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Teamwork Quotes

    “None of us are immune from life’s tragic moments. Like the small rubber boat we had in basic SEAL training, it takes a team of good people to get you to your destination in life. You cannot paddle the boat alone. Find someone to share your life with. Make as many friends as possible, and never forget that your success depends on others.”

    William A. McRaven, Make Your Bed (Page 21) | ★ Featured on this book list.

      “Don’t get into this binary thing where you’re looking at Fox or CNN. Read the other side. Some of your fellow citizens have good reasons to believe something different than you do. I try to think sometimes about where are they right? Not are they wrong. You’ll become a better thinker. And you earn peoples’ respect. By telling the truth, being a team player. Team player doesn’t mean you don’t complain. It means you complain if we are doing something stupid.”

      Jaime Dimon

        “This fight-camp, support-the-champ mentality became the new law of our group. Everybody had to run five at five; everybody had to work out in the gym; everybody had to eat right; everybody had to read and study and offer new ideas. Everybody had to live a disciplined life, to reach for the best version of themselves, otherwise they had to go the fuck home. The unified mission of telling Muhammad Ali’s story established a new fundamental way of being that would extend within our group far beyond the completion of Ali.”

        Will Smith, Will (Page 310)

          “It is a mistake to think that there are times when you can safely address a person without love. You can work with objects without love—cutting wood, baking bricks, making iron—but you cannot work with people without love. In the same way as you cannot work with bees without being cautious, you cannot work with people without being mindful of their humanity. It is the quality of people as it is of bees: if you are not very cautious with them, then you harm both yourself and them. It cannot be otherwise, because mutual love is the major law of our existence.”

          Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 124)

            “Human beings exist as individuals and as members of groups at all times. I am one and I am one of many… always. This also creates some inherent conflicts of interest. When we make decisions, we must weigh the benefits to us personally against the benefits to our tribe or collective. Quite often, what’s good for one is not necessarily good for the other. Working exclusively to advance ourselves may hurt the group, while working exclusively to advance the group may come at a cost to us as individuals.”

            Simon Sinek, Leaders Eat Last

              “The key—if you want to build habits that last—is to join a group where the desired behavior is the normal behavior.”

              James Clear, Blog

                “If you can’t see yourself working with someone for life, don’t work with them for a day.”

                Naval Ravikant, Medium

                  “Everyone has an ego.  Ego drives the most successful people in life—in the SEAL Teams, in the military, in the business world.  They want to win, to be the best.  That is good.  But when ego clouds our judgment and prevents us from seeing the world as it is, then ego becomes destructive.  When personal agendas become more important than the team and the overarching mission’s success, performance suffers and failure ensues.  Many of the disruptive issues that arise within any team can be attributed directly to a problem with ego.” ~ Jocko Willink, Extreme Ownership (Page 100)

                    “Leadership is the most important thing on any battlefield; it is the single greatest factor in whether a team succeeds or fails.  A leader must find a way to become effective and drive high performance within his or her team in order to win.  Whether in SEAL training, in combat on distant battlefields, in business, or in life: there are no bad teams, only bad leaders.” ~ Leif Babin, Extreme Ownership (Page 62)

                      “Leaders should never be satisfied.  They must always strive to improve, and they must build that mind-set into the team.  They must face the facts through a realistic, brutally honest assessment of themselves and their team’s performance.  Identifying weaknesses, good leaders seek to strengthen them and come up with a plan to overcome challenges.  The best teams anywhere, like the SEAL Teams, are constantly looking to improve, add capability, and push the standards higher.  It starts with the individual and spreads to each of the team members until this becomes the culture, the new standard.” ~ Leif Babin, Extreme Ownership (Page 55)

                        “When it comes to standards, as a leader, it’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate.  When setting expectations, no matter what has been said or written, if substandard performance is accepted and no one is held accountable—if there are no consequences—that poor performance becomes the new standard.  Therefore, leaders must enforce standards.  Consequences for failing need not be immediately severe, but leaders must ensure that tasks are repeated until the higher expected standard is achieved.” ~ Leif Babin, Extreme Ownership (Page 54)

                          “There are no bad teams, only bad leaders.  The leader’s attitude sets the tone for the entire team.  The leader drives performance—or doesn’t.  And this applies not just to the most senior leader of an overall team, but to the junior leaders of teams within the team.” ~ Leif Babin, Extreme Ownership (Page 49)

                            “Leadership is the most important factor on the battlefield, the single greatest reason behind the success of any team.  By leadership, we do not mean just the senior commanders at the top, but the crucial leaders at every level of the team—the senior enlisted leaders, the fire team leaders in charge of four people, the squad leaders in charge of eight, and the junior petty officers that stepped up, took charge, and led.  They each played an integral role in the success of our team.” ~ Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, Extreme Ownership (Page 11)

                              “When you’re surrounded by people who share a collective passion around a common purpose, anything is possible.” ~ Howard Schultz, via Talk Like TED

                              Do Nothing! [Book]

                                Do Nothing by J Keith Murnighan

                                By: J. Keith Murnighan

                                From this Book:  9 Quotes

                                Book Overview:  According to J. Keith Murnighan, Great leaders don’t do any­thing—except think, make key decisions, help people do their jobs better, and add a touch of organizational control to make sure the final recipes come out okay. In sharp contrast, most leaders are too busy actually working to do these things—and their teams suffer as a result.  Do Nothing!’s practical strategies and true stories will show you how to set high expec­tations for your team and watch it rise to the challenge. It will help you establish a healthier culture by trusting people more than they expect to be trusted. And it will help you overcome your natural tendencies toward micromanagement so you can let people do their jobs—even when you know you could do their jobs better.

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                                Post(s) Inspired by this Book:

                                1. 11 Important J. Keith Murnighan Quotes from Do Nothing! on Leadership and Management
                                2. Family First, Work Second. The Power of Family Values in Business.

                                  “‘People don’t know how much you know until they know how much you care about them.’  You could be the world’s greatest expert on something but if the people you work with don’t know that you care about them, they won’t listen to you much.”

                                  J. Keith Murnighan, Do Nothing!