Never Lead Alone: The Relationship Revolution That Powers Elite Teams

For years, I almost turned my back on by bestselling book, Never Eat Alone. Despite the book's global success, I was reluctant to be labeled "the networking guy." I always felt my mission was different: cracking the code of how to create better organizations, transform business and transform the world. But 20 years after writing that first book, and after coaching thousands of teams, I've finally recognized there's a throughline—a consistent thread—in all of my research. Work today happens fluidly in networked teams, and the performance of these teams is powered by purposeful relationships.

The Leadership Trap

Yet for decades, we've grown an elevated respect and admiration for the image of a great leader. This focus on leadership has caused us to under-curate one of the most valuable opportunities for accelerating business outcomes: the power of purposefully engineered relationships within and among teams. In teams with strong relationships, we see a 79% increase in candor, a 46% increase in collaboration, and a 44% increase in accountability. Unfortunately, this is a standard that only 15% of teams achieve today. Without trust built through relationships, there can be no candor or peer-to-peer accountability. Teams that lack strong relationships miss bold innovations and expose organizations to unnecessary risks. We have over-indexed on leadership and left billions of dollars of shareholder value on the table: nurturing the relationships and inderdependencies of teams.

The Rise of Teamship

This insight lies at the heart of my new book, Never Lead Alone, which is published next month. The world's best teams operate through what I call "teamship"—the ultimate competitive advantage driven by two forces:

1. Co-elevation behaviors - teammates committed to lifting each other up and pushing each other higher
2. Modern collaboration practices and tools that enable bolder innovation and faster decision-making

While traditional companies struggle with siloed organizations and slow decision-making, the most disruptive companies are being built by founder teams that have teamship behaviors born into their everyday practices.

Making the Shift to Teamship

The transformation to teamship requires ten fundamental shifts in team behavior:

1. Cracking the Code of Teamship: Shifting from Hub-and-Spoke to the Leader to Co-Elevation of the Team
2. Shifting from Conflict Avoidance to Candor
3. Shifting from Serendipitous Relationships to Purposeful Team Bond-Building
4. Shifting from Individual to Team Resilience
5. Shifting to Elevate Collaboration: Broader and Bolder Co-Creation Through Meeting Shifting
6. Shifting to Agile as the New Operating System for Your Team
7. Shifting from a Culture of Scarce Praise to Peer Celebration and Recognition
8. Shifting to Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging
9. Shifting to a Team of Seekers Who Are Each Other’s Coaches
10. Shifting from Silos to Alignment

But behavior change doesn't happen through manifestos or mission statements. The breakthrough in our research is discovering that these shifts can be achieved through simple, targeted high-return practices – daily and weekly team habits that make culture change a clear assignment rather than an abstract goal.

These practices have been battle-tested with hundreds of teams across Fortune 500 companies, fast-growing startups, and governments worldwide. They range from "Stress Testing" initiatives to uncover unseen risks, to "Personal Professional Check-ins" that build trust and psychological safety, to "Sprint Reviews" that create peer-to-peer accountability.

A Movement for Modern Teams

Never Lead Alone isn't just a book—it's a practical roadmap for extracting billions in shareholder value from the interdependency of talent in and among teams. The world needs more than theories; it needs high-return practices that any team can adopt to achieve breakthrough performance.

We can all achieve disproportionately extraordinary things with a strong team of committed souls around us. The question is: Are you ready to join the movement to transform how teams work?