Webster’s Dictionary defines “teamwork” as work done by several associates but subordinating personal prominence to the efficiency of the whole. Henry Ford said “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.”

Now, two years out of college, I have learned a great deal. Being an athlete, I never knew how hard it would be to work as a team with so many different people.

I never knew how hard it really was to work in a team atmosphere. Often I hear people ask, “Why doesn’t everyone pull together? Why can’t we all be one team? “

One thing that I hope everyone takes from this is take every experience in working as a group to the fullest effect, whether your team is fabulous or whether you are doing all the work, pull together and know that teamwork can exist if you accomplished: Coming together, Keeping together and Working together.

In a team, whether it is a sporting team or a team in a workplace, coming together and understanding the unified mission sometimes is a difficult task. Teamwork varies with many different communication styles, professional experience, education level, economic background and work ethic. Work together and use your various styles to enhance the team project.

Keeping together is progress.

Respect needs to be part of the story. Every teammate has their own responsibility, that one teammate has to have respect enough to follow through to allow all other aspects of the team to meet the unified goal. Unfortunately many people don’t have the same understanding of teamwork.

Working together is success.

We must build on the same mission and support one another. It’s all about commitment-and working together.

Final Thought:

Many of us have been taught in life the concept of competition and the desire to win whether it is school or sports. We learn to “go for the gold” so early in life, and we put our heart and commitment into the thinking of excelling competitively. Competition can be fun and rewarding if we can get this powerful drive aimed and at the right target. The problem we see in a lot of situations is that teamwork in the workplace is being replaced by the competitive nature of others. Let’s not compete individually so much that we defeat ourselves and fail to work together for the common good.