Contrary to the popular American loner icon--the cowboy riding off into the sunset, leaving another love behind--we need people. And we need them bad.
Few business advisors will tell you that you can do it alone, even entrepreneurs have to listen up. They need help too. Lots of it. It may come by outsourcing work but there needs to be emotional support as well. There are few successful people who go home to an empty house.
But there is more to teamwork than merely working well with people. To be a good team member, you need to be good at allowing others to achieve their best. You must be able to work with many different kinds of personalities and let them be.
Over time, the best coaches or team leaders have not been those who dominate with a highly visible presence but rather those who encourage through quite example and a general acceptance. Being accepting of difference is one of the greatest challenges of being on a team. And coaches or leaders are team members.
But what about the average player? They too must learn to lead by example. Just because you don't have the title coach, manager, president, doesn't absolve you of being a leader. In reality, it is much more important to be a player / coach than to be just the coach, for since we all know we need help, we need each other, it is vital to the betterment of the team that players are prime examples of "team players."
Play on!
Team Quotes:
"Every great man is always being helped by everybody; for his gift is to get good out of all things and all persons."-- John Ruskin
"It is the men behind who make the man ahead."-- Merle Crowell
"If I have seen more than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants."-- Sir Isaac Newton
"There is no limit to what can be accomplished if it doesn't matter who gets the credit."-- Emerson
"You can accomplish much if you don't care who gets the credit."-- Ronald Reagan
"Remember, nobody wins unless everybody wins."-- Bruce Springsteen
"Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much."-- Helen Keller
"All of us are smarter than one of us."-- Japanese proverb
"Individual commitment to a group effort - that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work."-- Vince Lombardi
"There is no substitute for effort. If someone with superior natural ability permits you to outwork him, you can defeat him. If you permit someone of lesser skill to excel you in effort, he will likely excel you in accomplishment."-- Joe Robbie
"If you don't make a total commitment to whatever you're doing, then you start looking to bail out the first time the boat starts leaking. It's tough enough getting that boat to shore with everybody rowing, let alone when a guy stands up and starts putting his life jacket on."-- Lou Holtz
"Do you value people who won't benefit you or only those who might contribute in some way to your success? Great team players truly value others as people, and they know and relate to what others value."-- John C. Maxwell
"You give 100% in the first half of the game, and if that isn't enough, in the second half you give what's left."-- Yogi Berra
Jeff is CEO of InnerProjection.com: working with students and parents using the proprietary Success, Design and Preparation
system creating a plan to ensure being of the 30% of college grads who
don't waste 10 to 15 years or leave 100s of thousands of dollars on the
table.
Previous to owning Inner
Projection, Jeff worked as a computer programmer and in tech. support,
but hated it enough to move from his home in Connecticut to do stand up
comedy in Boston where he worked with such comics as Bill Burr, Dan
Cook, and Billy Martin and wrote for people like Mz. Michagan who
needed material for her ventriloquism act. He then moved to Los Angeles
to do more stand up, but found being a college professor more
fulfilling. He's married with 3 children.
Looking for a fast paced, fun, inspirational read?: Black Body Radiation and the Ultraviolet Catastrophe (Amazon.com).
Disclaimer: All information on this site is provided for informational purposes only! By no means is any
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