100 Amazing Teamwork Quotes To Inspire and Motivate Your Team

Udn Webber

Managing Editor

“Words have the power to make things happen.”

Frederick Buechner – American writer, poet, and novelist

Words go a long way when it comes to inspiring and motivating people, especially your team members.

But with millions of teamwork quotes out there, which ones will inspire your team to reach for the stars? 🌟

Don’t worry. We’ve got you covered.

In this article, we’ll highlight 100 motivational teamwork quotes to inspire your team to strive for greatness. We’ll also give you 10 actionable tips that you can employ to get the best out of your workforce.

Let’s get inspired! 🤩

Top 100 Teamwork Quotes To Motivate Your Team Today

UDN Task Manager transforms your work with industry-leading features

Here are 100 teamwork quotes that will make your team feel like this:

A. Motivational Quotes About Teamwork

Here are 26 motivational quotes that put the ‘ team ’ in teamwork:

1. “Alone, we can do so little; together, we can do so much.”

Helen Keller – American Author, Activist, and Lecturer

2. “Individual commitment to a group effort: That is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.”

Vince Lombardi – Former NFL Player and Coach

3. “None of us is as smart as all of us.”

Ken Blanchard – American Author

4. “Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.”

Michael Jordan – American Basketball Player

5. “Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision, the ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.”

Andrew Carnegie – Business Magnate and Philanthropist

6. “No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it.”

H.E. Luccock – American Professor and Author

7. “The best teamwork comes from men who are working independently toward one goal in unison.”

James Cash Penney – American Entrepreneur

8. “If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.”

Henry Ford – Founder of Ford Motor Company

9. “In teamwork, silence isn’t golden. It’s deadly.”

Mark Sanborn – Author, Speaker, and Entrepreneur

10. “A group becomes teammates when each member is sure enough of himself and his contribution to praise the skills of the others.”

Norman Shidle – Author

11. “It takes two flints to make a fire.”

Louisa May Alcott – American Novelist and Poet

12. “What separates the good players from a great player is that a great player is willing to give up their own personal achievement for the achievement of the group.”

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar – American Basketball Player

13. “The nicest thing about teamwork is that you always have others on your side.”

Margaret Carty – American Politician

14. Interdependent people combine their own effort with the efforts of others to achieve their greatest success.

Stephen Covey – American Author and Educator

15. “Teamwork is the secret that makes common people achieve uncommon results.”

Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha – Author

16. A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has

Margaret Mead – American Cultural Anthropologist

17. “The main ingredient of stardom is the rest of the team.”

John Wooden – American Basketball Player and Coach

18. “Remember, teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.”

Patrick Lencioni – American Author

19. “The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.”

Phil Jackson – American Baseball Player and Coach

20. “A group is a bunch of people in an elevator. A team is a bunch of people in an elevator, but the elevator is broken!”

Bonnie Edelstein – American Actress and Playwright

21. “Learning, without any opportunities to share what we’ve learned, is a little like cooking for ourselves; we do it, but we probably won’t do it as well.”

Mike Schmoker – Author

22. “The ratio of ‘We’s’ to ‘I’s’ is the best indicator of the development of a team.”

Lewis B. Ergen – American Musician

23. “I’m not the smartest fellow in the world, but I sure can pick smart colleagues.”

Franklin D Roosevelt – 32nd President of the United States

24. “Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.”

Ryunosuke Satoro – Japanese Writer

25. “The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime.”

Babe Ruth – American Baseball Player

26. “No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you’re playing a solo game, you’ll always lose out to a team.”

Reid Hoffman – American Entrepreneur and Author

B. Inspirational Quotes About Building A Successful Team and Business

Here are 14 quotes that will motivate you to invest in both your teammates and business:

27. “Building a mission and building a business go hand in hand.”

Mark Zuckerberg – Founder and CEO of Facebook

28. “A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.”

Henry Ford – Founder of Ford Motor Company

29. “There is little success where there is little laughter.”

Andrew Carnegie – Business Magnate and Philanthropist

30. “The speed of the boss is the speed of the team.“

Lee Iacocca – American Automobile Executive

31. “The successful man is the one who finds out what is the matter with his business before his competitors do.”

Author Unknown

32. “I’m as proud of many of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done. Innovation is saying no to a thousand things.”

Steve Jobs –Founder and Former CEO of Apple

33. “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.”

John Quincy Adams – 6th President of the United States

34. “In the end, a great leader is only known by the impact he or she has on others.”

Jim Stovall – American Author

35. “A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts.”

Richard Branson – Founder of Virgin Group

36. “Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.”

