There are many ways to diagnose dysfunctional teams: lack of shared objectives, poor co-operative working practices, weak leadership etc. However taking a purely biological perspective opens up exciting possibilities for significantly improving dysfunctional team performance.

Lateral leadership skills are what you need to get the job done when you are not the boss of the team

One of the main dilemmas for team leaders and members is the thorny issue of responsibility. We often fixate on the problem of members (or leaders) not taking enough but Dr Scott Peck, renowned psychiatrist, reminds us they can also do damage if they try to take too much!

OK so you may be able to define collaboration, but will it help you achieve it?

Roger Fisher, the world's leading expert on win-win negotiation, describes the power of having Lateral Leadership skills which let you get the job done when you are not the boss.

Instantly discover a persons main worry about an upcoming change by how they speak just five words: We cant do that here.

At a lunch for business leaders a couple of years back Jack Welch, once voted the most respected business leader of all time, was asked about the relative importance of right values versus making the numbers.

Taking a break makes biological sense. In Harvard Business Review article, Are You Working Too Hard, leading Mind/Body Researcher Howard Benson describes how to use advanced relaxation techniques to produce breakthroughs where you or your team have got “stuck”.

The best team is Me. It might sound like heresy but sometimes the most effective way to produce something is not through collaboration but by just doing it yourself.

Why do I always have to take the garbage out : new social network research may explain why some team tasks just never get done.