Collaborative Teamwork Quotes

Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much

If you first take a minute, an hour or a month to let go of feeling annoyed, frustrated or critical of the person or situation that may be driving you crazy, you set yourself up for much greater leadership and personal success.

Unity is strength... when there is teamwork and collaboration, wonderful things can be achieved.

Strategy is not really a solo sport – even if you’re the CEO.

Collaboration, it turns out, is not a gift from the gods but a skill that requires effort and practice.

You won't benefit from diverse perspectives if you aren't open to utilizing differences.

As a leader, it's your job to get everyone to share what they know.

Collaboration allows teachers to capture each other's fund of collective intelligence.

Once leaders embrace the role of coach, they realize the weight of leadership is now balanced between themselves and their direct reports.

Givers reject the notion that interdependence is weak. Givers are more likely to see interdependence as a source of strength, a way to harness the skills of multiple people for a greater good.

Solving problems and iterating solutions is best done through collaboration, not force.

Central to the performance of any team is accountability to the people and to itself, for the course to which the team is responsible.

People need to feel safe to be who they are—to speak up when they have an idea, or to speak out when they feel something isn't right.

When people feel trusted, they'll begin to understand they are contributors--and you'll get great ideas and happy people.

Synergy without strategy results to waste of energy.

At the U of U, we were inventing a new language. One of us would contribute a verb, another a noun, then a third person would figure out ways to string the elements together to actually say something.

It's really important for our company to have a culture of healthy leadership and also healthy followership. We don't want to over emphasize leadership because it's not the most important thing. Leadership is important, followership is important, and collaboration is important.

It's hard for managers to consider different perspectives if they never ask people what they think.

The natural result of utilizing different perspectives is that people are more engaged because they feel their opinions are important.

The key to handling conflict is to make sure people understand it's okay to have an opposing view.

Alignment and collaboration need not be fuzzy, ill-defined concepts for “let’s just all get along.” Effective teamwork is more than good manners and good will, although both help an organization function more effectively. Alignment results from shared goals. Collaboration results from shared measures of success.

The New Groupthink did not arise at one precise moment. Cooperative learning, corporate teamwork, and open office plans emerged at different times and for different reasons. But the mighty force that pulled these trends together was the rise of the World Wide Web, which lent both cool and gravitas to the idea of collaboration.

The key to innovation—at Bell Labs and in the digital age in general—was realizing that there was no conflict between nurturing individual geniuses and promoting collaborative teamwork. It was not either-or. Indeed, throughout the digital age, the two approaches went together. Creative geniuses (John Mauchly, William Shockley, Steve Jobs) generated innovative ideas. Practical engineers (Presper Eckert, Walter Brattain, Steve Wozniak) partnered closely with them to turn concepts into contraptions. And collaborative teams of technicians and entrepreneurs worked to turn the invention into a practical product. When part of this ecosystem was lacking, such as for John Atanasoff at Iowa State or Charles Babbage in the shed behind his London home, great concepts ended up being consigned to history’s basement. And when great teams lacked passionate visionaries, such as Penn after Mauchly and Eckert left, Princeton after von Neumann, or Bell Labs after Shockley, innovation slowly withered.

An individual can make a change but a team can make a revolution.

Teamwork is not a game for the selfish. It is for those with the mindset that a win for one is a win for all.

Two good people are better than one good person. Together we can do what no individual can do. This is the power of synergy.

Intrinsically we humans want to be happy, and happiness derives from having purpose, pursuit towards interesting and challenging ‘something’ that is greater than oneself.

Teamwork and community have been incredibly important to me as of late. You can get a lot done by yourself, but a collaborative effort can take you even further.

Conflict can be healthy within a collaborative group, as long as everyone sticks to the issues and things don't get personal.

When you collaborate with individuals who push you to be your best, with no excuses, great things are bound to happen. You are only as extraordinary as the people around you and the desire within.

The Transforming Self is different from the Authoring Self in that rather than being individualistic and competitive, it is more relational and collaborative. When at this higher level, you engage in collaborative relationships for the sake of transformation. All parties have their own perspectives, beliefs, and agendas. Yet they come together for the purpose of having their own views, and even their own identities and sense of self expand. The whole becomes new and greater than the sum of all parts.

If your CEO has enough good ideas to fuel the company’s growth objectives in perpetuity, maybe you don’t need to tap into the reservoir of talent at other levels of the organization. But the most innovative companies in the twenty-first century have transitioned from command-and-control organizations to a participatory approach that involves collaboration and teamwork.

