, water, yeast, and salt.

Which does not mean it’s easy to make.

The opposite, actually.

A lot can go wrong.  Water that’s just a bit too warm will kill the yeast.  In the end, you can put all the ingredients together but won’t produce anything that resembles bread.

It will be flat.

Which is why, when I shared the key ingredients of high performing teams at a strategic leadership session this week, I also shared the most common things that can go wrong.

A deficit of trust is at the top of the list.

Here are the components of trust:

1. You do what you say you’re going to do. You deliver and show up.  Your actions tell me that you are reliable.
2. When you screw up, you fess up. On the rare occasion that you don’t do what you say you’re going to do (because, after all, at one time or another,  we all drop the ball in some way), you immediately take responsibility and ask to make it right.
3. You behave as if we are on the same team, because you believe and understand that we are. You don’t hoard information or credit.  Differences exist but you don’t use them to sabotage our work or me.

Having the right ingredients is essential to producing excellence.  But just as important is the absence of the things that flatten it.

To have a mutually exploratory conversation about working with me in 2017: sarah@sarah-levitt.com

I work with CEOs and senior executives and their teams to take the ingredients they have and make them extraordinary.

If you need an excuse to see one of the most beautiful places on the planet, I’ll be speaking on Magnificent Leadership™ in Banff, Canada at the Ignite Leadership Summit on March 14.   If you’re leading through change and want to come out on the other side, go here to register.

And join me in sunny Orlando, FL next month where I’ll be speaking at the American Bankers Association annual conference on Magnificent Leadership™ and Building High Performing Teams.

For more on my keynote topics: you can go here.