I picked up John Maxwell’s The 17 Essential Qualities of a Team Player in the bargain bin at the bookstore a couple of weeks ago.
Being that I am a firm believer that effective leadership is best done in a horizontal environment (where each person is a vital player) and not in a verticle environment (where one person at the top dictates what those below are to do) – I was excited to find some insights. After all, even though not all readers are leaders, all leaders are readers!
So here’s some things that really stood out to me.
- Teamwork and personal rigidity just don’t mix.
- A person’s age can be determined by the degree of pain he experiences when he comes in contact with a new idea.
- Commitment and talent are UNCONNECTED – unless you connect them.
- …you cannot make a commitment to uncommitted people and expect to receive a commitment from them.
- You cannot have teamwork unless you have communicative players. Without communication, you don’t have a team; you have a collection of individuals.
- If you have any kind of difficulty or conflict with a teammate, don’t let more than twenty-four hours go by without addressing it.
- Having hidden agendas, communicating to people via third party, and sugarcoating bad news hurts team relationships.
- Open communication increases trust, trust increases ownership, and ownership increases participation.
- The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.
- Fear not those who argue but those who dodge.
- It is not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what’s required.
- What we do on some great occasion will probably depend on what we already are, and what we are will be the result of previous years of self-discipline.
- People have just two choices when it comes to their emotions: they can master their emotions or be mastered by them.
- Discipline means doing the right things at the right time for the right reason.
- If you try to push people to work in areas where they have no talent, you will only frustrate them.
- Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
- Being intentional is…about focusing on doing the right things, moment to moment, day to day, and then following through with them in a consistent way.
- A team really isn’t a team if it isn’t going anywhere!
- Anyone who loves his opinions more that his teammates will advance his opinions but set back his team.
- You can’t make the other fellow feel important in your presence if you secretly feel that he is a nobody.
There’s so much more to this book. I receommend this to anyone who feels God has called them into leadership because leadership is more like football and less like tennis – it takes a team to win big!
I received this book Everyone Communicates, Few Connect
for free a while ago and have been so excited to dive into it. This is probably one of the books I received this year that I was most interested in getting into, simply because I know that I personally have a lot of room for growth in this area of connecting.
