Team Building Quotes

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Team building quotes from Patrick Lencioni:

Building a cohesive leadership team is the first critical step that an organization must take if it is to have the best chance at success.
- Patrick Lencioni

If you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time.
- In one of his books, Patrick Lencioni mentions this quote from one of his friends – but he doesn’t cite the actual name

Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare.
- Patrick Lencioni

Teamwork remains a sustainable competitive advantage that has been largely untapped because it is hard to measure (teamwork impacts the outcome of an organization in such comprehensive and invasive ways that it’s virtually impossible to isolate it as a single variable) and because it is extremely hard to achieve (it requires levels of courage and discipline that few executives possess) – ironically, building a strong team is very simple (it doesn’t require masterful insights or tactics).
- Patrick Lencioni

Building a strong team is both possible and remarkably simple. But is painfully difficult.
- Patrick Lencioni

As difficult as it is to build a team, it is not complicated. In fact, keeping it simple is critical, whether you run the executive staff at a multi-national company, a small department within a larger organization, or even if you are merely a member of a team that needs improvement.
- Patrick Lencioni

The team you belong to must come ahead of the team you lead: this is putting team results (e.g., organizational needs) ahead of individual agendas (e.g., the team or division you lead, your ego, your need for recognition, your career development, etc.) Confidentiality is respected downward more than it is respected upward. Organizational alignment is a direct result of this hierarchy (if it were the other way around, organizational alignment would be very difficult to achieve).
- Patrick Lencioni

Team building quotes from Jack Welch:

The team with the best players usually does win – this is why you need to invest the majority of your time and energy in developing your people.
- Jack Welch

If you managed a baseball team, would you listen more closely to the team accountant or the director of player personnel?
- Jack Welch

Every employee, not just the senior people, should know how a company is doing.
- Jack Welch

Lack of candor blocks smart ideas, fast action, and good people contributing all the stuff they’ve got. It’s a killer.
- Jack Welch

My bosses cautioned me about my candor. Now my GE career is over, and I’m telling you that it was my candor that helped make it work.
- Jack Welch

Some people have better ideas than others; some are smarter or more experienced or more creative. But everyone should be heard and respected.
- Jack Welch

Just because you are the boss doesn’t mean you are the source of all knowledge.
- Jack Welch

Ideally, the star will be replaced within eight hours. This sends the message that no single individual is bigger than the company.
- Jack Welch

Managers often hold on to resisters because of a specific skill set or because they’ve been around for a long time. Don’t.
- Jack Welch

Protecting underperformers always backfires.
- Jack Welch

Team building quotes from Lee Iacocca:

A major reason capable people fail to advance is that they don’t work well with their colleagues.
- Lee Iacocca

I've always found that the speed of the boss is the speed of the team.
- Lee Iacocca

Team building quotes from a remarkable executive:

You put together the best team that you can with the players you've got, and replace those who aren't good enough.
- Robert Crandall

Team building quotes from contemporary authors:

Interdependent people combine their own efforts with the efforts of others to achieve their greatest success.
- Stephen Covey

None of us is as smart as all of us.
- Ken Blanchard

Teamwork is so important that it is virtually impossible for you to reach the heights of your capabilities or make the money that you want without becoming very good at it.
- Brian Tracy

In teamwork, silence isn’t golden, it’s deadly.
- Mark Sanborn

Team building quotes that have endured the test of time:

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
- Margaret Mead

Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.
- Henry Ford

We must all hang together, or assuredly, we shall all hang separately.
- Benjamin Franklin

Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision – the ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.
- Andrew Carnegie

United we stand, divided we fall.
- Aesop

Team building quotes from sports:

Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.
- Michael Jordan

The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime.
- Babe Ruth

One man can be a crucial ingredient on a team, but one man cannot make a team.
- Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Team building quotes from unknown sources:

If you want to be incrementally better - be competitive. If you want to be exponentially better - be cooperative.
- Unknown

Teamwork is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.
- Unknown

Teamwork divides the task and double the success.
- Unknown

Teamwork: Simply stated, it is less “me” and more “we.”
- Unknown

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If you would like your organization to find out how to put into practice the meaning of some of these team building quotes through my speaking, training, or consulting services, please click on this link.

To keep on learning about other useful management and leadership skills, go back to the previous page, or click here to continue reading.

To learn more about the skills you need to manage the performance of your direct reports, go to my Management Skills page.

To learn more about the skills you need to lead the performance of your entire organization, go to my Leadership Skills page.