Download By John C. Maxwell - PMI Central Iowa Chapter

The 17 Essential Qualities of a Team Player:
Becoming the Kind of Person Every Team Wants
By John C. Maxwell
1. Adaptable—If you won’t change for the team, the team may change you
Adaptable people are:
1. Teachable
2. Emotionally secure
3. Creative
4. Service minded
To become more adaptable:
 Get into the habit of learning
 Reevaluate your role
 Think outside the lines
2. Collaborative—Working together precedes winning together
Becoming a collaborative team player requires a change in focus in four areas:
1. Perception: See teammates as collaborators, not competitors
2. Attitude: Be supportive, not suspicious, of teammates
3. Focus: Concentrate on the team, not yourself
4. Results: Create victories through multiplication
To become a collaborative team player:
 Think win-win-win
 Complement others
 Take yourself out of the picture
3. Committed—There are no halfhearted champions
Some things every team player needs to know about being committed:
1. Commitment usually is discovered in the midst of adversity
2. Commitment does not depend on gifts or abilities
3. Commitment comes as the result of choice, not conditions
4. Commitment lasts when it’s based on values
To improve your level of commitment:
 Tie your commitments to your values
 Take a risk
 Evaluate your teammates’ commitment
4. Communicative—A team is many voices with a single heart
Communicative players:
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1. Do not isolate themselves from others
2. Make it easy for teammates to communicate with them
3. Follow the twenty-four-hour rule (don’t let any difficulty or conflict with a
teammate go more than twenty-four hours without addressing it)
4. Give attention to potentially difficult relationships
5. Follow up on important communication in writing
To improve your communication:
 Be candid
 Be quick
 Be inclusive
5.
Competent—If you can’t, your team won’t
Highly competent people have some things in common:
1. They are committed to excellence
2. They never settle for average
3. They pay attention to detail
4. They perform with consistency
To improve your competence:
 Focus yourself professionally
 Sweat the small stuff
 Give more attention to implementation
6. Dependable—Teams go to go-to players
The essence of dependability:
1. Pure motives
2. Responsibility
3. Sound thinking
4. Consistent contribution
To improve your dependability:
 Check your motives
 Discover what your word is worth
 Find someone to hold you accountable
7. Disciplined—Where there’s a will, there’s a way
Develop discipline in three areas:
1. Disciplined thinking
2. Disciplined emotions
3. Disciplined actions
To become a more disciplined team player:
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


Strengthen your work habits
Take on a challenge
Tame your tongue
8. Enlarging—Adding value to teammates is invaluable
Players who enlarge their teammates have several things in common:
1. Enlargers value their teammates
2. Enlargers value what their teammates value
3. Enlargers add value to their teammates
4. Enlargers make themselves more valuable
If you want to be an enlarging team player, then do the following:
 Believe in others before they believe in you
 Serve others before they serve you
 Add value to others before they add value to you
9. Enthusiastic—Your heart is the source of energy for the team
Think about people who bring enthusiastic attitude to teamwork and you will realize
they:
1. Take responsibility for their own enthusiasm
2. Act their way into feeling
3. Believe in what they do
4. Spend time with other enthusiastic people
To improve your enthusiasm:
 Show a sense of urgency
 Be willing to do more
 Strive for excellence
10. Intentional—Make every action count
To live with intentionality, do the following:
1. Have a purpose worth living for
2. Know your strengths and weaknesses
3. Prioritize your responsibilities
4. Learn to say no
5. Commit yourself to long-term achievement
To improve your intentionality:
 Explore your strengths and weaknesses
 Specialize in your specialty
 Plan your calendar with purpose
11. Mission conscious—The (big) picture is coming in loud and clear
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The four qualities of all mission-conscious players:
1. They know where the team is going
2. They let the leader of the team lead
3. They place team accomplishment ahead of their own
4. They do whatever is necessary to achieve the mission
To improve your mission consciousness:
 Check to see if your team focuses on its mission
 Find ways to keep the mission in mind
 Contribute your best as a team member
12. Prepared—Preparation can mean the difference between winning and losing
If you want to prepare yourself so that you can help your team as it faces the
challenges ahead, then think about the following:
1. Assessment—know what you’re preparing for.
2. Alignment—make sure you’re lined up right.
3. Attitude—have a positive attitude about yourself, your teammates, and your
situation.
4. Action—Be ready to take that first step when the time comes.
To improve your preparedness:
 Become a process thinker
 Do more research
 Learn from your mistakes
13. Relational—If you get along, others will go along
Look for the following five characteristics in your team relationships:
1. Respect
2. Shared experiences
3. Trust
4. Reciprocity
5. Mutual enjoyment
To better relate to your teammates:
 Focus on others instead of yourself
 Ask the right questions
 Share common experiences
 Make others feel special
14. Self-improving—To improve the team, improve yourself
People who are constantly improving themselves make three processes an ongoing
cycle in their lives:
1. Preparation
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2. Contemplation
3. Application
To become self-improving:
 Become highly teachable
 Plan your progress
 Value self-improvement above self-promotion
15. Selfless—There is no “I” in team
To cultivate an attitude of selflessness as a team member, begin by doing the
following:
1. Be generous
2. Avoid internal politics
3. Display loyalty
4. Value interdependence over independence
To become more selfless:
 Promote someone other than yourself
 Take a subordinate role
 Give secretly
16. Solution oriented—Make a resolution to find the solution
Consider these truths that all solution-seeking people recognize:
1. Problems are a matter of perspective
2. All problems are solvable
3. Problems either stop us or stretch us
To make yourself a more solution-oriented team player:
 Refuse to give up
 Refocus your thinking
 Rethink your strategy
 Repeat the process
17. Tenacious—Never, never, never quit
Being tenacious means:
1. Giving all that you have, not more than you have
2. Working with determination, not waiting on destiny
3. Quitting when the job is done, not when you’re tired
To improve your tenacity:
 Work harder and/or smarter
 Stand for something
 Make your work a game
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