The key to innovation-at Bell Labs and in the digital age in general-was realizing that there was no conflict between nurturing individual geniuses and promoting collaborative teamwork. It was not either-or. Indeed, throughout the digital age, the two approaches went together. Creative geniuses (John Mauchly, William Shockley, Steve Jobs) generated innovative ideas. Practical engineers (Presper Eckert, Walter Brattain, Steve Wozniak) partnered closely with them to turn concepts into contraptions. And collaborative teams of technicians and entrepreneurs worked to turn the invention into a practical product. When part of this ecosystem was lacking, such as for John Atanasoff at Iowa State or Charles Babbage in the shed behind his London home, great concepts ended up being consigned to history's basement. And when great teams lacked passionate visionaries, such as Penn after Mauchly and Eckert left, Princeton after von Neumann, or Bell Labs after Shockley, innovation slowly withered.

The tale of their teamwork is important because we don’t often focus on how central that skill is to innovation. There are thousands of books celebrating people we biographers portray, or mythologize, as lone inventors. I’ve produced a few myself. Search the phrase “the man who invented” on Amazon and you get 1,860 book results. But we have far fewer tales of collaborative creativity, which is actually more important in understanding how today’s technology revolution was fashioned. It can also be more interesting.

Synergy refers to the interaction of elements that when combined produce a total effect that is greater than the sum of the individual elements. In the context of your business, consider how a team can put forth a collaborative effort that exceeds an individual’s output. Now on task, you may begin to share the key parts of your plan with the pillars of your business or family. Embrace the opportunity and be enthusiastic as you are assigning responsibilities. Everyone needs to have a “paddle in the canoe” and work in synchronicity to achieve the desired outcome.

the device had the property of transresistance and should have a name similar to devices such as the thermistor and varistor, Pierce proposed transistor. Exclaimed Brattain, “That’s it!” The naming process still had to go through a formal poll of all the other engineers, but transistor easily won the election over five other options.35 On June 30, 1948, the press gathered in the auditorium of Bell Labs’ old building on West Street in Manhattan. The event featured Shockley, Bardeen, and Brattain as a group, and it was moderated by the director of research, Ralph Bown, dressed in a somber suit and colorful bow tie. He emphasized that the invention sprang from a combination of collaborative teamwork and individual brilliance: “Scientific research is coming more and more to be recognized as a group or teamwork job. . . . What we have for you today represents a fine example of teamwork, of brilliant individual contributions, and of the value of basic research in an industrial framework.”36 That precisely described the mix that had become the formula for innovation in the digital age. The New York Times buried the story on page 46 as the last item in its “News of Radio” column, after a note about an upcoming broadcast of an organ concert. But Time made it the lead story of its science section, with the headline “Little Brain Cell.” Bell Labs enforced the rule that Shockley be in every publicity photo along with Bardeen and Brattain. The most famous one shows the three of them in Brattain’s lab. Just as it was about to be taken, Shockley sat down in Brattain’s chair, as if it were his desk and microscope, and became the focal point of the photo. Years later Bardeen would describe Brattain’s lingering dismay and his resentment of Shockley: “Boy, Walter hates this picture. . . . That’s Walter’s equipment and our experiment,

There is no way to overestimate the critical importance of adult teamwork and communication when we have challenging students like Toni. In isolation, teachers can feel like the last soldier on the battlefield, defending modern civilization against the potential chaos of a world filled with unruly teenagers. Toni was seen as one of those chaos-threatening students. She would often display her bad behavior in front of a lone teacher, provoking all of the consequences the adult had available. As a teacher once admitted to me when reflecting on his own emotional buildup and fear of losing control, which had propelled him to become more harshly punitive than he even expected he could be: "Not on my watch were we going to lose the battle!" When teachers have time to collaborate with each other and administrators, the metaphor of war can be put aside, and we can return to the boundless terrain of education.

We also changed our recruiting practices to improve our digital talent pool. Formerly, we had sought out digital talent from the best, name-brand colleges and universities. Now we focused on attracting members of a small subset of elite programmers who were capable of producing ten times the output of the typical programmer. To attract these premier programmers, or “multipliers” as we called them, we began evaluating potential hires on specific skills related to programming, collaboration, and teamwork, observing their actual behavior rather than just relying on their academic record. We took a similar approach to hiring data scientists as well. Our efforts in this area helped us significantly up our game as we developed software as a business and incorporated it into more of our existing products.

Trust is a MUST in High Performance Teams, because without trust we cannot fully collaborate. We just cooperate to keep our jobs, instead of creating exponential results. It is the shift from fear and protection, to trust and love, that activates, unleashes, and aligns, the fullest team potentials.

Musicians collaborate with each other all the time. Why don't we do the same as writers?

Limitless Leaders focus on 1. Consciously Constructive development of their people's ADAPTAGILITY capacity... to thrive in uncertainty, ever-changing, challenging, complexities, AND opportunities 2. Teamworking, connection, communication trust and collaboration 3. Limitless Leadership skills and mindsets on ALL levels of the organisation 4. A High Performance Culture, context and climate, that unleashes and engages fullest potentials and possibilities.

