Sometimes, you get challenged with a question that opens up your goals—that reaches right into your why? An editor asked me recently, “What’s the most rewarding aspect of writing about leadership?” When I wrote my first book, Never Eat Alone, I had people from around the world tell me that it changed their life. When I think about the ideas in my new bestseller, Never Lead Alone, I want to see a world where teamship becomes a core human competency for living in an ever more diverse, fast-changing, and interdependent world. For the last twenty years, I’ve been coaching teams through ten fundamental shifts over six-month periods with transformational results. My vision is to see teamship practices spread beyond my direct coaching work. I want to see more good teams become great ones—and it’s within their reach.
The Teamship Revolution
For decades, business has elevated the role of the leader. But our research with more than 3,000 teams reveals that traditional leadership approaches leave billions of dollars of value on the table. What we need instead is “teamship” – the ultimate competitive advantage driven by two forces: co-elevation behaviors (teammates committed to lifting each other up) and modern collaboration practices and tools, including AI, that accelerate and enable bolder and more inclusive innovation.
The data is compelling: When teams adopt these new ways of working, we see a 79% increase in candor, a 46% increase in collaboration, and a 44% increase in accountability. Yet only 15% of teams achieve this standard today.
Understanding Co-Elevation: The New Social Contract
Co-elevation is the bedrock principle on which teamship is stands. It represents a fundamental reimagining of how teams work together. It’s not just collaboration when convenient or cooperation under direction—it’s a deep commitment among teammates to lift each other up while achieving their mission. Think of it as a new social contract where team members agree that they will not withhold the truth, will not be conflict-avoidant, and will share what they think and feel about what’s happening because they give a damn about the team and each other’s performance and well-being.
Our research shows this behavioral shift has profound implications. In traditional teams, individuals often hold back critical insights for fear of overstepping boundaries or creating conflict. Under co-elevation, teammates recognize that allowing a peer to struggle or fail without offering valuable perspective isn’t respectful, it’s a breach of their commitment to mutual success.
This manifests in specific behavioral changes:
- Moving from “I won’t speak up against a peer” to “I won’t let my peer fail”
- Shifting from individual problem-solving to collective innovation
- Transforming feedback from a hierarchical duty to a peer-to-peer responsibility
- Converting competition for resources into shared ownership of enterprise outcomes
Ten Shifts to Transform Your Team
The transformation to teamship requires fundamental shifts in how teams operate:
- Shifting from hub-and-spoke to the leader to Co-elevation of the team – awakening team members to the hope and possibility of a new way of being and a heightened level of performance
- Shifting from conflict avoidance to candor – moving to an agreement to care enough about each other’s success that nothing will be withheld that might be valuable to achieving better outcomes
- Shifting from serendipitous relationships to purposeful team bond-building – engineering trust and true understanding among peers rather than relying on chance encounters
- Shifting from individual to team resilience – accepting the job of owning and lifting up each other’s energy and sustaining team resilience
- Shifting to elevate collaboration through broader co-creation and meeting shifting – moving to a bolder and more inclusive approach that leads to greater diversity of thinking
- Shifting to agile as the new operating system – adopting the only viable operating system to navigate today’s volatility and constantly adapt to bold initiatives
- Shifting from a culture of scarce praise to peer celebration and recognition – making recognition come abundantly from peers, not just leaders
- Shifting to diversity, inclusion, and belonging – turning unspoken divides into bonding and productive conversations
- Shifting to a team of seekers who are each other’s coaches – accepting teammates as coaches and holding each other accountable
- Shifting from silos to alignment – achieving what most fail to achieve and sustain: true and constant alignment even through volatility
The Power of Practices
One of my favorite sayings captures a fundamental truth about transformation: “We don’t think our way into new ways of acting, we act our way into new ways of thinking.” This is why teamship isn’t about manifestos or mission statements. It is about specific, targeted high-return practices that turn abstract cultural goals into clear daily assignments.
These practices include everything from “Stress Testing” initiatives to uncover unseen risks, to “Personal Professional Check-ins” that build trust, to “Sprint Reviews” that create peer-to-peer accountability. They make culture change a clear assignment rather than an abstract goal.
A Movement Gaining Momentum
The shift from leadership to teamship is gaining traction across industries and organizational types. At Cisco, Executive Vice President and Chief People, Policy & Purpose Officer Fran Katsoudas has engineered what she calls the “magic sauce” of team resilience, transforming resilience from an individual burden to a team sport through purposeful practices that grow heightened concern for each other’s well-being.
Under CEO Tarang Amin’s leadership, e.l.f. Beauty has transformed from a small internet startup selling $1 cosmetics to an $11 billion disruptor that’s shaking up an industry dominated by L’Oreal and Estee Lauder. The secret isn’t just their business model – it’s their commitment to teamship practices. Every employee has an open invitation to shape the future of the product roadmap, creating a culture of constant feedback where everyone is committed to each other’s professional growth. The results speak for themselves: in fiscal year 2023, net sales rose 48% to $578.8 million, marking an extraordinary 84-fold increase in shareholder value over the past decade.
At Pacific Gas & Electric, CEO Patti Poppe brought a bold internal ethos to “lead with love” – putting humanity, empathy, and relationships at the heart of operational culture. This approach helped galvanize the team for the ambitious task of burying 10,000 miles of power lines to reduce wildfire risk. The company has invested over $23 billion in technologies and tools while making team “affinity”— or care for one another—a measurable metric of success.
At Salesforce, President and Chief Revenue Officer Miguel Milano demonstrates how co-elevation can transform even traditionally competitive functions like sales. Rather than having individual negotiations about quotas, Milano’s senior leaders collaborate to reach decisions that serve both individual and collective goals. “I trust my team,” Milano explains. “I want them to feel that this has been a joint decision.” This approach has contributed to Salesforce’s remarkable growth, with revenues up 11% to $34.9 billion in fiscal year 2024.
These leaders exemplify how combining co-elevation behaviors with modern collaborative tools and processes can deliver breakthrough performance. Their success demonstrates that teamship isn’t just a theoretical framework – it’s a proven path to organizational transformation.
Would you like me to refine this section or add additional examples?
Transformation in Action
Consider e.l.f. Beauty’s journey. Under CEO Tarang Amin’s leadership, the company has transformed from a small internet startup selling $1 cosmetics to an $11 billion disruptor that’s shaking up an industry dominated by L’Oreal and Estee Lauder. The secret isn’t just their business model – it’s their commitment to teamship practices. Every employee has an open invitation to shape the future of the product roadmap, creating a culture of constant feedback where everyone is committed to each other’s professional growth. The results speak for themselves: in fiscal year 2023, net sales rose 48% to $578.8 million, marking an extraordinary 84-fold increase in shareholder value over the past decade.
I want people to know what teamship and co-elevation are—and understand they don’t just apply to business: the idea of winning together as a team. There is every chance that you and your colleagues are members of a Parent-Teacher Association, church groups, non-profits, and as contributors to those organizations, you can begin to transform their efficacy. What if, at a micro-level, everyone decided that co-elevation was the essence of how they want to parent? What if the battling of a teenager turned into an understanding of two individuals? This happened to me. This work really started to define how I interacted with my children. It started to define how I interacted with friends, and suddenly, the hurdle of what a successful relationship was to me changed. It became a set of values that I wanted to live my life by. That’s why I decided to publish these practices and give everyone the same access as my coaches and clients have had to these shifts and practices – to have a greater impact on the world of business and society—to join a movement.