The 17 Essential Qualities of a Team Player: Becoming the Kind of Person Every Team Wants

by John C. Maxwell

Great challenges require great teamwork, and the quality most needed among teammates amid the pressure of a difficult challenge is collaboration. Notice that I didn’t say “cooperation” because collaboration is more than that. Cooperation is working together agreeably. Collaboration is working together aggressively. Collaborative teammates do more than just work with one another. Each person brings something to the table that adds value to the relationship and synergy to the team. The sum of truly collaborative teamwork is always greater than its parts.

See Teammates as Collaborators, Not Competitors

Healthy competition is okay but must be closely managed

Attitude: Be Supportive, Not Suspicious, of Teammates

That means assuming that other people’s motives are good unless proven otherwise.

Make It Easy for Teammates to Communicate with Them

People are up on things they’re in on.

How can you improve the gap between coming up with ideas and putting them into practice?

Are your teammates able to depend on you? Can they trust your motives? Do you make good decisions that others can rely on? And do you perform consistently, even when you don’t feel like it?

Are you a go-to player, or do your teammates work around you when crunch time comes?

The next time you want to lash out, hold your tongue for five minutes, and give yourself a chance to cool down and look at things more rationally.

Boston Celtics Hall of Fame center Bill Russell, who said, “The most important measure of how good a game I played was how much better I’d made my teammates play.”

It’s finding ways to help others improve their abilities and attitudes.

Believe in others before they believe in you.

Add value to others before they add value to

encourage and motivate people out of their comfort zone, but never out of their gift zone.

You’ve got to think about “big things” while you’re doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction.

But perhaps what was most impressive about Ronald Reagan was his ability to relate to people.

“Few things will pay you bigger dividends than the time and trouble you take to understand people.

Teammates seldom go along with someone they can’t get along with.

George Knox was right: “When you cease to be better, you cease to be good.”

A. L. Williams says, “You beat 50 percent of the people in America by working hard. You beat another 40 percent by being a person of honesty and integrity and standing for something. The last 10 percent is a dogfight in the free enterprise system.” To improve your tenacity . . .