I spent the past three days working with a really good team, a senior group in a large media company. We focused on honing their skills in thinking and acting strategically, and then we made a vision and strategy plan for their whole region for the coming year.

It was such a pleasure.

I’d spoken with all of them on the phone before the session, and had gotten the sense that they were proud of their team and what they had accomplished, and that they genuinely liked working together. One woman told me, “This is the most functional (as opposed to dysfunctional) team I’ve ever worked on.”

Over the course of our time together, I began to understand what makes this team so unusual: they really trust each other. You could see it in every interaction. It was easy for them to disagree, easy for them to learn together, easy for them to come to consensus: all because they each assumed that the rest of the folks in the room were smart, competent, well-intended human beings, for whom they had respect and affection.

When we work to help teams improve, we focus on five elements that characterize high-performance teams: Clear and compelling goals; defined, known and accepted roles; simple and efficient team processes (ways of working together); clear measures of success, to which everyone is held accountable; and consistently high trust. We ask the team to self-assess on each of the five, and then we dig into those elements where they feel they have the most need for improvement, to help them determine practical changes they can make.

Over the years, we’ve discovered that the hardest teams to improve are those that have low trust. If you don’t trust someone, you tend to feel and be self-protective when you’re around them, which makes it hard to get into that open and vulnerable mindset where real learning happens. In other words, it’s a vicious cycle: because they don’t trust each other, it’s harder to be honest and curious enough with each other to learn to trust each other more. We’ve also discovered that trust is the most important of the five elements: even if a team is pretty good on the other four, if they don’t trust each other, they’re probably not going to be very effective.

So, what if you suspect that a team you’re on doesn’t have high trust? Here’s what to look for—and what to do about it:

How do team members treat the leader? On the team I was working with this week, I noticed that everyone on the team felt free to disagree with the leader. His ideas and statements certainly carried weight with the group, and they were respectful in their interactions with him, but fairly often they came to a different conclusion than he had proposed. I noticed that they also felt comfortable joking around with him—even at his expense. Team members being able to be honest and open with the team’s leader is a strong indicator of high team trust. If, on the other hand, it feels dangerous or taboo to push back on the leader of your team, that’s a strong indication of low trust.

Unfortunately, this is the least ‘fixable’ trust problem. With this kind of leader, his or her unwillingness to be confronted makes it very difficult even to bring up the issue—that will also feel dangerous and taboo! If this is how your leader consistently behaves (and it doesn’t look as though your company is going to hold him or her accountable for behaving differently), and you want to work in a high-trust environment, I’d suggest you start looking for another job. Sorry about that.

How does the team respond to new ideas from its members? At one point during our work together, the group had agreed on a strategy and was starting to work on defining the tactics for implementing it. Suddenly, one of the team members backtracked: he questioned the wording of the strategy—he thought it was confusing, and didn’t capture the intention they were trying to communicate. Nobody defended the current state or tried to talk him out of his concern; they all got curious, made sure they understood what he was saying, and then ended up taking a few minutes to improve the strategy in a simple way that felt more resonant to everyone. On high-trust teams, members feel ownership for good outcomes, vs. for their particular point of view. This makes it much easier to come to consensus around the best ideas, no matter whose they are. On low-trust teams, people feel (as I said earlier) self-protective; they focus on promoting their own ideas, because they don’t trust that others will have good ideas and/or that they will get any credit for contributing to the overall outcome if their idea isn’t the one chosen.

This one is more addressable than the first one, especially if the leader sees the need to operate differently. One thing you can do is propose a “listen before disagreeing” rule in meetings. Often if people hear one another out before they start defending the status quo (their idea), they can begin to see the value of their colleagues’ ideas. This can start a virtuous cycle (as opposed to a vicious cycle) of trust: I see that your idea is good, I start to trust the quality of your thinking more, I then accept your idea, you start to trust my intentions toward you more, etc.

How much does the team enjoy spending time together? At the end of our session this afternoon, one woman said to me, “You know, on Sunday night, when I thought about this meeting, I found I was really looking forward to having three days together—we’re all so busy, we just don’t get to see each other that much.” Being with people you trust feels good: it’s relaxing, and positive things tend to happen. Being with people you don’t trust feels bad: there’s the aforementioned self-protectiveness—you feel as though you have to be on your guard, watch what you say and do. It’s kind of exhausting, and not much fun. Low-trust teams tend to make their interactions as brief and transactional as possible: get in and out, and on to something more rewarding. As a result, there’s little or no fresh thinking, mutual support, or break-through work…those things take time and ease with each other.

This one is also addressable—again, if the leader is on board. Often this trust problem arises because team members simply don’t know each other well enough. If the folks on the team are competent and reasonably well-intended toward one another, you can quite often solve this problem by creating opportunities for them to spend more time together focusing on something other than immediate tasks. This time together could be focused on work (a long-term planning session, for instance, or a brainstorming session about the brand), or it could be purely social (having dinner together, going on an outing of some kind). It’s even better to do both (a morning of work-focused brainstorming followed by lunch in a nice restaurant, where people can talk).

Are team members worthy of your trust? One of the main eroders of trust I’ve seen over the years is simple lack of competence. The team I worked with this week clearly respected each others’ expertise, and all felt that everyone on the team was highly capable. This is another place where trust is so relaxing: if I’m not having to worry about whether you’re doing your job, I can focus on doing my job. On low-trust teams, there’s a a lot of second-guessing and shadow systems—it’s inefficient, exhausting and demoralizing.

Addressing this one requires bravery on your part (and openness on the leader’s part). If you see that someone on the team isn’t doing his or her job well, gather information about the negative impact that’s having on results, and share it with the person. If he or she isn’t open to hearing about it, you need to share it with your boss (not in a throwing-the-person-under-the-bus way, but rather in a team-problem-to-be-solved way). It’s astonishing the positive impact on trust (and results) you can get by improving or removing one negative or less-than stellar person on a team.

As you think about whether your team or teams are high-trust, and what to do about it if they’re not, remember…it is possible. Teams like the one I worked with this week do exist. You can find or make one for yourself, if that’s what you truly want.