1. One man can be a crucial ingredient on a team, but one cannot make a team.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (b.1947) U.S. basketball player. Star (1986)
2. Team-building exercises come in many forms but they all trace their roots back to the prison system.
Scott Adams (b.1957) U.S. cartoonist and humorist. The Dilbert Principle (1996)
3. Team player: An employee who substitutes the thinking of the herd for his/her own good judgment.
Anonymous. Fortune (February 15, 1995)
4. A team is like a baby tiger given to you at Christmas. It does a wonderful job of keeping the mice away for about 12 months, and then it starts to eat your kids.
Anonymous. Quoted in Fortune (February 19, 1996)
5. A team is not a bunch of people with job titles, but a congregation of individuals, each of whom has a role that is understood by other members.
Meredith Belbin (b.1926) British psychologist and training expert. Team Roles at Work (1993)
6. Empowered teams can say “no” to the status quo…Teams will replace the hierarchy in the private sector. In government, teams can get a lot more done at a lower cost to the taxpayer.
Kenneth Blanchard (b.1939) U.S. management theorist and author. Ken Blanchard’s Profiles of Success (1996)
7. Teamwork is a constant balancing act between self-interest and group interest.
Susan Campbell (b.1946) U.S. lecturer and author. From Chaos to Confidence (1995)
8. There are two important factors in building a self-motivated team of people-the opportunity to learn through increased effort and trust in the management to give the utmost support.
Tom Farmer (b.1940) British chairman and C.E.O. of Kwik-Fit. Management Today (July 1999)
9. Dividing enemy forces to weaken them is clever, but dividing one’s own team is a grave sin against the business.
Henri Fayol (1841-1925) French business executive. General and Industrial Management (1916)
10. Self-deception operates both at the level of the individual mind, and in the collective awareness of the group. To belong to a group of any sort, the tacit price of membership is to agree not to notice one’s own feelings of uneasiness and misgiving, and certainly not to question anything that challenges the group’s way of doing things.
Daniel Goleman (b.1946) U.S. behavioral scientist, journalist and author. Vital Lies, Simples Truths: The Psychology of Self-Deception (1996)
11. The people we get along with, trust, feel simpatico with, are the strongest links in our networks.
Daniel Goleman (b.1946) U.S. behavioral scientist, journalist and author. Working with Emotional Intelligence (1998)
12. A good team is a great place to be, exciting, stimulating supportive successful. A bad team is horrible, a sort of human prison.
Charles Handy (b.1932) British business executive and author. Inside Organisations (1999)
13. A camel is a horse invented by a committee.
Alec Issigonis (1906-88) British engineer. Quoted in Guardian (London) (January 14, 2001)
14. High-performing companies increasingly believe that teams, rather than business units or individuals, are the basic building blocks of a successful organization.
Anthony Jay (b.1930) British author and business consultant. Quoted in Management Teams-Why They Succeed (R. Meredith Belbin; 1984)
15. It is not the individual but the team that is the instrument of sustained and enduring success in management.
Anthony Jay (b.1930) British author and business consultant. Quoted in Management Teams-Why They Succeed (R. Meredith Belbin; 1984)
16. You’ve got to figure out a way to manage the complexity of large projects yet still allow your core teams to focus on the essentials.
Steve Jobs (b.1955) U.S. entrepreneur, cofounder and C.E.O. of Apple Computer Company, and C.E.O. of Pixar. Quoted in “Steve’s Two Jobs,” Time (Michael Krantz; October 18, 1999)
17. Teams are now the primary force of organizations. They are worth cultivating at their core. Their core is the mind of each team member.
Nancy Kline (b.1946) U.S. author, educator and consultant. Time to Think (1999)
18. The desire to stand well with one’s fellows, the so-called human instinct of association, easily outweighs the merely individual interest.
Elton Mayo (1880-1949) U.S. psychologist. The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilization (1933)
19. Seek to understand each others’ problems and develop a sense of responsibility for each other through working in small grous.
Reg Revans (1907-2003) British academic. Action Learning (1979)
20. People don’t want to be left out of teams. You don’t threaten them or anything like that.
Jack Rowell (b.1937) British rugby captain and coach. Quoted in The Adventure Capitalists (Jeff Grout and Lynne Curry; 1998)
21. To function as a group, the individuals who come together must establish a system of communication and a language that permits interpretation of what is going on.
Edgar H. Schein (b.1928) U.S. writer. Organizational Culture and Leadership (1992)
22. People can be themselves only in small comprehensible groups.
- F. Schumacher (1911-77) British economist and conservationist. Small is Beautiful (1973)
23. A team of dragons doesn’t need a head.
Stan Shih (b.1945) Taiwanese C.E.O. of the Acer Group. Forbes (September 1998)
24. To create human capital, a company needs to foster teamwork, communities of practice and other social forms of learning.
Thomas A. Stewart (b.1948) U.S. journalist and author. “Brain Power: Who Owns It…How They Profit From It,” Fortune (1997)
25. Male Bonding.
Lionel Tiger (b.1937) Canadian anthropologist. Men in Groups (1969)
26. A team-oriented incentive system with group responsibility is…more effective in reducing team conflict and facilitating morale, cooperation and productivity in Chinese organizations.
Zhong-Ming Wang, Chinese academic and business author. “Team Conflict Management,” International Management in China: Cross-Cultural Issues (Jan Selmer. ed.;1998)
27. Team management has been considered as the Chinese approach to enhance collective culture at work.
Zhong-Ming Wang, Chinese academic and business author. “Team Conflict Management,” International Management in China: Cross-Cultural Issues (Jan Selmer. ed.;1998)
28. Building a team is extremely challenging in software.
Ann Winblad (b.1953) U.S. venture capitalist. “Coaching in the Software Industry Play-offs,” Red Herring (1997)
29. You can’t play the game without all the players on the court…The teams must be assembled quickly and play as aunit almost from the start. Failure to recruit a strong, cohesive team means a losing season.
Ann Winblad (b.1953) U.S. venture capitalist. “Coaching in the Software Industry Play-offs,” Red Herring (1997)
