Team Bonding Quotes

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You don't know when you're twenty-three. You don't know what it really means to crawl into someone else's life and stay there. You can't see all the ways you're going to get tangled, how you're going to bond skin to skin. How the idea of separating will feel in five years, in ten - in fifteen. When Georgie thought about divorce now, she imagined lying side by side with Neal on two operating tables while a team of doctors tried to unthread their vascular systems. She didn't know at twenty-three.
Rainbow Rowell (Landline)
There's a Good Book about goodness and how to be good and so forth, but there's no Evil Book about how to be evil and how to be bad. The Devil had no prophets to write his Ten Commandments, and no team of authors to write his biography. His case has gone completely by default. We know nothing about him but a lot of fairy stories from our parents and schoolmasters. He has no book from which we can learn the nature of evil in all its forms, with parables about evil people, proverbs about evil people, folklore about evil people. All we have is the living example of people who are least good, or our own intuition.
Ian Fleming (Casino Royale (James Bond, #1))
This was Skywalker and Kenobi as they should be: a team built on emotion and intellect, bravado and control, fire and ice. And despite no longer having the formal bond of Master and apprentice, they would always be connected. In fact, they were better this way.
Mike Chen (Brotherhood (Star Wars))
Between the lapels of his subdued charcoal suit, he'd worn a silky red tie. A gold Rolex had circled his wrist, and an overblown blonde had been bonded on his side like a suction cup. The man clearly liked to accessorize.
Rachel Gibson (See Jane Score (Chinooks Hockey Team #2))
Patriotism is a thing difficult to put into words. It is neither precisely an emotion nor an opinion, nor a mandate, but a state of mind -- a reflection of our own personal sense of worth, and respect for our roots. Love of country plays a part, but it's not merely love. Neither is it pride, although pride too is one of the ingredients. Patriotism is a commitment to what is best inside us all. And it's a recognition of that wondrous common essence in our greater surroundings -- our school, team, city, state, our immediate society -- often ultimately delineated by our ethnic roots and borders... but not always. Indeed, these border lines are so fluid... And we do not pay allegiance as much as we resonate with a shared spirit. We all feel an undeniable bond with the land where we were born. And yet, if we leave it for another, we grow to feel a similar bond, often of a more complex nature. Both are forms of patriotism -- the first, involuntary, by birth, the second by choice. Neither is less worthy than the other. But one is earned.
Vera Nazarian (The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration)
I can think about the team when the team starts to give a fuck about me.
J. Bree (Broken Bonds (The Bonds that Tie, #1))
Humans are tribal. We need to belong to groups. We crave bonds and attachments, which is why we love clubs, teams, fraternities, family. Almost no one is a hermit. Even monks and friars belong to orders. But the tribal instinct is not just an instinct to belong. It is also an instinct to exclude.
Amy Chua (Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations)
Why? Why should the bond between a people and their baseball team be so intense? Fenway Park is a part of it, offering a physical continuum to the bond, not only because Papi can stand in the same batter's box as Teddy Ballgame, but also because a son might sit in the same wooden-slat seat as his father.
Tom Verducci
We have forged the type of bonds that only battle brings.
C.M. Subasic (The Forty Watt Flowers)
I'm getting very sorry for the Devil and his disciples such as the good Le Chiffre. The devil has a rotten time and I always like to be on the side of the underdog. We don't give the poor chap a chance...the Devil had no prophets to write his Ten Commandments and no team of authors to write his biography.
Ian Fleming (Casino Royale (James Bond, #1))
In time, as if by magic, we will realize that we have developed a deep bond with this person. The madness and excitement and spontaneity of the dopamine hit is replaced by a more relaxed, more stable, more long-term oxytocin-driven relationship. A vastly more valuable state if we have to rely on someone to help us do things and protect us when we’re weak. My favorite definition of love is giving someone the power to destroy us and trusting they won’t use it.
Simon Sinek (Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't)
People who feel untrusted have little inclination to bond together into a cooperative team.
Tom DeMarco (Peopleware : Productive Projects and Teams)
And I have to admit that there is something undeniably fulfilling about hunting with Rosie. Somehow, it makes me feel as if the long list of differences between us doesn't exist. We're dressed the same, we fight the same enemy, we win together ... It's as though for that moment I get to be her, the one who isn't covered in thick scars, and she gets to understand what it is to be me. It's different than hunting with Silas--he and I are partners, not part of the same heart.
Jackson Pearce (Sisters Red (Fairytale Retellings, #1))
Please, I'm your friend -- inside that tough-girl shell is a really tough girl. But you're motivated by how much you care. Being part of Team Lois, it's an honor. There's nothing you wouldn't do for any of us.
Gwenda Bond (Triple Threat (Lois Lane, #3))
Just like James fucking Bond.
Pamela Clare (Dead By Midnight: An I-Team Christmas (I-Team #7.5))
Precisely. So for the next week we’ll be practicing to see who qualifies to be on the team. It will be a wonderful bonding experience.” The purr in Killian’s voice made me think the next week was actually going to bond us the same way childhood traumas can serve as bonding experiences for siblings.
K.M. Shea (Magic Redeemed (Hall of Blood and Mercy, #2))
There were more of them out there. More walkers. And I was being asked to step up and be... what? Some kind of Captain Heroism who would lead the boys in the Red, White, and Blue to victory? What was I getting myself into? This wasn't task force duty, this wasn't even SWAT-team level. I'd never even smelled anything this big before and now I was expected to train and lead a black ops team? How frigging insane was this? Why were they asking me? I'm just a cop. Where are the guys who actually do this for a living? How come none of them were here? Where's James Bond and Jack Bauer? Why me, of all people?
Jonathan Maberry (Patient Zero (Joe Ledger, #1))
The time we spend getting to know people when we’re not working is part of what it takes to form bonds of trust. It’s the exact same reason why eating together and doing things as a family really matters. Equally as important are conferences, company picnics and the time we spend around the watercooler. The more familiar we are with each other, the stronger our bonds. Social interaction is also important for the leaders of an organization. Roaming the halls of the office and engaging with people beyond meetings really matters.
Simon Sinek (Leaders Eat Last Deluxe: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't)
And when you're not partying in Vegas, what do you do?" she asked. "Prepare for your role as the next James Bond?" "No, I don't work alone." She cocked her head as if trying to make sense of his words. "I'm a SEAL in Uncle Sam's Navy. When I'm working, I have a team of guys who could kick James Bond's ass watching my back, covering my six at all times.
Sara Jane Stone (To Tempt a SEAL (Sin City SEALs, #1))
You don’t know what it really means to crawl into someone else’s life and stay there. You can’t see all the ways you’re going to get tangled, how you’re going to bond skin to skin. How the idea of separating will feel in five years, in ten—in fifteen. When Georgie thought about divorce now, she imagined lying side by side with Neal on two operating tables while a team of doctors tried to unthread their vascular systems.
Rainbow Rowell (Landline)
Lenders assess a company's creditworthiness before approving a loan, considering factors like financial health and repayment ability. So if you’re leading a business, it’s really important for you and your team to be proactive about establishing good credit health for the business.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
I'm getting very sorry for the Devil and his disciples such as the good LeChiffre. The Devil has a rotten time and I always like to be on the side of the underdog. We don't give the poor chap a chance. There's a Good Book about goodness and how to be good and so forth, but there's no Evil Book about evil and how to be bad. The Devil has no prophets to write his Ten Commandments and no team of authors to write his biography. His case has gone completely by default. We know nothing about him but a lot of fairy stories from our parents and schoolmasters. He has no book from which we can learn the nature of evil in all its forms, with parables about evil people, proverbs about evil people, folk-lore about evil people. All we have is the living example of the people who are least good, or our own intuition.