Henry David Thoreau – American Philosopher and Poet

37. “That’s been one of my mantras—focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex; you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple.”

Steve Jobs – Founder and Former CEO of Apple

38. “If you’re competitor focused, you have to wait until there is a competitor doing something. Being customer-focused allows you to be more pioneering.”

Jeff Bezos – Founder and CEO of Amazon

39. “Striving for success without hard work is like trying to harvest where you haven’t planted.”

David Bly – US Politician

40. “The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.”

Vidal Sassoon – British-American Hairstylist and Entrepreneur

C. Inspirational Quotes About Pushing Yourself

What happens when things get tough?

Exactly!

To help your team get through anything, here are 23 teamwork quotes about pushing yourself :

41. “When you wake up in the morning, you have two choices: go back to sleep, or wake up and chase those dreams.”

Author Unknown

42. “An entrepreneur is someone who jumps off a cliff and builds a plane on the way down.”

Reid Hoffman – Entrepreneur, Venture Capitalist, and Author

43. “You shouldn’t focus on why you can’t do something, which is what most people do. You should focus on why perhaps, you could be one of the exceptions.”

Steve Case – American Entrepreneur

44. “If you are afraid to take a chance, take one anyway. What you don’t do can create the same regrets as the mistakes you made.”

Iyanla Vanzant – American Inspirational Speaker

45. “The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will.”

Vince Lombardi – Former NFL Player and Green Bay Packers Football Coach

46. “There is no such thing as a self-made man. You will reach your goals only with the help of others.”

George Shinn – American Businessman

47. “Don’t let the fear of losing be greater than the excitement of winning.”

Robert Kiyosaki – American Businessman and Author

48. “If what you are doing is not moving you towards your personal goals, then it’s moving you away from your personal goals.”

Brian Tracy – Canadian-American Motivational Speaker

49. “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”

Andre Gide – French Author and Nobel Literature Winner

50. “When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.”

Abraham Lincoln – 16th President of The United States

51. “There are two types of people who will tell you that you cannot make a difference in this world. Those who are afraid to try and those who are afraid you will succeed.”

Ray Goforth – Union Leader

52. “There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.”

Mark Twain – American Author

53. “Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”

Steve Jobs – Founder and Former CEO of Apple

54. “He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson – American Philosopher and Poet

55. “There’s nothing like biting off more than you can chew, and then chewing it anyway.”

Mark Burnett – British Television and Film Producer

56. “In times of great stress or adversity, it’s always best to keep busy, to plow your anger and your energy into something positive.”

Lee Iacocca – American Automobile Executive

57. “Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.”

Dalai Lama

58. “Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson – American Philosopher and Poet

59. “Patience, persistence, and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success.”

Napoleon Hill – American Author

“If you really want to do something, you’ll find a way. If you don’t, you’ll find an excuse.”

Jim Rohn – American Entrepreneur and Author

61. “We generate fears while we sit. We overcome them by action. Fear is nature’s way of warning us to get busy.”

Dr. Henry Link – Clinical Psychologist

62. “Striving for success without hard work is like trying to harvest where you haven’t planted.”

David Bly – US Politician

63. “It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”

Leonardo da Vinci – Italian Inventor, Philosopher, Artist, and Mathematician

64. “Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow know what you truly want to become.”

Steve Jobs – Founder and Former CEO of Apple

D. Motivational Quotes About Persistence

Persistent teams stick to their goals even if the going gets tough!

So here are seven quotes about determination :

65. “Everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you’re climbing it.”

Andy Rooney – American Radio and Television Personality

66. “Success is the sum of small efforts – repeated day in and day out.”

Robert Collier – American Self-Help Author

67. “Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.”

Albert Einstein – Theoretical Physicist, Discovered Theory of Relativity

68. “I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.”

Booker T Washington – American Author and Orator

69. “Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”

Warren Buffett – American Investor and Philanthropist

70. “If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.”

Isaac Newton – British Mathematician, Physicist, and Astronomer

71. “Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.”

Earl Nightingale – American Radio Speaker and Author

E. Motivational Quotes About Overcoming Failure

Feeling like this?

Don’t worry!

Here are 12 teamwork quotes to help your team overcome failure :

72. “Failure is just a direct result of a collapse in self-discipline to do little things every day.”

Jeb Blount – Author and Motivational Speaker

73. “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

Thomas Edison – American Inventor

74. “It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.”

Theodore Roosevelt – 26th President of The United States

75. “It’s fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.”

Bill Gates – Founder and CEO of Microsoft

76. “A person who cannot handle setbacks will never handle victories either.”

