35+ Collaboration Quotes to Celebrate Teamwork

Take a quick look at your social media feeds and admit it: we all love collaboration quotes, especially in beautiful hand-lettering. Every second office wall includes as many collaboration images and mantras as possible. We love them so much, we print them on t-shirts, posters and on our bodies. Collaboration quotes seem to be so commonplace, they turn into white noise.

Collaboration is a popular buzzword these days. Yes, truly productive teamwork is awesome. However, there is another side: collaboration is also hard and personally challenging. Collaboration quotes rather describe a fantasy world we don’t live in.

Ask your colleagues to describe what they think about teamwork. Frustration, concerns, lack of understanding — it’s not a full list of things you will hear. Numbers show us that 86 percent of employees lack collaboration and effective communication. When employees are unengaged, that results in missed deadlines and productivity drop.

Can collaboration quotes improve teamwork? Which of them should you use? These and many

other questions we will try to answer in this article. Let’s get this sorted out!

But before that, check out collaboration quotes that inspire us.

Collaboration quotes about business success

“Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than the one where they sprang up.” Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

“Effective teamwork begins and ends with communication.” Mike Krzyzewski

“A strong team can take any crazy vision and turn it into reality.” John Carmack

“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” Henry Ford

“Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.” Steve Jobs

“Teamwork is the secret that makes common people achieve uncommon results.” Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

“Teamwork is so important that it is virtually impossible for you to reach the heights of your capabilities or make the money that you want without becoming very good at it.” Brian Tracy

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

Collaboration quotes about leadership

“The secret to success is good leadership, and good leadership is all about making the lives of your team members or workers better.” Tony Dungy

“Strong and cohesive teams thrive when leaders highlight how much they all have in common, not how much he or she stands above from the crowd.” Moira Alexander

“A leader must inspire or his team will expire.” Orrin Woodward

“The speed of the boss is the speed of the team.” Lee Iacocca

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

“It is the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) that those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.” Charles Darwin

Collaboration quotes about trust

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

“Trust is knowing that when a team member does push you, they’re doing it because they care about the team.” Patrick Lencioni

“Teamwork builds trust and trust builds speed.” Russel Honore

“Without trust, we don’t truly collaborate; we merely coordinate or, at best, cooperate. It is trust that transforms a group of people into a team.” Stephen Covey

“A team is not a group of people who work together. A team is a group of people who trust each other.” Simon Sinek

Collaboration quotes about fellowship

“No matter what accomplishments you make, somebody helped you.” Althea Gibson

“The way a team plays as 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.” George Herman

“If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.” Booker T. Washington

“A successful team is a group of many hands and one mind.” Bill Bethel

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

“To me, teamwork is the beauty of our sport, where you have five acting as one. You become selfless.” Mike Krzyzewski

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

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

“Sticks in a bundle are unbreakable.” Kenyan Proverb

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed. It is the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Mead

“None of us is as smart as all of us.” Ken Blanchard

“If you can laugh together, you can work together.” Robert Orben

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

Collaboration quotes about management

“Good management consists of showing average people how to do the work of superior people.” John Rockefeller

“To build a strong team, you must see someone else’s strength as a complement to your weakness and not a threat to your position or authority.” Christine Caine

“Collaboration has no hierarchy. The Sun collaborates with soil to bring flowers on the earth.” Amit Ray

“Finding good players is easy. Getting them to play as a team is another story.” Casey Stengel

Fact-checking is a ground rule

One day Bill Gates said: ‘I will always choose a lazy person to do a hard job because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.’ You have probably met this quote many times. Now you are going to print it and hang it on the office wall… Stop, stop, stop! There’s no legitimate record of this quote being said by the principal founder of Microsoft Corporation.

Internet is the largest source of misinformation. Whatever you are reading or retweeting, a research study, a collaboration quote, a statistic – has a big chance of being false. Let’s be honest: business influencers, bloggers and coaches need to generate content every single day, if not every minute. And sometimes their content managers can be too busy to double-check facts. After all, collaboration quotes are too easy to generate.

You may ask, but who cares? Any quote, captured inside a decorative frame, can work pretty well. However, you don’t want to motivate yourself and your teammates with unverified information, don’t you? In that case, you can fall into the trap of searching for meaning where it doesn’t exist. So, it’s a good idea to check facts when it comes to collaboration quotes.