Ian Fleming (Casino Royale (James Bond, #1))
Bond Team could forget about secret-agenting in the field for a while. To begin with, they could hardly find their way around the school, let alone a supervillain’s secret complex.
A.J. Butcher (The Frankenstein Factory (Spy High, #1))
Lay off her Ben," yelled Jake. Cally registered that he was defending her. “She’s doing her best!” “Her best? That’ll look good on our tombstones. RIP Bond Team—Cally did her best!
A.J. Butcher (The Frankenstein Factory (Spy High, #1))
In the SEAL Teams, the bond of our brotherhood is our strongest weapon. If you take that away from us, we lose our most important quality as a team.
Jocko Willink (Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win)
Our restaurant fostered a sense of camaraderie in a number of ways besides sharing the same nickname of 'chef.' Initially, we bonded through training. Once we opened, we worked in teams each night, meaning that we not only knew our colleagues well, we depended on them. Most importantly, we all had 'family meal' together every night, just like President Bush recommended to all families so that their children would have good values and grow up to be gun-toting, pro-life, pro-death, gas-guzzling, warmongering, monolingual, homophobic, wiretapped, Bible-thumping, genetically engineered, stem-cell harboring, abstinent creationists. Oops, I think I just lost all of my red state readers. To make up for it, I'll let you lose my ballot.
Phoebe Damrosch (Service Included: Four-Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter)
On its surface, the booming market in side bets on subprime mortgage bonds seemed to be the financial equivalent of fantasy football: a benign, if silly, facsimile of investing. Alas, there was a difference between fantasy football and fantasy finance: When a fantasy football player drafts Peyton Manning to be on his team, he doesn’t create a second Peyton Manning. When Mike Burry bought a credit default swap based on a Long Beach Savings subprime–backed bond, he enabled Goldman Sachs to create another bond identical to the original in every respect but one: There were no actual home loans or home buyers. Only the gains and losses from the side bet on the bonds were real.
Michael Lewis (The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine)
This is a time in baseball when steroids have become a pretty big deal. On our team, you got Barry Bonds, who is hitting home runs like a mortar barrage, and whose head has grown to a size where when they make his promotional bobble-head, they just do the whole thing to scale, while across the bay in Oakland, Mark McGwire now has forearms like Popeye and will only speak in dialects of horse, and they’re keeping José Canseco chained to a post under the ballpark and throwing him raw meat until right before game time, so the league is starting to get sensitive about it.
Christopher Moore (Secondhand Souls (Grim Reaper, #2))
The kind of trust that is necessary to build a great team is what I call vulnerability-based trust. This is what happens when members get to a point where they are completely comfortable being transparent, honest, and naked with one another, where they say and genuinely mean things like “I screwed up,” “I need help,” “Your idea is better than mine,” “I wish I could learn to do that as well as you do,” and even, “I’m sorry.” When everyone on a team knows that everyone else is vulnerable enough to say and mean those things, and that no one is going to hide his or her weaknesses or mistakes, they develop a deep and uncommon sense of trust. They speak more freely and fearlessly with one another and don’t waste time and energy putting on airs or pretending to be someone they’re not. Over time, this creates a bond that exceeds what many people ever experience in their lives and,
Patrick Lencioni (The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business)
started hearing people talking about racial issues. In the military, that really wasn’t even a thing as far as I experienced. No one cared if you were Black, Hispanic, or Estonian or whatever because we were all on the same team. We were a tribe. But we were fighting for this country where everyone was divided. I just thought, Are you people out of your minds?
Johnny Joey Jones (Unbroken Bonds of Battle: A Modern Warriors Book of Heroism, Patriotism, and Friendship)
Part of their close bond came from that longstanding commonality—the fact that Robinson also believed there were similarities between sports and religion. “My concept of religion is of people having faith in God, in themselves and in each other and putting that faith into action,” Robinson wrote in his unpublished manuscript. “If you can find a better example of those four things than a team of sportsmen working as a unit, I’d like to know what it is.”2
Ed Henry (42 Faith: The Rest of the Jackie Robinson Story)
Hockey is a club that holds its members tightly, the bond forged by shared hardship and mutual passion, by every trip to the pond, where your feet hurt and your face is cold and you might get a stick in the ribs or a puck in the mouth, and you still can’t wait to get back out there because you are smitten with the sound of blades scraping against ice and pucks clacking off sticks, and with the game’s speed and ever-changing geometry. It has a way of becoming the center of your life even when you’re not on the ice.
Wayne Coffey (The Boys of Winter: The Untold Story of a Coach, a Dream, and the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey Team)
People leave personality footprints everywhere, Fisher tells me, even in the sentences they write. She gives me common words used by each group. Explorers use words like excite, spirit, dream, fire, and search, while more community-minded Negotiators talk about links, bonds, love, team, and participate. Builders are more liable to discuss law, honor, limits, and honesty. And that Numerati-infested bucket of Directors? Their words focus largely on the physical world, where aim, measure, strong, hard, and slash have currency. Not surprisingly, they also talk a lot about "thinking.
Stephen Baker (The Numerati)
Who knows what advantages you might find in a smaller home, even beyond what you were initially hoping for, after you move in? Maybe you'll be inspired to become a more creative person when you take up residence in a quaint older neighborhood and get out of that suburban tract where you can have a house of any color as long as it's beige. Maybe by putting your preadolescent kids in a bedroom together, they'll socialize better and develop closer bonds. Maybe you and your spouse will rediscover each other when you're actually spending time together instead of tag-teaming on chores.
Joshua Becker (The Minimalist Home: A Room-by-Room Guide to a Decluttered, Refocused Life)
There’s a Good Book about goodness and how to be good and so forth, but there’s no Evil Book about evil and how to be bad. The Devil has no prophets to write his Ten Commandments and no team of authors to write his biography. His case has gone completely by default. We know nothing about him but a lot of fairy stories from our parents and schoolmasters. He has no book from which we can learn the nature of evil in all its forms, with parables about evil people, proverbs about evil people, folk-lore about evil people. All we have is the living example of the people who are least good, or our own intuition.
Ian Fleming (Casino Royale (James Bond, #1))
The Rebellions were the first gang in The Bahamas, to come up with a popular logo/brand in the wearing of Raiders clothing. However, other neighborhoods gave birth to their own gangs using popular sporting team images as their official colors and name. You had the Hoyas Bull Dogs out of Kemp Road; the Coconut Grove area took on the name Nike, which became their clothing of choice. Miami Street took on the name Hurricanes, and wore Miami Hurricanes clothing. However, when you look at it closely, because of the lack of involved fathers, a lot of us were simply lacking an image and a positive identity of ourselves.