Orrin Woodward – American Author

77. “Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”

Winston Churchill – Former Prime Minister of England

78. “You get paid in direct proportion to the difficulty of problems that you solve.”

Elon Musk – CEO of Tesla and SpaceX

79. “Each mistake teaches you something new about yourself. There is no failure, remember, except in no longer trying.

Chris Bradford – British Author and Martial Artist

80. “Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”

Henry Ford – Founder of Ford Motor Company

81. “Our similarities bring us to a common ground; our differences allow us to be fascinated by each other.”

Tom Robbins – American Novelist

82. “In the real world, the smartest people are people who make mistakes and learn. In school, the smartest people don’t make mistakes.”

Robert Kiyosaki – American Businessman and Author

83. “It’s better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.”

Herman Melville – American Novelist

F. Inspirational Quotes About Personal Growth and Excellence

Here are seven quotes about self-growth :

84. “What lies behind us and what lies before us are but tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson – American Philosopher and Poet

85. “When you realize nothing is lacking, the whole world belongs to you.”

Lao Tzu – Ancient Chinese Philosopher and Writer

86. “You were not born a winner, and you were not born a loser. You are what you make yourself be.”

Lou Holtz – Former NFL Player and Coach

87. “The heart of human excellence often begins to beat when you discover a pursuit that absorbs you, frees you, challenges you, or gives you a sense of meaning, joy, or passion.”

Terry Orlick – American Author and Motivational Speaker

88. “When all is said and done, and we’ve completed this journey we call life, what will matter most is not what we achieve — but rather who we have become.”

Author Unknown

89. “Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.”

Jim Rohn – American Entrepreneur, Author, and Motivational Speaker

90. “Too little confidence, and you’re unable to act. Too much confidence, and you’re unable to hear.”

John Maeda – American Designer

G. Inspirational Quotes About Celebrating Small Victories

Here are ten quotes about the importance of celebrating small achievements even if it doesn’t seem like much to someone else:

Keep going, Spongebob! 💪

91. “Look for small victories and build on that. Each small victory, even if it is just getting up five minutes earlier, gives you confidence. You realize that these little victories make you feel great, and you keep going. You realize that being paralyzed by fear of failure is worse than failure.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger – Austrian-American Actor, Businessman, and Retired Bodybuilder

92. “The great victory, which appears so simple today, was the result of a series of small victories that went unnoticed.”

Paulo Coelho – Brazilian Lyricist and Novelist

93. “Don’t try to rush progress. Remember, a step forward, no matter how small, is a step in the right direction. Keep believing.”

Kara Goucher – American long-distance runner

94. “We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.”

Howard Zinn – American Historian, Playwright, Philosopher, and Socialist Thinker

95. “With every job I’ve gotten, I’ve bought myself something. When ‘Glee’ was picked up, I rented a piano for the year. For smaller victories, I’ll go to dinner with a friend or go for a walk and think about it all. It’s important to say to yourself, today was a good day.”

Dianna Agron – American Actress, Singer, and Dancer

96. “Small wins are exactly what they sound like and are part of how keystone habits create widespread changes.”

Charles Duhigg – American Journalist and Non-Fiction Author

97. “Small victories are better than none.”

Neal Shusterman – American Writer of Young Adult Fiction

98. “Progress is the sum of small victories won by individual human beings.”

Bruce Catton – American Historian and Journalist

99. “I’ve found that small wins, small projects, small differences often make huge differences.”

Rosabeth Moss Kanter – Professor of Business at Harvard Business School

100. “You don’t need a grand plan; you don’t need to go back to the ancestors and rewrite the rules. You just need to take small steps and accumulate small wins.”

Bruce Feiler – American Writer and Television Personality

10 Actionable Tips To Boost Teamwork

Inspiring your teammates with motivational quotes isa great way to galvanize the troops, but they aren’t enough.

No team has ever been built on a proverb or a selection of team quotes and sayings.

What you need are actionable changes to your workplace that foster effective teamwork and collaboration. And once you have a team-friendly workplace, you can use quotes about teamwork to maintain those levels of productivity .

Here are ten tips for creating a dream work environment, tailor-made for effective teamwork:

1. Use Top-Notch Project Management Software

An excellent project management tool can facilitate effective teamwork in your organization. It’ll give your organization the structure it needs to support a collaborative effort on all your projects.

Fortunately, all you need is UDN Task Manager , the world’s highest-rated project management tool used by highly-productive teams in small and large companies.

