Principles of Teamwork and Project Management

One of the Principles of team work is that teams are made up of individuals and that individual performance is key to team performance. There are too many situations where teams believe everything must be done in unison, that every team member must be involved or participate in everything the happens. Team work does not mean endless meetings, It means finding ways to integrate into the whole without compromising on individual performance. Think of a sports team - there is the coordination and common goal but also the star performers and the journeymen.

Dear Peter
Thank you for participating in this reflection and for your opinion.

We agree when he writes: "Teamwork means finding ways to integrate into the whole without compromising individual performance."

But for people to work in teams, there must be a set of principles that all participants must consider.

What are these Principles in your opinion?

In order to be a good team player, one should also be a good listener in my opinion. To work well with each other, one should have the patience/empathy to listen to the other team member's situation or impediment he is facing in order to guide/facilitate them/the team.

Luis,

Important topic, thank you for posting it. Here are a some of the quotes/principles that I have written related to teamwork.

- Faith in one's team accelerates results and breaks down barriers to success. Motivational speech has value, but the words often drift away before activities even begin. Whereas continuously presenting a belief in one’s team renders increased accountability and accomplishment, as the team will constantly strive to fulfill the words spoken over them.

- Rationed knowledge starves realization. Knowledge is the accelerant that, when applied to a flame, produces the energy one needs to succeed. However, when knowledge is quenched, the flame lacks the energy to propel one forward and success becomes out of reach.

- Isolation of extremes reveals knowledge and enables solutions. To reveal solutions, one must first isolate the extremes that polarize knowledge and then execute due diligence on the facts that remain. Otherwise, misinformation will prevail.

- Collaboration is easily defined and spoken to, but will be elusive if one does not practice it themselves. One cannot simply speak collaboration into existence, as it can only be properly communicated to others through the modeling of the practice itself.

- Reaching true consensus requires the absence of assumptions and the adoption of one's ability to be wrong. Surrendering to one’s self and others that you can be wrong creates an environment that yields consensus and successful outcomes. Whereas consensus made among those who are never wrong is "future discord" masked as an agreement.

- That which you are willing to do in the trenches for your team, establishes a care fund that pays dividends in perpetuity. When the team doesn't appear to be responding to your directives, check your location as you may be on a hilltop where one’s voice is distant and obscure. Therefore, place yourself in the midst of the team and provide personal value to their objectives and then watch what happens when you speak.

If you are interested, there is more detail on each of these, plus a lot of other quotes on different subjects in an article I wrote back in 2018 called “Strategic Lessons Learned From a Battle-Hardened Project Manager."