Teamwork

“ It was, as Paul declared to his colleagues, a triumph of teamwork.
It had never, perhaps, come to the minds of the boys that teamwork was a term that could be applied to work as well as to play. Business and sport seemed vitally different fields of activity. Yet here they were—a group of boys pulling together, each at the post assigned him—toiling for the success of the whole body. Was it such a different thing from football or baseball after all? Business managers, authors, advertising agents, were working quite as hard to do their part as ever they had worked at right or left tackle ”

“ Katherine informed him with emphasis. “You boys think you’re the only ones that know anything about teamwork. Teamwork is our first motto.”
“I guess it must be,” admitted Justice. “You certainly are a team.”
[80]
The rest of the “team” came in then, Sahwah and Gladys and Hinpoha, all three arm in arm, and Migwan behind them, pushing Sylvia in her rolling chair. They settled in a circle before the fireplace, and the talk soon drifted around to Uncle Jasper and his blighted romance. Indeed, Hinpoha had done nothing but talk about it all during dinner. ”

“ In a way, this is certainly so, since teamwork can accomplish things that mobs cannot do. But the Team is a failure if each member assumes that he, himself, is helpless and can do nothing, but that the Team will do it for him. ”

“ Our ideals of fairness and decency in work and play are built on this foundation.
Good teamwork assures two states of mind in [Pg 42] the individual which are most helpful for efficient work. No matter in what isolation or obscurity the individual has to work he feels sure that his work is a necessary and important part of the whole and that it will receive due appreciation; and he is also borne up by feeling sure that each of his fellows is doing his own part with equal faithfulness and likewise counting on him to do his. ”

“ He wants their co-operation in loyal teamwork; he therefore asks their ideas as to methods, encourages their suggestions, and assumes that they are intelligently interested in the common success and able to bring something of value toward winning it. In short he considers them to be active partners with himself in the working out of a common purpose, and treats them as such. ”

“ What they did understand far better than the highly individualistic pioneers was the value of teamwork, which grew in importance as the National American Association expanded far beyond the ability of one person to cope with it. ”

“ Once these skills are developed, an athlete must then learn to coordinate his or her game with the other four players on a squad. This combination of individual achievement and teamwork is what makes the game of basketball both fascinating and rewarding. ”

“ Mutual Acquaintance Among Subordinates.—Another important thing is to get these subordinates together in such a way that they will get to know each other personally. They are really partners in the same enterprise, and a knowledge of each other's personal equations is quite indispensable to their successful teamwork. Personal acquaintance and even better, friendship, will add tremendously to their efficiency. ”

“ A knowledge of this art is of practical value in every phase of human endeavor—in bringing up children, in school, college and hospital, in the office and in the field, and most particularly in industry where men are grouped for the purposes of material production. Applied to any large business organization, let every leader from the big chief to the lowest sub-foreman practice the same principles of leadership, and there will soon permeate the whole machine a spirit of loyalty, teamwork and esprit which will drive it with a marvelous degree of efficiency. ”

“ The mere fact that they had won, satisfying as it was, counted for little compared with the enormous benefit of the game in welding the team together. It had taken eleven stars and molded them into a team. No individual brilliancy, however great, can atone for the lack of team work. To-day they had tested each other, supported each other, played into each other's hands, forgotten [73] that they were anything but parts of one great, smoothly moving, swiftly running machine. ”

“ Along with the sense of the team as a mechanical instrument, and unseparated from it in the boy 's mind, is the consciousness of it as the embodiment of a common purpose. There is in team play a very intimate experience of the ways in which such a purpose is built up and made effective. You feel, though without analysis, the subtle ways in which a single strong character breaks out the road ahead and gives confidence to the rest to follow; how the creative power of one ardent imagination, bravely sustained, makes possible the putting through of the play as he conceives it. ”

“ No one except a man who has been in battle can realize how great are the noise and confusion, and how necessary and important are coöperation, team-work, discipline, and communication, in order for a company commander to control and direct the fire of the company—there must be absolute coöperation, team-work, and communication between all parts of the company—between the captain and the platoon leaders, the platoon leaders and the squad leaders, and the squad leaders and the members of their squads. ”

“ The successful business head to-day makes himself the captain of a team whose members co-operate intelligently for the team's success. For this purpose he brings them together in a body where shoulder to shoulder they feel their comradeship in a common cause; where they all get the inspiration of their captain's personal leadership, and absorb enthusiasm from his personal presentation of his hopes and plans. All are thus filled with a common purpose and return to their tasks each better fitted and more highly determined to play his part to the best advantage of the larger organization. ”

“ When each member not only does his own work as well as possible but plays well into the hands of the other members, we speak of the excellence of the team work. And in nine cases out of ten it is not brilliant individual play, but fine all-round team-work that wins the game. ”

“ In the mass-meeting of the school the night before the games, when the boys gathered in loyal force to give their team a “send-off” for the morrow, nothing that was said by student or graduate or friend stirred such response in the hearts of the school as the short, plain, virile exhortation of the captain.
And no athletes need personal inspiration as do the members of a track team. The football player stands shoulder to shoulder with his fellows, the strong helps the weak and shares with him the glory of victory. ”