With UDN Task Manager , you can share amazing teamwork quotes in the Chat view , motivate your team through Goals , and celebrate project milestones . 🥳

Here are a few other ways UDN Task Manager can help your team be more productive:

With UDN Task Manager , you’ll have all the features you need for inspirational teamwork to take center stage at your company.

So why not take a free ride with UDN Task Manager today?

2. Hire The Right People For The Right Roles

Poor communication isn’t the biggest roadblock to creating a dream workspace for team building. The most significant deterrents to effective teamwork are skill gaps .

You could have teammates that love working alongside each other, but talent wins in the end.

As long as they’re in roles that don’t suit them, you’re going nowhere:

No amount of camaraderie will help an employee succeed in a role they’re not built for.

And having the wrong employees in the wrong roles will drastically slow down your team’s progress. This will lead to widespread resentment and frustration among your employees.

Not the ingredients you want when building a successful team, right?

3. Take Time To Get To Know Them Personally

A team is far more than just a group of people working independently.

It’s a collective unit of people that can trust and respect one another.

And the only way to truly gain someone’s trust and respect is to get to know them personally.

Treating a group of people as cogs in a machine will only get you so far. 🤖

It’s only when you start looking at them as human beings, will you take your team to the next level; a great way to build a strong relationship with each employee and make them feel valued as a team member.

4. Use Each Employee’s Strengths and Weaknesses To Your Advantage

Once you know an employee personally, you’ll have a better idea of their talent and individual str e ngths and weaknesses .

As each employee brings something unique to the table, it’s up to you to decide how to get those skills working together.

Organize your team and company work processes to get the best out of each employee’s strengths and weaknesses. Once you’ve mastered this, your team will be working together like a well-oiled machine.

5. Create A Common Long-Term Job Goal

You need to establish clear-cut, long-term company and job goals.

Without this, it’s impossible to keep all your employees on the same page.

The best time to introduce these job goals would be during your hiring process or as part of their onboarding activities.

Communicating this vision at the start is an excellent way for an employee to quickly adjust their personal goals to what’s expected at the company. This ensures that everyone is working on the same wavelength, making it easier to work alongside each other.

As they’re all striving towards the same company goal, it’s easier for them to collaborate and accomplish things together.

6. Define Roles

While creating a common goal is important, good leadership needs to establish a set of employee roles too. This will dictate the path they take to chase your long-term vision.

Without a clear-cut reporting structure, it’ll be impossible for your team to get anything done.

If there’s a company work problem:

Answering these questions ensures that your team’s progress won’t come to a grinding halt every time an issue pops up. Your team will know exactly what to do and can steer ahead easily.

7. Encourage Feedback and Communication

Your team needs to have the confidence and comfort to voice their opinions and ideas.

You must create a work environment that encourages feedback and allows people to express themselves in a safe, respectful atmosphere. Once your employees feel comfortable expressing themselves, they’ll find it far easier to work together as a great team.

Another great tip is to specify the company’s communications policy during the hiring process.

Include the company’s preferred mediums of communication along with a redressal system. This gives them a reference point on how to channel their views and ideas to align with the company’s preferences.

8. Use Brainstorming As A Team Building Exercise

Brainstorming sessions are the perfect place for leadership to encourage teamwork and communication.

Pay special attention to team members who have a hard time speaking up and voicing themselves. This is the perfect platform for them to build their confidence and to get them actively contributing.

Treat every idea in a brainstorming session with respect and never shoot anything down without a clear reason.

Remember, you’re using this to encourage employees to speak up; dismissing their contributions without a valid reason is the quickest way to alienate them.

When done right, a brainstorming session is a great team-building activity to get your employees to come forward with ideas, and it’ll make them feel valued in your company.

And the more invested they are in a project, the better they’ll perform!

9. Don’t Limit Yourself To The Office

Building an open and inclusive workplace is an integral part of fostering effective teamwork.

However, it’s often not enough.

Why?

Because at the end of the day, it’s still a workplace. It’s uncommon for employees to let their guard down and get comfortable in a space they associate with work.

You could add a company trip or team cooking class into your team building activities :

If Homer had such team-building activities, maybe then he’d know how to make cereal. 😉

Once you’re out of the office, your employees can loosen up and really get to know each other as ordinary people. They can bond over things unrelated to work and forge a connection that’s far stronger than your usual group of people working together.

10. Include A Teamwork Component In Performance Reviews

Including a teamwork component in your performance reviews is an excellent way to show your employees that you take this seriously.

It lets them know that teamwork and collaboration are vital parts of their growth in your company.

Go over an employee’s teamwork contributions during their performance review and outline their strengths and areas of improvement. This gives them a teamwork-related target that they can work toward in the future. 🎯