Universal Principles For Better Teamwork [Infography]

Explorations > Teamwork > the universal principles

Teamwork often seems like more art than science. But over the years, practicioners have found teamwork principles that work for them—and researchers have found principles that seem to work for everyone. We collated the most popular precepts from both, and found that though people may disagree on terminology or exact frameworks, there are universal fundamentals that underly good, bad, and great teamwork.

When you put together all of the leading teamwork frameworks, and all of the principles that top leaders profess as essential to teamwork, it becomes clear that there are three possible types of teams:

Dysfunctional – teams that don’t work together
Functional – teams that work together
Synergistic – teams that do breakthrough work together

No matter your industry or your leadership style, your team will fall into one of those categories.

So what makes the difference? We took apart the leading teamwork frameworks and principles from top leaders around the world, lined up the synonyms, and distilled it here: