What is Teamwork?

There are many aspects to teamwork and definitions of teamwork. Here are some common definitions of teamwork.

• Teamwork is working together as a group toward a common goal.
• Teamwork is solving problems together.
• Teamwork is achieving desired results.
• Teamwork is working to meet the needs of the customer.
• Teamwork is striving to exceed customer expectations.
• Teamwork is having fun while working.
• Teamwork is celebrating success along the way.
• Teamwork is understanding your team members.
• Teamwork is having a clear team leader.
• Teamwork is having a clear purpose.
• Teamwork is having open and free discussion.
• Teamwork is each team member applying their strengths effectively.
• Teamwork is supporting each other on the way to a shared goal.
• Teamwork is working through conflict.
• Teamwork is all members having the ability to influence decisions.
• Teamwork is being kept informed of pertinent project information.
• Teamwork is a group of people who work well together.
• Teamwork is each member of the work team taking personal responsibility for their performance and quality.

What Teamwork is not!

• Teamwork is not a group of people and one 'Star' doing all the work.
• Teamwork is hard when the leader just tells everyone what to do.
• Teamwork is strained when the team faces unrealistic deadlines.
• Teamwork is not just letting everyone have their own way.
• Teamwork is not always easy to achieve.
• Teamwork is not always the best way to work
• Teamwork is not about reaching consensus on every issue.
• Teamwork suffers when team members quit or are asked to leave.
• Teamwork is not fostered when team members are not recognized in some way for their contributions.

Teamwork Quotes and Proverbs

It is amazing how much you can accomplish when it doesn't matter who gets the credit.

There is no "I" in "TEAMWORK".

Teamwork: Simply stated, it is less me and more we.

TEAM = Together Everyone Achieves More

Teamwork is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.

Andrew Carnegie
Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.

The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Teamwork is working together — even when apart.

A job worth doing is worth doing together.

Coming together, sharing together, working together, succeeding together.

A successful team beats with one heart.

Teamwork divides the task and doubles the success.

Teamwork doesn't tolerate the inconvenience of distance.

Ken Blanchard
None of us is as smart as all of us.

Henry Ford
Coming together is a beginning.
Keeping together is progress.
Working together is success.

Bruce Coslet, Coach, Bengals
The era of the rugged individual is giving way to the era of the team player.
Everyone is needed, but no one is necessary.

Susan Gerke, IBM, Leadership Development
Conflict is inevitable in a team ... in fact, to achieve synergistic solutions, a variety of ideas and approaches are needed. These are the ingredients for conflict.

Benjamin Franklin
We must all hang together,
or assuredly, we shall all hang separately.

Thomas Edison, when asked why he had a team of twenty-one assistants
If I could solve all the problems myself, I would.

Lewis B. Ergen
The ratio of We's to I's is the best indicator of the development of a team.

Stephen Covey
Synergy is the highest activity of life; it creates new untapped alternatives; it values and exploits the mental, emotional, and psychological differences between people.

Max DePree
The key elements in the art of working together are how to deal with change, how to deal with conflict, and how to reach our potential...the needs of the team are best met when we meet the needs of individuals persons.

R. Meredith Belbin
Do you want a collection of brilliant minds or a brilliant collection of minds?

Baltasar Gracion, Spanish Priest
The path to greatness is along with others.

Doug Smith
Teams share the burden and divide the grief.

Tom Bouchard
Teams are successful when they are focused, have a short cycle time, and are supported by the executives.

Robert F. Bales
Effective teamwork will not take the place of knowing how to do the job or how to manage the work. Poor teamwork, however, can prevent effective final performance. And it can also prevent team members from gaining satisfaction in being a member of a team and the organization.

Dennis Kinlaw
Teamplayer: One who unites others toward a shared destiny through sharing information and ideas, empowering others and developing trust.

Buchholz and Roth
Wearing the same shirts doesn't make you a team

Buchholz and Roth
Synergism is the simultaneous actions of separate entities which together have greater total effect than the sum of their individual effects.

Katzenbach & Smith
A demanding performance challenge tends to create a team.

Marvin Weisbord
Teamwork is the quintessential contradiction of a society grounded in individual achievement.

Will Schutz
Team members who feel threatened but who are not aware of it become rigid — and that stops teamwork.

Barbara Glacel & Emile Robert Jr.
A team is more than a collection of people. It is a process of give and take.

Mark Twain
Synergy — the bonus that is achieved when things work together harmoniously.

Ned Lautenbach
Teamwork is the lynchpin in our long term success.

Michael Jordan
Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.

Joe Paterno
When a team outgrows individual performance and learns team confidence, excellence becomes a reality.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter
A self-reinforcing upward spiral: performance stimulating pride stimulating performance.

Max DePree
Without forgiveness, there can be no real freedom to act within a group.

Katzenbach & Smith
The same dynamics that promote performance also support learning and behavioral change.

Dennis Kinlaw
Work and self-worth are the two factors in pride that interact with each other and that tend to increase the strong sense of pride found in superior work teams. When people do something of obvious worth, they feel a strong sense of personal worth.

Dr. Rob Gilbert
Working together works.

H.E. Luccock
No one can whistle a symphony. It takes an orchestra to play it.

Richard Wellins, William Byham, Jeanne Wilson
Teams are not ends in themselves; they are a means by which to achieve other organizational goals.

Sandra Richardson, OD Consultant
Effective teamwork is all about making a good, well-balanced salad not whipping individuals into a single batch of V8.

Reinhold Niebuhr
Men have never been individually self-sufficient.

Douglas McGregor
Most teams aren't teams at all but merely collections of individual relationships with the boss. Each individual vying with the others for power, prestige and position.

Katzenbach & Smith
Overcoming barriers to performance is how groups become teams.

Paul McCartney
I love to hear a choir. I love the humanity... to see the faces of real people devoting themselves to a piece of music. I like the teamwork. It makes me feel optimistic about the human race when I see them cooperating like that.

Benjamin Franklin
We must indeed all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.

Paul Bear Bryant
In order to have a winner, the team must have a feeling of unity; every player must put the team first-ahead of personal glory.

Robert Yates
It is amazing what can be accomplished when nobody cares about who gets the credit.

Margaret Carty
The nice thing about teamwork is that you always have others on your side.

A Harvey Block
The ideas that come out of most brainstorming sessions are usually superficial, trivial, and not very original. They are rarely useful. The process, however, seems to make uncreative people feel that they are making innovative contributions and that others are listening to them.

Katzenbach & Smith
Fun is only real and sustainable if it feeds off the team's purpose and performance aspirations.

Robert Crandall
You put together the best team that you can with the players you've got, and replace those who aren't good enough.

B. Dodge
No problem is insurmountable. With a little courage, teamwork and determination a person can overcome anything.

Dr. Allan Fromme
People have been known to achieve more as a result of working with others than against them.

Debra Mancuso
Win together, lose together, play together, stay together.

Katzenbach & Smith
Real teams don't emerge unless individuals on them take risks involving conflict, trust, interdependence and hard work.