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

by John C. Maxwell

Inflexibility is one of the worst human failings.

Adaptable people always place a high priority on breaking new ground. They are highly teachable.

Creativity is another quality you find in adaptable people. When difficult times come, they find a way.

If your goal is to serve the team, adapting to accomplish that goal isn’t difficult.

Collaboration is working together aggressively.

1. Perception: See Teammates as Collaborators, Not Competitors

Relationships need attention to thrive. That is especially true of relationships between people who have potential for conflict.

To improve your communication . . . Be candid. Open communication fosters trust. Having hidden agendas, communicating to people via a third party, and sugarcoating bad news hurt team relationships.

You have to let the people be a team. That means fostering an environment where people say what they really think. You can’t be too dogmatic.” That attitude has allowed the best ideas to rise to the top and get implemented.

Team members always love and admire a player who is able to help them go to another level, someone who enlarges them and empowers them to be successful.

People will always move toward anyone who increases them and away from others who devalue them.

1. Take Responsibility for Their Own Enthusiasm

Enthusiasm is contagious. It’s difficult to remain neutral or indifferent in the presence of a positive thinker. —DENIS WAITLEY

1. They Know Where the Team Is Going

Mission-conscious team players who have committed themselves to a team allow the leader of the team to do the leading.

Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality. —WARREN G. BENNIS

“Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.” For a team to win, the leader must be allowed to lead.

Are you continually looking for ways to help the team realize its mission?

1. Assessment

Preparation begins with knowing what you’re preparing for.

2. Alignment

3. Attitude

But you also must have a positive attitude about yourself, your teammates, and your situation.

4. Action

You can claim to be surprised once; after that, you’re unprepared.

Relationships are the glue that holds team members together.

1. Respect

2. Shared Experiences

3. Trust

4. Reciprocity

You will never develop common ground with your teammates unless you share common experiences.

The heart of selflessness is generosity.

That usually means posturing or positioning themselves for their own benefit, regardless of how it might damage relationships on the team.

Problems Are a Matter of Perspective

meet them with a solution-oriented mind-set. It’s just a matter of attitude.

When it comes to approaching problems, you really have only four choices: flee them, fight them, forget them, or face them.

Rethink your strategy. Nobel Prize–winning physicist Albert Einstein observed, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” Get out of the box of your typical thinking. Break a few rules. Brain-storm absurd ideas. Redefine the problem. Do whatever it takes to generate fresh ideas and approaches to the problem.