Social capital, or “networks of trust,” are rooted in relationships based on a common set of norms and values that bind a group of individuals together and enable them to collaborate more effectively. Networks of trust are critical in complex systems that demand high performance under fast-paced, ambiguous, and evolving conditions. Successful outcomes in military special forces, modern aviation, championship sports, and hyper-growth startups all require teamwork that is grounded in trust and a shared sense of purpose.

So Goldman’s research alignment program was consistent with the firm’s teamwork approach, because it required different divisions to work together. But the SEC concluded that it violated securities laws requiring the firm to protect clients, even if there was an alignment that followed the principles of Goldman. To executives and board members, because Goldman had leading market share in IPOs and equity offerings, the collaboration seemed to be working effectively—it was an example of teamwork.

Collaborate to Innovate

Team collaboration comes when internal competition has gone.

Caring for dogs teaches kids observation skills, empathy and a sense of responsibility. Taking part in sport helps children cultivate physical strength, mental and physical resilience, self-esteem, delayed gratification, patience, courage, independence, leadership skills, good judgement and decision making, collaboration skills and a passion for teamwork. I have long held the belief that sport is worthwhile, and something that is often underestimated in the individual and team values it fosters. Who ever said that sporty types - girls included - do not like a fairy tale? Sport can be the beginning of a journey where children discover that they - and their team - whether dogs or humans, can create and fulfil their passions and their dreams

Welcome" is a word to use often! Leaders who maintain an open-door policy inspire trust, teamwork, and healthier communication. They are more likely to earn respect, gain buy-in, and foster collaboration.

All the evidence from the science of complexity says that given certain clear parameters...communities or teams will become self-organizing. They will be attracted to certain flowing states of organization natural to the people who make them up. In complexity theory, these flowing states are poetically called strange attractors. ... A work team made up of collaborating individuals would...have, if you could measure and plot creativity, failure, and success, a strange attractor that depicted the edges and patterns of the team's behavior. This pattern would be constrained by the forces operating within the company and outside in the market, but it would be most affected by the focus and vision of the team. A strong vision and purpose acts as a kind of strange attractor, allowing individual creativity while acting as a natural constraint to behavior that is detrimental to the team. Without repressive rules, then, a cohesive team with a strong sense of its mission, ethics, and tasks can be allowed a lot of leeway to develop its own approach to problems.

Individually, you are a warrior. Together, we are an army.

Leading from the front is cliché. I lead from the back to push you forward or be there to catch you. I lead from the side because Im your ally and here to serve you. Leaders are accessible at all times.

Changes are not like for like, it already has an extra weight for the context switch & let’s not forget about the time already invested in the initial thought path that will no longer be valid.

To whomever is expressing that resistance do please explain briefly the intention of the benefits from the exercise, then add: “are you willing to give it a try?

Working through the framework takes both patience and imagination. It also takes teamwork. Any new strategy is created in a social context—it isn’t devised by an individual sitting alone in an office, thinking his or her way through a complex situation. Rather, strategy requires a diverse team with the various members bringing their distinct perspectives to bear on the problem. A process for working collaboratively on strategy is essential,

So if you are to measure something, measure what is fostering an environment of bringing that value faster in a safer and happier environment.

Help yourself with your workspace set up, reduction of notifications, block sections to achieve specific goals, reduce distractions and allow yourself to get into deep flow.

Different ideas are just that, another outlook to the same situation. And it all starts with oneself. Getting DEtached from being ATtached to one’s own ideas.

Having a path for the product is good, building that path in line of the vision is key, doing it together ‘makes or breaks it’, tuning and adjusting it as we go and learning from it is what wins in an ever changing environment.

Thinking of small tiny improvements would be exhausting if not impossible from the leadership team. Hence it has to happen at micro level, at each team level to control their own product & their own destiny. They are the closest, they know more about it.

Having regular check-ins to align direction is super powerful, the ability to tune and adjust reduces waste and deviation and realignment.

So instead of forcing top-down organisational charts, which is an outdated archaic legacy tool from the 1800’s and hasn't evolved, embrace organic growth with inter-related responsible teams that are autonomous and self-organised teams.

Switch to proving ourselves wrong. We don’t do this enough, it’s like developing only happy paths, charged with biases and own agendas and we know where that leads. That’s why we write negative tests, do the same with your product bets

Welcome change whilst there is return or a strong hypothesis of higher return than not doing so, that you can test on a small ring fenced effort so that you can faster validate or revoke your hypothesis.

We need to also make decisions in smaller batches, so that can be faster & economically viable.What I see way too often: teams can go fast, real fast! But if the rest of the organisation doesn’t keep up, it defeats the object.