Drexel Deal (The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father (The Fight of My Life is Wrapped in My Father Book 1))
think we should break the swing in slowly, don’t you? After all, it’s so new to being used for romantic purposes.” “More like breaking me in slowly. I’m not used to being kissed like that.” “That makes two of us. I guess now would be a good time to tell you that I’m kind of old-fashioned. I believe physical intimacy is more than sharing one’s body with someone; it’s a connection with another person’s heart and soul. When the two people involved love each other to the exclusion of everyone else, the experience can be unique, unlike anything else. It can transcend the visceral and create a bond that nothing on earth can break. To me, it’s something worth waiting for.
Delaney Cameron (Team Mom (Finding Love, #1))
The goal of Combined Intelligence Objectives Subcommittee was to investigate all things related to German science. Target types ran the gamut: radar, missiles, aircraft, medicine, bombs and fuses, chemical and biological weapons labs. And while CIOS remained an official joint venture, there were other groups in the mix, with competing interests at hand. Running parallel to CIOS operations were dozens of secret intelligence-gathering operations, mostly American. The Pentagon’s Special Mission V-2 was but one example. By late March 1945, Colonel Trichel, chief of U.S. Army Ordnance, Rocket Branch, had dispatched his team to Europe. Likewise, U.S. Naval Technical Intelligence had officers in Paris preparing for its own highly classified hunt for any intelligence regarding the Henschel Hs 293, a guided missile developed by the Nazis and designed to sink or damage enemy ships. The U.S. Army Air Forces (AAF) were still heavily engaged in strategic bombing campaigns, but a small group from Wright Field, near Dayton, Ohio, was laying plans to locate and capture Luftwaffe equipment and engineers. Spearheading Top Secret missions for British intelligence was a group of commandos called 30 Assault Unit, led by Ian Fleming, the personal assistant to the director of British naval intelligence and future author of the James Bond novels. Sometimes, the members of these parallel missions worked in consort with CIOS officers in the field.
Annie Jacobsen (Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America)
Josh’s father felt Josh should bond with his fellow injured patients in the ward. This was something I really dissuaded Josh from doing. I didn’t want him to hear the hardships, battles, and frustrations that others were going through. I also didn’t want Josh to take on their fears and frustrations. We were always pleasant and polite to everyone else in the ward, but my only concern was Josh, and it was enough for us to focus just on his issues. I found the whole Acute Spinal Ward experience extremely negative and distressingly sad with no great healing or recovery objective. The message from the medical team was always, without fail, acceptance of the prognosis. This was totally the opposite message of what we presented and instilled into Josh. We slowly gained evidence that our non-traditional approach was working.
Josh Wood (Relentless: Walking Against All Odds)
Goldman Sachs itself—and so Goldman was in the position of selling bonds to its customers created by its own traders, so they might bet against them. Secondly, there was a crude, messy, slow, but acceptable substitute for Mike Burry’s credit default swaps: the actual cash bonds. According to a former Goldman derivatives trader, Goldman would buy the triple-A tranche of some CDO, pair it off with the credit default swaps AIG sold Goldman that insured the tranche (at a cost well below the yield on the tranche), declare the entire package risk-free, and hold it off its balance sheet. Of course, the whole thing wasn’t risk-free: If AIG went bust, the insurance was worthless, and Goldman could lose everything. Today Goldman Sachs is, to put it mildly, unhelpful when asked to explain exactly what it did, and this lack of transparency extends to its own shareholders. “If a team of forensic accountants went over Goldman’s books, they’d be shocked at just how good Goldman is at hiding things,
Michael Lewis (The Big Short)
Two weeks ago, Aaron and Isaac, I learned your mother Laura has breast cancer. My heart feels impaled. These words, so useless and feeble. Laura is only thirty-five years old. Her next birthday will be in only three days. I write this letter to you, my sons, with the hope that one day in the future you will read it and understand what happened to our family. Together, your mother and I have created and nurtured an unbreakable bond that has transformed us into an unlikely team. A Chicano from El Paso, Texas. A Jew from Concord, Massachusetts. I want you to know your mother. She has given me hope when I have felt none; she has offered me kindness when I have been consumed by bitterness. I believe I have taught her how to be tough and savvy and how to achieve what you want around obstacles and naysayers. Our hope is that the therapies we are discussing with her doctors will defeat her cancer. But a great and ominous void has suddenly engulfed us at the beginning of our life as a family. This void suffocates me.
Sergio Troncoso (Crossing Borders: Personal Essays)
Studies say that it takes six to eight meetings to feel like someone is our friend. When was the last time you saw someone new who you didn’t work with six to eight times in a year? Unless you’re dating, on a sports team together or flatmates, the answer is never. By this definition, my best friend is the route 19 bus driver. Other research says that, on average, it takes fifty hours of time with someone before you consider them a casual friend and ninety hours before you feel comfortable updating them to a ‘friend’. Fifty hours? I’m not so sure. Add a little light trauma, and you can get there ten times as fast. At journalism school, I was paired with a classmate to work on a TV report. You can bet that a few hours of sobbing in the editing suite brought us together like nobody’s business. Same goes for surviving turbulent plane rides, sadistic teachers and punishingly long jazz concerts. If you make it out alive, you are usually bonded for life. Personally, I think meeting someone you really connect with twice, for a few hours, followed by extensive, emotional texting, is enough to feel like friends. And I think I’m on my way with Abigail.
Jessica Pan (Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come: An Introvert's Year of Living Dangerously)
Pat Riley, the famous coach and manager who led the Los Angeles Lakers and Miami Heat to multiple championships, says that great teams tend to follow a trajectory. When they start—before they have won—a team is innocent. If the conditions are right, they come together, they watch out for each other and work together toward their collective goal. This stage, he calls the “Innocent Climb.” After a team starts to win and media attention begins, the simple bonds that joined the individuals together begin to fray. Players calculate their own importance. Chests swell. Frustrations emerge. Egos appear. The Innocent Climb, Pat Riley says, is almost always followed by the “Disease of Me.” It can “strike any winning team in any year and at any moment,” and does with alarming regularity. It’s Shaq and Kobe, unable to play together. It’s Jordan punching Steve Kerr, Horace Grant, and Will Perdue—his own team members. He punched people on his own team! It’s Enron employees plunging California into darkness for personal profit. It’s leaks to the media from a disgruntled executive hoping to scuttle a project he dislikes. It’s negging and every other intimidation tactic.
Ryan Holiday (Ego Is the Enemy)
The whitewash of Kingdom of Heaven Kingdom of Heaven is a classic cowboys-and-Indians story in which the Muslims are noble and heroic and the Christians are venal and violent. The script is heavy on modern-day PC clichés and fantasies of Islamic tolerance; brushing aside dhimmi laws and attitudes (of which Ridley Scott has most likely never heard), it invents a peace-and-tolerance group called the “Brotherhood of Muslims, Jews and Christians.” But of course, the Christians spoiled everything. A publicist for the film explained, “They were working together. It was a strong bond until the Knights Templar caused friction between them.” Ah yes, those nasty “Christian extremists.” Kingdom of Heaven was made for those who believe that all the trouble between the Islamic world and the West has been caused by Western imperialism, racism, and colonialism, and that the glorious paradigm of Islamic tolerance, which was once a beacon to the world, could be reestablished if only the wicked white men of America and Europe would be more tolerant. Ridley Scott and his team arranged advance screenings for groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations, making sure that sensitive Muslim feelings were not hurt. It is a dream movie for the PC establishment in every way except one: It isn’t true. Professor Jonathan Riley-Smith, author of A Short History of the Crusades and one of the world’s leading historians of the period, called the movie “rubbish,” explaining that “it’s not historically accurate at all” as it “depicts the Muslims as sophisticated and civilised, and the Crusaders are all brutes and barbarians. It has nothing to do with reality.” Oh, and “there was never a confraternity of Muslims, Jews and Christians. That is utter nonsense.
Robert Spencer (The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades))
There’s a Good Book about goodness and how to be good and so forth, but there’s no Evil Book about evil and how to be bad. The Devil has no prophets to write his Ten Commandments and no team of authors to write his biography. His case has gone completely by default. We know nothing about him but a lot of fairy stories from our parents and schoolmasters. He has no book from which we can learn the nature of evil in all its forms, with parables about evil people, proverbs about evil people, folk-lore about evil people. All we have is the living example of the people who are least good, or our own intuition. ‘So,’ continued Bond, warming to his argument, ‘Le Chiffre was serving a wonderful purpose, a really vital purpose, perhaps the best and highest purpose of all. By his evil existence, which foolishly I have helped to destroy, he was creating a norm of badness by which, and by which alone, an opposite norm of goodness could exist. We were privileged, in our short knowledge of him, to see and estimate his wickedness and we emerge from the acquaintanceship better and more virtuous men.’ ‘Bravo,’ said Mathis. ‘I’m proud of you. You ought to be tortured every day. I really must remember to do something evil this evening. I must start at once. I have a few marks in my favour – only small ones, alas,’ he added ruefully – ‘but I shall work fast now that I have seen the light. What a splendid time I’m going to have. Now, let’s see, where shall I start, murder, arson, rape? But no, these are peccadilloes. I must really consult the good Marquis de Sade. I am a child, an absolute child in these matters.’ His face fell. ‘Ah, but our conscience, my dear Bond. What shall we do with him while we are committing some juicy sin? That is a problem. He is a crafty person this conscience and very old, as old as the first family of apes which gave birth to him. We must give that problem really careful thought or we shall spoil our enjoyment. Of course, we should murder him first, but he is a tough bird. It will be difficult, but if we succeed, we could be worse even than Le Chiffre.
Ian Fleming (Casino Royale (James Bond, #1))
we were all itching for dick jokes and male bonding. The team took photos for the web site on an abandoned construction site (camp was in central Florida at the beginning of the mortgage crisis, so the area was filled with ruins, not unlike ancient Rome). The next day, we rode back to the same spot and took our own pictures, this time with our genitals out, and slipped it into the photographer’s slideshow. Someday, I’ll frame that photo and put it on the wall.
Phil Gaimon (Pro Cycling on $10 a Day: From Fat Kid to Euro Pro)
We’re all members of one tribe or another—bonded by culture, family, religion, class, education, employment, team affiliation, or any number of other criteria. An essential first step in discerning the cultural from the human is what mythologist Joseph Campbell called detribalization. We have to recognize the various tribes we belong to and begin extricating ourselves from the unexamined assumptions each of them mistakes for the truth.
Christopher Ryan (Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships)
NBA is not exactly the friendliest environment for teaching selflessness. Even though the game itself is a five-person sport, the culture surrounding it celebrates egoistic behavior and stresses individual achievement over team bonding.
Phil Jackson (Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success)
Basketball is a great mystery. You can do everything right. You can have the perfect mix of talent and the best system of offense in the game. You can devise a foolproof defensive strategy and prepare your players for every possible eventuality. But if the players don’t have a sense of oneness as a group, your efforts won’t pay off. And the bond that unites a team can be so fragile, so elusive.
Phil Jackson (Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success)
I’m convinced the reason they don’t make James Bond movies anymore is because the stunts he used to do no longer impress us as people do that stuff on a wet Thursday afternoon in an office team building session. Even sweaty Pete from IT manages to get his fat arse into a jumpsuit so he can do a tandem jump with his head of
Karl Pilkington (The Further Adventures of an Idiot Abroad)
As a team leader, the question for you is how much formal team bonding is enough. After talking with a number of former McKinsey-ites, and reflecting on my own experience, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the answer is not much. A little team bonding goes a long way. As a team leader, you have the far more important job of looking after team morale
Ethan M. Rasiel (The McKinsey Way)
I’m not sure that team bonding is all that important. What’s important is that a team works together well, and that will come or not over the course of a project. It’s also important that individuals feel respected and that they feel that their ideas are respected. Team bonding is not, “Did you take your team to enough dinners? Did you go out to the movies? Did you go to the circus?” Most people, even very hard-working people, want to have a life, to be with their families. I think that’s more important than going out to the circus.
Ethan M. Rasiel (The McKinsey Way)
Get to know your teammates as people. Are they married? Do they have kids? What are their hobbies? It will help you to understand them. Share a bit about yourself as well; that makes it more likely that your teammates will think of you as part of “us,” rather than “them.” This, incidentally, is a much better way of team bonding than taking your team out to the ball game.
Ethan M. Rasiel (The McKinsey Way)
Why did these men fight? The answer is simple. We were ordinary people molded into Marines. The same can be said of those who served in the army. We all had the proper upbringings of common folk, when you have a task to do, you work hard, give it your best and get the job done. We came from different backgrounds; however, we became a team, moving and fighting as if we had known each other all of our lives. All of us have bonded for life and still keep in touch by phone, letters, and visits. If anyone of the second squad needs help you can be sure the rest of the squad would be there. All of those I have kept in touch with have been successful in the life endeavors they chose. "Not one of them is bitter about giving up two years of their life to 'Serve Their Country'" -George E. Krug
James Brady (Why Marines Fight)
She built a close-knit team of talented people who bonded with one another and felt passion for the mission. Soon her group became one of the parent bank’s most desirable places to work. She developed strong relationships with senior executives who helped her deal with tensions in the middle, and she communicated well and often about why her unit needed to be different. Her creativity, vision, teamwork, and persistence helped this group succeed and become a national role model, while other banks’ efforts faltered.
Harvard Business School Press (HBR's 10 Must Reads on Innovation (with featured article "The Discipline of Innovation," by Peter F. Drucker))
I would never hurt you,” he said in a low voice that did strange things to her insides. Sophie looked into the fire, trying not to meet his eyes. “I don’t see how you could avoid it. If you were, uh, biting me, I mean. Anyway, if I ever do get married or bonded or whatever you want to call it, it couldn’t be with someone like you. I mean, you’re a really nice guy but…” He raised an eyebrow. “But?” Sophie felt awkward but somehow it had to be said. She needed to let him know how she felt before things went any further. “Well it’s not just because of the biting thing, really it’s not,” she said. “It’s because you’re so big. So aggressive. I mean, the things you said to that Scourge guy in the shuttle…” Sylvan frowned. “He was threatening you. I had to make it clear you were off limits.” “And I appreciate that,” Sophie said earnestly. “But I don’t know who you scared more, me or him.” She thought of the way he’d looked, with his fangs out and that blood-thirsty look in his eyes—terrifying. Even though they’d been about to crash, she hadn’t been able to stop staring at him. Sylvan nodded thoughtfully. “And if you ever do get bonded, what kind of male would you look for?” “Probably not a Kindred. I don’t want any kind of alpha male,” Sophie said decisively. He frowned. “Alpha male?” “Big, strong, angry, aggressive. You know like…like the captain of the football team.” Sophie looked down at her hands. “If I ever end up with someone he’ll have to be quiet and gentle.” “I can be those things.
Evangeline Anderson (Hunted (Brides of the Kindred, #2))
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Aman Jha (All About Yoga: Details of yoga with 10 types Of yoga forms and fifteen yoga asana with pictures)
Funny how bonding it can be to dig up a grave together. They should include it in team-building management courses.
Marina Finlayson (The Twiceborn Queen (The Proving #2))
Aung San spent the rest of 1940 in the Japanese capital, learning Japanese and apparently getting swept away in all the fascist euphoria surrounding him. “What we want is a strong state administration as exemplified in Germany and Japan. There shall be one nation, one state, one party, one leader . . . there shall be no nonsense of individualism. Everyone must submit to the state which is supreme over the individual . . . ,” he wrote in those heady days of the Rising Sun.8 He spoke Japanese, wore a kimono, and even took a Japanese name. He then sneaked back into Burma, landing secretly at Bassein. He changed into a longyi and then took the train unnoticed to Rangoon. He made contact with his old colleagues. Within weeks, in small batches and with the help of Suzuki’s secret agents in Rangoon, Aung San and his new select team traveled by sea to the Japanese-controlled island of Hainan, in the South China Sea. There were thirty in all—the Thirty Comrades—and they would soon be immortalized in nationalist mythology. Aung San at twenty-five was one of the three oldest. He took Teza meaning “Fire” as his nom de guerre. The other two took the names Setkya (A Magic Weapon) and Ne Win (the Bright Sun). All thirty prefixed their names with the title Bo. “Bo” meant an officer and had come to be the way all Europeans in Burma were referred to, signifying their ruling status. The Burmese were now to have their own “bo” for the first time since 1885. But six months of harsh Japanese military training still lay ahead. It wasn’t easy, and at one point some of the younger men were close to calling it quits. Aung San, Setkya, and Ne Win received special training, as they were intended for senior positions. But all had to pass through the same grueling physical tests, saluting the Japanese flag and learning to sing Japanese songs. They heard tales of combat and listened to Suzuki boasting of how he had killed women and children in Siberia.9 It was a bonding experience that would shape Burmese politics for decades to come.
Thant Myint-U (The River of Lost Footsteps: A Personal History of Burma)
Still another abstract benefit of playing for Pulaski: The experience is so different from traditional high school football that the Bruins’ players feel as though they’re part of something unique, an elite unit amid regular cadets. The team bonds have solidified; the offensive and defensive players consider themselves kindred spirits, bracketed together by their singular coach.
Tobias J. Moskowitz (Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind Sports and How Games Are Won)
RoofScapes is a bonded, insured roofing contractor servicing the DFW area. Our leadership team has multiple years of experience in all aspects of the roofing industry. We are a company large enough to handle any of your commercial or residential roofing needs, yet small enough to monitor your project through from start to finish to assure your complete satisfaction.
RoofScapes
When it blossoms it is like a team but when it fades away it is worse than an enemy.' (Misunderstandings in our friendships and relationships)
Riya Bisht
The dominance of football in Texas high schools had become the focus of raging debate all over the state in 1983. The governor of Texas, Mark White, appointed Perot to head a committee on educational reform. In pointing to school systems he thought were skewed in favor of extracurricular activities, Perot took particular aim at Odessa. On ABC’s Nightline, he called Permian fans “football crazy,” and during the show it was pointed out that a $5.6 million high school football stadium had been built in Odessa in 1982. The stadium included a sunken artificial-surface field eighteen feet below ground level, a two-story press box with VIP seating for school board members and other dignitaries, poured concrete seating for 19,032, and a full-time caretaker who lived in a house on the premises. “He made it look like we were a bunch of West Texas hicks, fanatics,” said Allen of Perot. The stadium “was something the community took a lot of pride in and he went on television and said you’re a bunch of idiots for building it.” Most of the money for the stadium had come from a voter-approved bond issue.
H.G. Bissinger (Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream)
moved to the aura-based system. That's part of development: You throw stuff out there, and it works or it doesn't." Ultimately, however, auras passed the Blizzard North test: If a proposal's merit held up after testing, it made the cut. Auras became a defining characteristic of the Paladin. His assortment of combat skills and defensive auras enabled solo players to survive and thrive on their own, while Paladin players were sought after on Battle.net for the benefits their auras granted to parties. To fully upgrade each of any hero's thirty skills would require 600 skill points. The maximum character-level is 99, meaning players will never receive enough points to master—fully upgrade—all thirty skills. That limitation forces them to make difficult choices: maximize proficiency in a few skills, focus on a half dozen, or potentially spread themselves thin to become competent in all abilities but a master of none. Because each hero's skills are exclusive, all players wind up specializing simply by choosing a class. From there they only specialize further, investing heavily in some skills, spending a single point in others to satisfy requirements for later abilities, and ignoring most of the rest. Those limitations are not meant to restrain players, but to encourage them to think carefully about upgrades. The thought they put into skill points creates a bond between players and their avatars, and the satisfaction that comes from seeing a character evolve—as well as choosing each and every piece of a character's equipment load—feeds into Dave Brevik's peacock mentality: No two players were likely to spec out the same hero. In fact, a single player could roll several Amazons or Paladins and develop each differently. In a way, assigning exclusive skills to Diablo II's heroes was more limiting than Diablo's spell books, which could be read and cast by any of the game's three heroes as long as players dumped enough experience points into their Magic stat. Blizzard North's team saw that limitation as a good thing. It fostered agency, asking players to play an active role in evolving their characters.
David L. Craddock (Stay Awhile and Listen: Book II - Heaven, Hell, and Secret Cow Levels)
It would be a big story and would take a difficult emotional toll on the community there. The bond you form in high-stress moments like this, when you’re sharing information that you can’t discuss with anyone else, is a powerful one. In every emergency I’ve encountered as CEO, I’ve been grateful for the competence and cool heads and humanity of the team around me.
Robert Iger (The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company)
Relying on the art of persuasion to strengthen emotional bonds makes teams more productive, engaged, cooperative, and, ultimately, successful.
Carmine Gallo (Five Stars: The Communication Secrets to Get from Good to Great)
Sort out your priorities for the session and identify what the outcome will be. This is not the same as identifying what the decision will be i.e. the outcome may be that a decision will be made regarding the method of banding books in the guided reading store, not that the decision to use method X will be the outcome. Helpful elements for a variety of meeting types are Brainstorming (or the more politically correct: Thought Showers) which are good for enthusing and bonding a team, and Workshopping where all work together to produce a finished project/plan/strategy.
Carole Lorimer (The Seven Deadly Demons of Deputy Headship)
The affable Feige would never admit it to Pascal’s face, but he and his team at Marvel had for years disliked what Sony had been doing with the character. He thought that restarting with The Amazing Spider-Man, rather than moving on from Raimi’s mistakes in Spider-Man 3, had been a big mistake. “In a million years I would never advocate rebooting . . . Iron Man,” Feige wrote to Marvel Entertainment’s president, Alan Fine, and its vice president of production, Tom Cohen. “To me it’s James Bond and we can keep telling new stories for decades even with different actors.” Fine concurred: “I think that it is a mistake to deny the original trilogy its place in the canon of the Spider-Man cinematic universe. What are you telling the audience? That the original trilogy is a mistake, a total false-hood?” He had even harsher words for the script of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 that the Marvel trio had recently read: “I found this draft tedious, boring, and had to force myself to read it through . . . This story is way too dark, way too depressing. I wanted to burn the draft after I read it never mind thinking about buying the DVD.” The
Ben Fritz (The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies)
The crucial issue when a subsidy is proposed is the impact on the finances of the local government, known as fiscal impact. Unless the annual flows of tax revenues more than pay for the bonds being issued, then some other part of the municipal budget will suffer. Even then it will probably suffer because people’s budgets for recreation are limited. A dollar spent at the ballpark is a dollar not spent at a restaurant, bar, or other place of leisure time activity, thus transferring the jobs and economic effects from many businesses to a single sports team.
David Cay Johnston (Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill))
What you want is to become a valuable team player, get along with everyone, avoid confrontation, bond with your Boss, and avoid stressful situations.
Sharon Vargas (New Job Survival Guide, Updated and Expanded: How to Start Your New Job Stress Free and Confident in Today's Complex Work Environment)
It’s not enough to think people are happy. I want you to be a scientist about it: quantify it and equate it with performance. If something doesn’t match up, there’s a problem. It’s great to go to the pub with your team and bond. But it doesn’t do the company a lot of good if that bonding doesn’t actually translate into better performance. There are a lot of people I hang with just for fun. With my team I want that social aspect to move directly into performance. And
Jeff Sutherland (Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time)
It is because of serotonin that a college graduate feels a sense of pride and feels their confidence and status rise as they walk across the stage to receive their diploma. Technically, all a student needs to graduate is to pay their bills, fulfill their requirements and collect enough credits. But graduation probably wouldn’t feel the same if we received only an e-mail with a generic letter of congratulations and a downloadable attachment of the diploma. And here’s the best part. At the moment that college graduate feels the serotonin course through their veins as they receive their diploma, their parents, sitting in the audience, also get bursts of serotonin and feel equally as proud. And that’s the point. Serotonin is attempting to reinforce the bond between parent and child, teacher and student, coach and player, boss and employee, leader and follower.
Simon Sinek (Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't)
Our world is one of impatience. A world of instant gratification. A world ruled by dopamine. Google can give us the answer we want now. We can buy online and get what we want now. We can send and receive information instantaneously. We don’t have to wait a week to see our favorite show, we can watch it now. We have gotten used to getting what we want when we want it. This is all fine and good for movies or online shopping, but it’s not very helpful when we are trying to form the bonds of trust that can withstand storms. That takes time, and there’s no app that can speed that up.
Simon Sinek (Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't)
WHITE SOLIDARITY White solidarity is the unspoken agreement among whites to protect white advantage and not cause another white person to feel racial discomfort by confronting them when they say or do something racially problematic. Educational researcher Christine Sleeter describes this solidarity as white “racial bonding.” She observes that when whites interact, they affirm “a common stance on race-related issues, legitimating particular interpretations of groups of color, and drawing conspiratorial we-they boundaries.”10 White solidarity requires both silence about anything that exposes the advantages of the white position and tacit agreement to remain racially united in the protection of white supremacy. To break white solidarity is to break rank. We see white solidarity at the dinner table, at parties, and in work settings. Many of us can relate to the big family dinner at which Uncle Bob says something racially offensive. Everyone cringes but no one challenges him because nobody wants to ruin the dinner. Or the party where someone tells a racist joke but we keep silent because we don’t want to be accused of being too politically correct and be told to lighten up. In the workplace, we avoid naming racism for the same reasons, in addition to wanting to be seen as a team player and to avoid anything that may jeopardize our career advancement. All these familiar scenarios are examples of white solidarity. (Why speaking up about racism would ruin the ambiance or threaten our career advancement is something we might want to talk about.) The very real consequences of breaking white solidarity play a fundamental role in maintaining white supremacy. We do indeed risk censure and other penalties from our fellow whites. We might be accused of being politically correct or might be perceived as angry, humorless, combative, and not suited to go far in an organization. In my own life, these penalties have worked as a form of social coercion. Seeking to avoid conflict and wanting to be liked, I have chosen silence all too often. Conversely, when I kept quiet about racism, I was rewarded with social capital such as being seen as fun, cooperative, and a team player. Notice that within a white supremacist society, I am rewarded for not interrupting racism and punished in a range of ways—big and small—when I do. I can justify my silence by telling myself that at least I am not the one who made the joke and that therefore I am not at fault. But my silence is not benign because it protects and maintains the racial hierarchy and my place within it. Each uninterrupted joke furthers the circulation of racism through the culture, and the ability for the joke to circulate depends on my complicity. People of color certainly experience white solidarity as a form of racism, wherein we fail to hold each other accountable, to challenge racism when we see it, or to support people of color in the struggle for racial justice.
Robin DiAngelo (White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism)
I truly loved the soldiers I served with, in ways that transcend familial or romantic love. Some of them still call me, and for the guys in my fire team I’ll be their ‘sarge’ for perpetuity. And even though some stayed active duty and outranked the E-5 stripes I proudly wore, they’ll always be Specialist Joe to me. The lightning rod of combat, the first rounds fired, it solidifies that moment, encapsulating it and preserving the bond. For us, time stopped and Bravo Fire Team will always be as it was. Even though we moved on, it remains.
J.R. Handley
But he and Lucky had been bound from the first moments the SEAL team stepped into the jungle to rescue him. And that bond hadn’t been cut. Instead, it tugged them closer, across oceans. Across impossible odds.
S.E. Jakes (Bound to Break (Men of Honor, #6))
Kindness is a powerful bridge builder which unifies teams, bonds friends, supports loved ones, and spreads goodwill. Tending to your bridges will fortify your relationships in such way that you will keep your invitations coming and your options open for future opportunities.
Susan C. Young (The Art of Action: 8 Ways to Initiate & Activate Forward Momentum for Positive Impact (The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #4))
As assistant officer in charge of his SEAL Team Three platoon, Brendan saw the terrorist threat firsthand in a way few Americans could in the spring or summer of 2010. He was driven not by ideology, but by the same promise he and Travis had made when they were called to action after 9/11. As long as evil men wished to do Americans harm and demonstrated the willingness and capability to do so, brave men and women like Brendan and his fellow US service members would step forward to confront them.
Tom Sileo (Brothers Forever: The Enduring Bond between a Marine and a Navy SEAL that Transcended Their Ultimate Sacrifice)
She began by doing the work herself. Then she trained some volunteers. When the team grew to the point of becoming unwieldy, she created roles and gave volunteers responsibility and, with that responsibility, titles. The live chat team soon had live chat volunteers (LCVs) and point of contacts (PCs).
Becky Bond (Rules for Revolutionaries: How Big Organizing Can Change Everything)
All true, I suppose, but Caine is not the man you think he is. Do you have any idea how much blood is on his hands? How many lives Caine has ended? How many operations—black, unsanctioned, wet, whatever term you want to use—he has participated in?” “What are you talking about? I’ve debriefed plenty of operatives. He’s no different than—” “You’re deluded, Rebecca. Caine is nothing like other operatives. Everything about him, even his official work with the CIA, was part of his cover. He was a member of a very special group, a team of specialists with superlative skills. All handpicked by me. Trained by the best, to be the best. One-hundred-percent loyal. One-hundred-percent dependable. And as always, one-hundred-percent expendable. When I saw an opportunity to remove him from play, and create a benefit for myself and the program, I took it. That was my directive.” Rebecca struggled in her bonds. “You goddamn son of a bitch!