When сollaboration quotes fall short

Collaboration quotes usually set the stage for an idealized state of teamwork – effortless, pleasant, and always productive. However, the reality is that collaboration is not always smooth sailing. Such quotes oversimplify the intricacies of collaborating together, which leaves teams with overly optimistic expectations. When things don’t work out as planned, it tends to be disappointing.

Take the quote, “Effective teamwork begins and ends with communication.” At face value, it sounds ideal. However, when there’s breakdown in communication or poor clarity, what happens? Such a statement ends up becoming annoying. It completely blames communication as if communication were the only variable for success and doesn’t recognize deeper causes such as lack of trust, mismatched priorities, or undefined objectives.

And then there’s “A strong team can take any crazy vision and make it happen.” Sounds empowering, right? But when the dream doesn’t work out as magically as suggested, it can leave team members feeling incompetent. The idea that a team can overcome any obstacle can fall apart when the obstacles also appear to be too great.

These quotes also aren’t going to give teams the guidance they need to overcome real issues. Tacking a motivational quote on the wall isn’t going to repair the underlying issues – whether that’s power battles, lack of resources, or different work styles. In fact, it’ll make people feel isolated, and they’ll be seeking solutions that aren’t delivered in the words on the wall.

What these quotes often miss is the reality of collaboration. It’s messy. It involves trial and error, missteps, and plenty of hard work. There is no perfect solution that fits all, no elegant sentence that can sum up all the complexities. While these quotes may leave a momentary spark of inspiration, they can never replace the effort required to build a truly good team.

Thus, while a timely collaboration quote can give you a short-term boost, it shouldn’t be the foundation of your team’s success. Instead, reflect on the deeper, more realistic aspect of collaboration. In fact, the journey might be difficult, but it’s far from hopeless. Genuine growth happens when teams face challenges with chin-up, learn from mistakes, and move forward. Collaborationis not always simple, but with consistent effort and true connection, it results in success that’s far greater than a hung-on-the-wall quote could ever be.

The science behind collaboration quotes

The science of motivation is tricky to study because there are too many illogical reasons behind almost everything we do. In a nutshell, motivation is the sum of internal or external factors that provide the ‘energy’ to remain interested in a project, goal, outcome, etc. But how exactly do we become motivated by looking at a poster with a collaboration quote?

First, we can take a look at the self-discrepancy theory. In short, this theory claims that we have three types of self: the ‘ideal’ self we hope to become, the ‘ought’ self we behave to achieve the ideal self and the actual self. The ‘ideal’ self encourages us to get closer to the ‘ideal’ self. The ‘ought’ self stops us from moving away from the ‘ideal’ self. A well-phrased collaboration quote may remind us of our ideal self and point out that hard work is necessary.

Also, there’s a so-called ‘coaching factor’. It describes the following situation: if your coach or mentor believes you can do something, you’re more likely to do it. This type of emotional support is a powerful incentive to try harder. The message that someone else believes you can achieve something (even if it’s located on the poster) can become ad-hoc coaching that’s happening when you’re reading it.

But let’s face the truth: there’s no reliable research about the relationship between successful collaboration and well-placed posters. On the other hand, there’s also no research that denies the effectiveness of motivational quotes.

Considering this, why not try to motivate your team to work hard and strive for success with collaboration quotes? Your teammates continuously fight various battles, side by side. Let’s celebrate the power of working together with the following collaboration quotes we have put together!

The last few words on collaboration quotes

Workplace collaboration issues are unique to every company. Motivational quotes are only one factor that can improve productivity and employee engagement. It’s a good idea to select one of the above-mentioned collaboration quotes each week and discuss them with your team. Open dialogue can help you understand how your colleagues see the productive and collaborative teamwork.

In addition to motivation quotes, there is an ocean of methods to foster collaboration within your team. Ultimately, working together is a skill every team member should develop. And learning to collaborate effectively takes time and practice.

Collaboration quotes are a way to keep your team motivated. They are reminders of the common goal you all are working towards, together. We hope that the above-listed collaboration quotes will inspire your team to cooperate more often and more effectively.

Which one of these quotes do you like more? Let us know in the comments below!