Markets change, visions change, technologies change, teams change, settings change, relationships change… with an ever changing environment it will be naive to think that you can draw the future with a straight line.

As Product Owner trust your team, they solve much harder things every day.

Documentation is not a step on a linear timeline, and certainly not the one at the end. One could argue documentation is a byproduct.

Team collaboration comes when internal competition has left.

Exclusivity detracts collaboration. Inclusivity attracts participation.

Avoid PowerPoint and slide presentations. This is a maxim that Steve Jobs also followed. Bezos’s belief in the power of storytelling means that he thinks that his colleagues should be able to create a readable narrative when they pitch an idea. “We don’t do PowerPoint (or any other slide-oriented) presentations at Amazon,” he wrote in a recent shareholder letter. “Instead, we write narratively structured six-page memos. We silently read one at the beginning of each meeting in a kind of study hall.” The memos, which are limited to six pages, are supposed to be written with clarity, which Bezos believes (correctly) forces a clarity of thinking. They are often collaborative efforts, but they can have a personal style. Sometimes they incorporate proposed press releases. “Even in the example of writing a six-page memo, that’s teamwork,” he says. “Someone on the team needs to have the skill.

Archetype Other descriptions Achievement Performance, accountability, focus, speed, delivery, meritocracy, discipline, transparency, rigour Customer-Centric External focus, service, responsiveness, reliability, listening One-Team Collaboration, globalisation, internal customer, teamwork, without boundaries Innovative Learning, entrepreneurial, agility, creativity, challenging status quo, continuous improvement, pursuit of excellence People-First Empowerment, delegation, development, safety, care, respect, balance, diversity, relationships, fun Greater-Good Social responsibility, environment, citizenship, meaning, community, making a difference, sustainability

To build a fire, you need more wood. To build a team, you need more people.

how organizations need to reinvent themselves. This involves breaking down silos, working across divisions, and mastering the flexible response that comes from true teamwork and collaboration.

No pursuit of knowledge is a solitary venture, and greatness is often born from the coming together of curious minds.

Collaboration enables us to pool our resources, to learn from each other, and to collectively solve problems.

Teamwork exposes us to diverse perspectives, broadening our understanding and enriching our explorations.

We need to engage in a comprehensive and collaborative effort on a global scale, driven by a shared commitment to preserve the delicate balance of our planet’s ecosystems. The cost of inaction is not merely the loss of biodiversity but the unravelling of the intricate web of life that sustains us all.

You need long meetings only when you don't trust your team, or are less experienced than your players and want to learn from them.

The strategic responsibility of leaders is not only to act as a “Role Model” to promote collaborative teamwork and innovative ideas but also to manage the undiscovered vistas of diversity, cohesion and inclusiveness to harbour extravagant gifts.

As I've written in prior books and articles, more and more of that teamwork is dynamic – occurring in constantly shifting configurations of people rather than in formal, clearly-bounded teams.4 This dynamic collaboration is called teaming.5 Teaming is the art of communicating and coordinating with people across boundaries of all kinds – expertise, status, and distance, to name the most important. But whether you're teaming with new colleagues all the time or working in a stable team, effective teamwork happens best in a psychologically safe workplace.

It’s essential to be comfortable asking for advice or help — after all, there is a reason we have dozens of different specialists that come together to work on a film project.

Success relies on your capacity to cooperate, ability to regulate your emotions, capacity to delay gratification, and capacity to focus your attention.

The remarks by Winkler and Somaini made me think of the safety culture I observed at a nuclear power plant early in my career. The organization was run according to key values such as safety, employee empowerment (with a questioning attitude), teamwork, customer service, excellence, and diversity. These values were consciously driven throughout the organization. All employees were empowered to question any order they believed would reduce safety. Supervisors could not penalize employees for such questioning. Everyone was encouraged to think continuously of ways to improve safety. Thus, germination of grassroots ideas from people closest to the work was part of the culture. This produced a highly safety-conscious workforce, superior team spirit, a collaborative relationship between workers and management -- and an excellent safety record.

The most productive, healthy and satisfying relationships are based, not on a quid pro quo but an ebb and flow of mutual support over time. Don’t just be a giver. Be an extremely helpful giver who demonstrates an awareness of what that person most needs.

The greatest privilege that men in the workplace have had isn't a corporate or public policy. It's a partner at home. A nonpaid working dad (a.k.a. Stay-at-home dad) might be some working moms' idea of a superhero. But nonpaid working dads are not the ultimate solution. We do not need role reversal; rather, we need a new model of teamwork in which both parents are meaningfully engaged at work and at home, collaboratively making decisions that reflect what matters most to them.

By yourself you are but one woman, together we are a unit

The best, most wonderful, indelible, and greatest achievements of humanity are accomplished not by a single individual, but a team of innovative thinking individuals.