When information is scarce, which is a common occurrence, the dominant, fast thinking system in our brain operates as a machine for jumping to conclusions.

The brain tends to rely on readily available information in making judgments and decisions, not the information you actually need.

You cannot help dealing with the limited information you have as if it were all there is to know. You build the best possible story from the information available to you, and if it is a good story, you believe it.

The busier people are, the more they have on their minds, and the more time constraints they face, the more likely they will be to rely on the dominant, fast thinking system in the brain ... and to make costly errors.

Willingness precedes skill when it comes to collaboration.

Employee engagement is ranked as one of the top three human capital priorities by almost 40% of companies.

Employee engagement will play a critical role for organizations actively looking to gain competitive advantage in both short- and long-term time horizons.

87% of C-Suite executives recognize that disengaged employees is one of the biggest threats to their business.

A work group consists of individual people. To achieve high-performing teams, you must treat them as individual people. Individuals are engaged when they feel like their effort and opinions are valued and they are rewarded for their individual contribution.

When assembling a virtual team, managers often assume that people will mainly be interested in what their fellow team members can do, as opposed to who they are as individuals. Wrong!

We tend to trust others who we perceive to be similar to us because we believe that those individuals will react to various situations in ways that we can understand (and even predict).

When assembling a virtual team ... people will often latch onto personal details, such as hobbies and other outside interests because they want to get a better sense of that individual and to see if they might have anything in common.

Remember that the purpose of recognition is to drive greater levels of “discretionary effort.” Such discretionary effort comes when we, as people, feel inspired to do more.

The companies jumping on the trend of frequent, meaningful and timely recognitions early are the ones that will win the war to acquire and retain great talent.

Touting the competence of the different team members helps build trust in teams.

Co-workers know intimately the particulars of a job and when they notice excellence, it is a special event. So, the best praise and recognition may not come from the top down -- it may come from a peer recognition program.

It’s clear that recognition leads to engagement and reinforces the key behaviors that drive company success.

Trust is a primary factor in how people work together, listen to one another, and build effective relationships ... Trust is a critical link to all good relationships, both personal and professional.

Building and maintaining trust in the traditional, physical workplace is difficult enough, but the process is even tougher in a virtual environment, where people often have to work with people they haven't met in person.

Studies show that productivity, income, and profits are positively or negatively impacted depending on the level of trust in the work environment. Trust can be created or destroyed through personal perceptions and behaviors.

The hard truth, though, is that teams can't function without trust.