“ My idea of perfect play Is when a team performs strictly as it has been coached to perform ... following a system through to the very last regardless of the breaks of the game or the preconceived notions of the individual players. That is team-work in the fullest—that is genuine football. That you failed to win does not alter the fact that you gave a faultless exhibition insofar as your experience and training permitted. ”

“ I don't know that I can explain the difference exactly, but it seems to me that the Team is something outside of which the individual has no existence, while the men of the Belt can form a team because they know that each member is self-sufficient in his own right.
On Earth, we all depend on the Team, and, in the long run, that means that we are depending on each other—but none of us feels he can depend on himself. Every man hopes that, as a member of the Team, he will be saved from his own errors, his own failures. ”

“ He coordinates administrative and logistical support with the detachment sergeant. (7) Team leader. The team leader is responsible for the tactical employment, training, administration, personnel management, and logistics of his team. He does this by planning, making timely decisions, issuing orders, assigning tasks, and supervising team activities. He must know the capabilities of his team members and supporting units. He is a key man in the planning, preparation, and execution of LRS missions. Success depends largely on how well he performs and influences the performance of his team. ”

“ Each player of a team should occupy his position so unfailingly in practice, and the team should indulge in combination work to such an extent, that, in a match, a forward ought, at times, to be able to slide the puck to an assistant without even having to look to know where the latter is. ”

“ This is not so, as will be noted by a comparison to a baseball team, where each man has his separate place and his separate work and where his work shows up separately with separate records, such as "batting average" and "fielding average." Team spirit is the result of being grouped together against a common opponent, and it will be the same in any sort of work when the men are so grouped, or given to understand that they belong on the same side. ”

“ Every branch of the service of war must co-operate with another, if not with all the others. It is a regular business, this war game. I have read enough to see that. It is team-work that counts most in the big movements, and I expect that it is team-work that counts most all the way through, in the detailed work as well."
Team-work! That had a familiar ring to Jimmy. Team-work was what the football coach had forever pumped into his young pupils. Team-work! Yes, Jimmy knew what that meant.
"I can give you a bit of news, Jimmy," added Mr. ”

“ Each man has his particular place to fill, his own work to do, and each position on the team, from the goal minder's to that of the centre forward, differing essentially from the others in the duties that it entails, calls for work that may not he used in any other. ”

“ Every man, as they could see, even at that distance, knew exactly what he was to do. It seemed that the whole operation must have been planned far in advance, even rehearsed. Such perfect team work could not be the result of chance, nor even of unusually good discipline. ”

“ The relation of the members to one another in a well-organized team amounts to an affection which is never forgotten. The words of cheer when the team is hard pushed and has to take a "brace"; the fighting spirit that plays the game to a finish, no matter what the odds ”

“ For example, soldiers are grouped or formed in line, in column of squads, column of files, etc.
In close order drill soldiers are taught to move in an orderly [Pg 15] manner from one group or formation to another; how to stand, step off, march, halt and handle their rifles all together.
This practice makes the soldier feel perfectly at home and at ease in the squad and company. He becomes accustomed to working side by side with the man next to him, and, unconsciously, both get into the habit of working together, thus learning the first principles of team-work. ”

“ One has only to study the organization for a short time to discover that one of its strongest features is the manifest team-work, the one animating and controlling influence throughout it all being "the interest of the service." ”

“ More important yet, like all team games, it teaches you to work with others, to obey orders promptly, to give up your own way and do, not what you like best, but what will help the team most; to keep your temper, to bend every energy to win, but to play fair. ”

“ The truly wonderful transformations in character that have been worked in girls and in boys by means of well-organized play have taught us the moral value of team-work for the older children. In these games, which come at a period when the child has already acquired considerable skill and strength, the chief interest is in doing the best for the team, so that the individual learns the importance of subordinating himself to a common purpose. He learns the joy of contributing his best to his "side" without considering his individual glory or gains. ”

“ I've played the game in my day and I've coached teams, boys, and I think I've got a little [254] of what your coach disclaimed. I mean a sort of—well, not second-sight, but a sort of ability to tell what a team will do from the looks of the players on it. In my profession we have to study human nature a lot and we get so we can classify folks after we've looked them over and watched them awhile. ”

“ A prolonged movement rippled from team to team, disengaging in its passage a multitude of sounds—-the click of buckles, the creak of straining leather, the subdued clash of machinery, the cracking of whips, the deep breathing of nearly four hundred horses, the abrupt commands and cries of the drivers, and, last of all, the prolonged, soothing murmur of the thick brown earth turning steadily from the multitude of advancing shears. ”

“ Also, the helplessness of the forwards threw a lot too much work on the outsides. This has got to be stopped. You can't always get weather to suit your team's outsides. We must learn how to play a forward game when it's necessary. We must (p. 032) learn to screw, to wheel, to shove and to rush. We repeat, the individuals are there, but they have to be trained into a combination. The outsides are so brilliant that they can be trusted faithfully to fulfil the work of passing and open-side attack. ”

“ Take eleven corking men, each one a master of his position, and get them so that they play together like a well-oiled machine, and then run them up against a team of ordinary players without much team-work or anything else except a great, big, overwhelming desire to win, and what happens three times out of four? ”