Working in a team can ensure that the sum of the talents present is surpassed. This can be hugely motivating for the team members. Unfortunately, the reverse is also true: working in a team can be frustrating and lead to worse results than what you would expect from the team members.

Lencioni’s model is built as a pyramid where the underlying level must be completed in full first, before working on the next phase. In addition, the properties of the lower levels are very important and more difficult to achieve than the higher levels. In many organizations the emphasis is on the responsibilities of the team members and the final result, while according to Lencioni the hard (business) result is achieved only when sufficient work has been done on the (soft) emotional human value, like trust.