Andrew Warren (Tokyo Black (Thomas Caine #1))
I’ll never forget talking to Marissa Mayer when she was at Google about a whale-watching trip that her boss had organized to help the team bond. Marissa gets seasick. She knew she’d wind up blowing chunder over the side of the boat if she went. But her boss pressured her, saying she should go anyway, to be a good team player. You shouldn’t have to barf over the side of a boat to demonstrate you’re a good team player.
Kim Malone Scott (Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity)
As Haidt writes in The Righteous Mind, the moral foundation of loyalty helps groups cement bonds and form coalitions. It shows “who is a team player and who is a traitor, particularly when your team is fighting with other teams.
Daniel H. Pink (The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward)
The lesson is simple: do not confuse a chummy, clublike atmosphere with team spirit and cohesion. Coddling your soldiers and acting as if everyone were equal will ruin discipline and promote the creation of factions. Victory will forge stronger bonds than superficial friendliness, and victory comes from discipline, training, and ruthlessly high standards.
Robert Greene (The 33 Strategies of War)
Revelation 13 presents a sneak-peek into a future system in which this one-world dictator and his demonic-controlled team will seize complete global-economic control by forcing a new method of purchasing and selling through a three-part system, “a mark, a number, or a name” (Rev. 13:16-17). This scheme, known as the “Mark of the beast,” is global, as we read, “He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond to receive a mark in their right hand or in their foreheads” (Rev. 13:16).
Perry Stone (America's Apocalyptic Reset: Unmasking the Radical's Blueprints to Silence Christians, Patriots, and Conservatives)
Stay Loyal to People, Not Organizations Mitt Romney was wrong—corporations aren’t people. As British Lord Chancellor Edward Thurow observed more than two centuries ago, business enterprises “have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned.” As such, they do not deserve your affection or your loyalty, nor can they repay it in kind. Churches, countries, and even the occasional private firm have been touting loyalty to abstract organizations for centuries, usually as a ploy to convince young people to do brave and foolish things like go to war so old people can keep their land and treasure. It. Is. Bullshit. The most impressive students in my class are the young men and women who have served their country. We benefit (hugely) from their loyalty to our country, but I don’t think we (the United States) pay them their due. I believe it’s a bad trade for them. Be loyal to people. People transcend corporations, and people, unlike corporations, value loyalty. Good leaders know they are only as good as the team standing behind them—and once they have forged a bond of trust with someone, will do whatever it takes to keep that person happy and on their team. If your boss isn’t fighting for you, you either have a bad boss or you are a bad employee.
Scott Galloway (The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google)
emotional trust is grounded in coworkers’ care and concern for one another. Relationships built on emotional trust rely on positive feeling and emotional bonds, and they crop up most easily when team members share common values and mind-sets.
Tsedal Neeley (Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding from Anywhere)
Why do we care for our stakeholders in this particular order? The interests of our own employees must be placed directly ahead of those of our guests because the only way we can consistently earn raves, win repeat business, and develop bonds of loyalty with our guests is first to ensure that our own team members feel jazzed about coming to work. Being jazzed is a combination of feeling motivated, enthusiastic, confident, proud, and at peace with the choice to work on our team.
Danny Meyer
A Team maintains different faces but one look, different eyes but one vision, different tastes but a common hunger to succeed, different thinking but common understanding; diverse methods but one dream; standing far but remaining together, feels envy at own loss but pride in partner's achievement. Might not drink from the same cup but ready to fill each other's cup, Team-work is an invisible bond offering space in togetherness.
Shahenshah Hafeez Khan
Luit never came out of the anesthesia. He paid dearly for having stood up to two other males, frustrating them by his steep ascent. Those two had been plotting against him in order to take back the power they had lost. The shocking way they did so opened my eyes to how deadly seriously chimpanzees take their politics. Two-against-one maneuvering is what lends chimpanzee power struggles both their richness and their danger. Coalitions are key. No male can rule by himself, at least not for long, because the group as a whole can overthrow anybody. Chimpanzees are so clever about banding together that a leader needs allies to fortify his position as well as the greater community’s acceptance. Staying on top is a balancing act between forcefully asserting dominance, keeping supporters happy, and avoiding mass revolt. If this sounds familiar, it’s because human politics works exactly the same. Before Luit’s death, the Arnhem colony was ruled jointly by Nikkie, a young upstart, and Yeroen, an over-the-hill conniver. Barely adult at seventeen, Nikkie was a brawny character with a dopey expression. He was very determined, but not the sharpest knife in the drawer. He was supported by Yeroen, who was physically not up to the task of being a leader anymore, yet who wielded enormous influence behind the scenes. Yeroen had a habit of watching disputes unfold from a distance, stepping in only when emotions were flaring to calmly support one side or the other, thus forcing everybody to pay attention to his decisions. Yeroen shrewdly exploited the rivalries among younger and stronger males. Without going into the complex history of this group, it was clear that Yeroen hated Luit, who had wrested power from him years before. Luit had defeated Yeroen in a struggle that had taken three hot summer months of daily tensions involving the entire colony. The next year, Yeroen had gotten even by helping Nikkie dethrone Luit. Ever since, Nikkie had been the alpha male with Yeroen as his right-hand man. The two became inseparable. Luit was unafraid of either one of them alone. In one-on-one encounters in the night cages, Luit dominated every other male in the colony, taking away their food or chasing them around. No single one of them could possibly have kept him in his place. This meant that Yeroen and Nikkie ruled as a team, and only as a team. They did so for four long years. But their coalition eventually began to unravel, and as is not uncommon among men, the divisive issue was sex. Being the kingmaker, Yeroen had enjoyed extraordinary sexual privileges. Nikkie would not let any other males get near the most attractive females, but for Yeroen he had always made an exception. This was part of the deal: Nikkie had the power, and Yeroen got a slice of the sexual pie. This happy arrangement ended only when Nikkie tried to renegotiate its terms. In the four years of his rule, he had grown increasingly self-confident. Had he forgotten who had helped him get to the top? When the young leader began to throw his weight around, interfering with the sexual adventures not only of other males but also of Yeroen himself, things got ugly. Infighting within the ruling coalition went on for months, until one day Yeroen and Nikkie failed to reconcile after a spat. With Nikkie following him around, screaming and begging for their customary embrace, the old fox finally walked away without looking back. He’d had it. Luit filled the power vacuum overnight. The most magnificent chimpanzee male I have known, both in body and spirit, quickly grew in stature as the alpha male. Luit was popular with females, a mighty arbiter of disputes, protector of the downtrodden, and effective at disrupting bonding among rivals in the divide-and-rule tactic typical of both chimp and man. As soon as Luit saw other males together he would either join them or perform a charging display to disband them.
