1 + 1 = 3 – Teamwork and Individual Success

Brian Tracy said: 'teamwork is so important that it is actually impossible for you to reach the heights of your capabilities or make the money that you want without becoming very good at it'.

Leverage is an important reason to combine resources and work in a team. Working together you can leverage other people's strengths, leverage your time, leverage other people's time and leakage all the resources that you have available to you.

What exactly do I mean when I say 1 + 1 = 3? – Maximizing resources to achieve a common goal and individual goals. That's what it means – every individual achieving their results and together achieving more through the common results.

Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishment towards the organizational objective is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results according to Andrew Carnegie. You can look at any team, whether it's a team in business, a team in sport, even the individual 100 meter runner, Usain Bolt, he may do all the running but he has a team of individuals around him who are all focused on him breaking records and becoming the fastest man in the world in any race that he chooses to run in. So everyone working together on that same vision allows the individual to be successful but overall as a team they succeed as well.

How Do You Make the Math Work? Interesting question! I believe there are four key things you can do.

1. Get clear on what the compelling reasons are for other individuals to work beyond achieving their individual goals and to contribute to achieving a broader goal or vision. These reasons need to move beyond reasons for the business or for you, there has to be something in it for them, that age-old adage of what's in it for me applies here.

2. Use the right language – engaging, persuasive and collaborative – language that helps people understand that it's all about how you work together.

3. Promises made, promises delivered. If you make a promise you have to be able to deliver it. There's no point saying to someone 'look, if you do this for me, I'll get you promoted', if you can not get them promoted. If all that you can do is make a recommendation, then be clear on that and say, 'look, if you help me with this, this will go a long way to getting you promoted and certainly I'll include it in a recommendation for that to happen '. So be very clear, do not over-commit and make sure you have a plan.

4. Nothing can be achieved without a plan. A vision without a plan is simply a dream.