Frans de Waal (Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are)
But what aren't you doing already? What more can you possibly do?’ ‘I guess he means the team stuff’, I said. ‘The bonding. The camaraderie I've never really been –‘. ‘Don't start judging yourself’, she said sharply. ‘Don't start seeing yourself in the light of those kinds of standards.’ ‘No, but it's true. There's always been the part of work I've struggled with, the unquestioning side. The feeling of joining in. I've always tried to do it at this kind of remove. Maybe what he's saying is –‘ ‘Of course you've done it at a remove. How else are you supposed to do it and still be you?’ ‘But maybe those days are gone’, I said. ‘Maybe I have to accept that. Maybe there just won't be those kind of jobs anymore - the ones where you can roll out of bed and staggering without speaking to anyone and keep your head down and just do it, you know? maybe this is what work is, now’ […] ‘Definitely. Simple tasks can be automated. They've already almost got the machine learning to do what you do. It's about what else a human can bring to the table, which is, literally, their humanity.’ It was possible, I realised, to imagine. A semi-global future in which the bulk of paid human employment would revolve not around hard skills, but around the messy, blurry business of interpersonal success. A new divide would open up, between the well liked, The easy to get along with, and the awkward, The rude, the unfriendly. I pictured the encampment on which I had lived, filled not as it was then, with migrants, unfortunates, hard drinkers, the out of luck. But instead, the abrasive, the poorly adjusted, the excessively reserved and painfully shy. (p.136-7)
Sam Byers (Come Join Our Disease)
Over the next few years, my husband and I went through the motions of being married. We had something in common now that was so important to both of us. Our baby boy had bonded us forever. Our love for each other didn’t blossom, but the love we shared for him put us back on the same team. Whatever our differences and disagreements and incompatibilities, we were working together toward the same goal—to raise a healthy child—and that tunnel vision meant we could avoid looking too closely at our problems.
Kristina Kuzmic (Hold On, But Don't Hold Still: Hope and Humor from My Seriously Flawed Life)
The growing team also bonded over computer games. Following a long day of work, most of the employees in the office would put the phones on their desks into conference mode. The office would come alive with banter and bravado as the SpaceX employees loaded the computer game Quake III Arena, a first-person shooter that allowed multiple players to join, and battle one another in death matches. Each participant would choose a playable character and a weapon, and look for targets on the virtual playing field.
Eric Berger (Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX)
Page 7: (H)e (Darwin) supposed that man, before he even emerged from apedom, was already a social being, living in small scattered communities. Evolution in his eyes was carried out mainly as a struggle between communities - team against team, tribe against tribe. Inside each team or tribe, the 'ethical cosmos' [the dual code of Amity and Enmity] was at work, forging and strengthening the social bonds which made the members of such a team a co-operative whole. … Thus, in the early stages of human evolution we find competition and co-operation as constituent elements of the evolutionary process … Co-operation and unity give strength to a team or tribe; but why did neighboring tribes refuse so stubbornly to amalgamate? If united, they would have got rid of competition and struggle. Why do human tribes instinctively repel every thought of amalgamation, and prize above all things independence, the control of their destiny, their sovereignty? Here we have to look beneath the surface of things and formulate a theory to explain tribal behavior. How does a tribe fulfill an evolutionary purpose? A tribe is a 'corporate body,' which Nature has entrusted with an assortment of human seed or genes, the assortment differing in some degree from that entrusted to every other tribe. If the genes are to work out their evolutionary effects, then it is necessary that the tribe or corporation should maintain its integrity through an infinity of generations. If a tribe loses its integrity by a slackening of social bonds, or by disintegration of the parental instincts, or by lack of courage or of skill to defend itself from the aggression of neighboring tribes, or by free interbreeding with neighbors and thus scattering its genes, then that tribe as an evolutionary venture has come to an untimely end. For evolutionary purposes it has proved a failure. Page 25: Tribalism was Nature's method in bringing about the evolution of man. I have already explained what a tribe really is - a corporation of human beings entrusted with a certain capital of genes. The business of such a corporation is to nurse and develop its stock of genes - to bring them to an evolutionary fruition. To reach such an end a tribal corporation had to comply with two conditions: (1) it had to endure for a long age; (2) it had to remain intact and separate from all neighboring and competing tribes. Human nature was fashioned or evolved just to secure these two conditions - continuity through time and separation in space. Hence the duality of man's nature - the good, social, or virtuous traits serving intratribal economy; the evil, vicious, or antisocial qualities serving the intertribal economy and the policy of keeping its genes apart. Human nature is the basal part of the machinery used for the evolution of man. When you know the history of our basal mentality - one fitted for tribal life - do you wonder at the disorder and turmoil which now afflict the detribalized part of the world?
Arthur Keith
You’re not part of the team because you’re the field.” “I’m not sure if you’re trying to tell me that you’re playing me, but that’s what it sounds like.” He scrubs his hand over his mouth, hiding a smile. “No, that’s not what I mean. What I’m trying to say is you’re the reason we’re a team. We come together for you, meeting on mutual grounds to work toward the finish line, which is making our little family a safe and happy home.
Rory Miles (Tainted Power - The Complete Series)
Scarecrow explained the rules. Each group’s mission was to ransack and destroy Sandanona. For several hours they would shoot at anything that moved, except possibly each other, although no one would receive points for hitting anything other than skeet. This was no wimpy paintball shooting contest; the guns and ammo were real. We were about to learn the corporate team concept of shooting to kill and experience the ultimate in male bonding (although a few women were present, this being the 1990s and all). Some salesmen questioned whether F.I.A.S.C.O. was originally Scarecrow’s idea. Original ideas may not have been Scarecrow’s forte, but on this issue, I must defend him. The clever acronym may not have been his invention, but the idea of shooting at things certainly was.
Frank Partnoy (FIASCO: Blood in the Water on Wall Street)
we were failing to create useful bonds between one team and the next.
Stanley McChrystal (Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World)
She broke the rules Vivian set. You deserved the win and he’s already thrown her out of the class. Her parents are furious but Gryphon went to speak to them. You can’t join a TacTeam if you have no loyalty to your team.
J. Bree (Broken Bonds (The Bonds that Tie, #1))
This systemic risk problem is what drew Blythe Masters, one of the key figures behind blockchain innovation on Wall Street, into digital ledger technology; she joined Digital Asset Holdings, a blockchain service provider for the financial system’s back-office processing tasks, as CEO in 2014. Masters is best known for one of the most contentious financial innovations of our time, the credit default swap (CDS), a financial derivative contract in which one institution agrees to pay another if a particular bond or loan goes into default. At the age of just twenty-five, and as part of a crack team at J.P. Morgan, she conceived of CDSs as a way for investors to buy insurance against the risk they bear on their balance sheets—and thus to unlock capital hitherto tied up against that risk—as well as for other investors, the banks, and other institutions that issue the CDS to place a bet on the underlying asset without actually owning it.
Michael J. Casey (The Truth Machine: The Blockchain and the Future of Everything)
A good working environment helps ensure that we can build the bonds of trust required for effective cooperation.
Simon Sinek (Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't)
Where do people like Johnny Bravo come from? Are they just born that way? Some perhaps are. But if the conditions in which we work meet a particular standard, every single one of us is capable of the courage and sacrifice of a Johnny Bravo. Though we may not be asked to risk our lives or to save anybody else’s, we would gladly share our glory and help those with whom we work succeed. More important, in the right conditions, the people with whom we work would choose to do those things for us. And when that happens, when those kinds of bonds are formed, a strong foundation is laid for the kind of success and fulfillment that no amount of money, fame or awards can buy. This is what it means to work in a place in which the leaders prioritize the well-being of their people and, in return, their people give everything they’ve got to protect and advance the well-being of one another and the organization.
Simon Sinek (Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't)