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The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork Workbook: Embrace Them and Empower Your Team

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Dr. Maxwell has taken on a very difficult challenge in this book. He looks at effective teams from the perspective of being a better team member, playing various roles in a successful team, and being a team leader . . . all in the same book! If you are like me, you will feel that he has carried off the challenge well.

The format of the book will be familiar to those who have read Dr. Maxwell's excellent leadership books. In this case, there are 17 laws, with each one being comprised of additional elements. Each law has one or two overriding examples, and then many small examples . . . usually as one for each subpoint. At the end of each law's section, you have questions to answer and assignments to do. This aspect of the book is like having a workbook to help you begin to apply the lessons to your own situation.

The book begins with a key question, "Will your involvement with others be successful?" In emphasizing that all 17 laws are important, Dr. Maxwell starts out with an anecdote about how a young leader absolutely insisted on knowing what one thing was most important about teams. Dr. Maxwell thought and told the young man that it was that there was no one most important thing about teams. In the end, the same point is made by observing that good chemistry (not one of the 17 laws) only occurs on a team when all 17 laws are being observed.

Here is my rephrasing of the 17 laws:

(1) By combining their efforts and talents, teams can outperform any individual. Anyone who has seen a great player brought down by a special effort from the opposing team will know the truth of that observation.

(2) Team players have to subordinate their self-interests on behalf of the team's purpose. In the NBA, the teams with ball hogs don't win championships. I find that this law is violated more often than it is followed.

(3) Each team player can add a greater contribution when in the correct role. If you turned a great linebacker into a tight end, the results usually wouldn't be as good.

(4) The more difficult the goal, the more important the teamwork. The example used here is climbing Mount Everest and the hard work that dozens of people have to do so that two people can climb atop the peak. Most teams suffer from having weak or inappropriate goals. Spend time on this area . . . and take on something worth doing!

(5) The team's results will only be as good as the performance of the weakest person. The poor leadership by the captain of the Exxon Valdez is used as an example.

(6) People on the team have to find ways to spark the team on to greater accomplishment. Michael Jordan during his years with the Bulls is the example.

(7) Teams need a vision of what needs to be accomplished to inform and inspire their efforts. If the company leader doesn't do this, then someone on the team must. IBM's improved marketing under Lou Gerstner's time as CEO is the key example.

(8) Bad attitudes can spoil great talent. You are better building great attitudes on the team than having great talent. Ideally, you should try to have both.

(9) Team members need to be able to rely on one another. Many people have trouble either trusting others or being trustworthy. Many teams find that exercises can help. There is a terrific example of demolishing the Omni in Atlanta using explosives that makes this point well.

(10) Be prepared to make the necessary sacrifices to do what needs to be done. Most people know what should be done, but are not able to discipline themselves or the team to get there. The book describes the opportunity that Montgomery Ward missed to become a retail department store ahead of Sears in the early 20th century.

(11) Keep track of your progress to focus your attention. Think of this as keeping score. When you are not meeting your quantitative goals, you should adapt.

(12) You need to have lots of people who can play the same roles. When one person isn't being effective, you should substitute. This gives your team the chance to benefit from more perspectives, creativity, and energy.

(13) Build from shared values that everyone on the team has. I think this is extremely important. If someone doesn't have the same values as the team, you should not have them on the team. In most cases, teams ignore this point. That's a big mistake!

(14) Great communications are essential. Otherwise, you just work at cross-purposes.

(15) The team's leadership will make the difference when all else is equal.

(16) With everyone is feeling good about the team, hurdles can be overcome. There is the moving story of Ms. Kerri Strug making her vault in the 1996 Olympics while severely injured and overcoming the pain to get the points needed for the U.S. women to win the gold medal for gymnastics.

(17) Keep doing what works for teams, and the results get even better with time. I enjoyed reading about Morgan Wootten, a high school basketball coach with an 87 percent winning average over 40 years who was inducted into the basketball hall of fame.

As you can see from some of the examples I cited from the book, one of Dr. Maxwell's great strengths as a writer is that he picks terrific examples and puts them into interesting, brief anecdotes.

After you finish this book, I suggest that you think about who else you need to be a better teammate for. Be sure to include at least your spouse, your family, your colleagues at work, your neighbors, those you volunteer with, and those who are like minded about important social goals.

Build from a sound plan and foundation to reach higher than has occurred before!

Got the Audio Tapes of this book and I am somewhat pleased. However, the author has that vaguely self righteous tone when he reads. It feels almost as if he has spent hours of practice trying to relate to us unelightened, but still can't get it right.

He effectively breaks down teamwork into logical and understandable parts, but unfortunately the parts seem very obvious. "Bad apples. Having a vision..." these are all very basic things that we are taught from early on in our social development. What Maxwell does is state the same things our kindergarten teachers told us..."don't let a bad apple spoil the bunch" But then he doesn't take us into the real world to tell us how to solve that problem. He gives us a great story of how he and friend ruined their high school basketball team with their bad attitudes, but he doesn't take the next step and explain how his coach or fellow players should have dealt with that situation. He basically ends by saying, "my friend and I shouldn't have been bad apples." Well, yes John, but you WERE bad apples, just as there will always be Bad Apples, what do you suggest we DO about it!

I look at the book as more of a good primer for a strategic meeting or a brainstorming session than any type of a helpful resource. These are the kind of seminars that give the seminar and self-help industry a bad name. They state what the ideal is, and what the brokeness is, but don't even give you a hint of how to bridge the gap.

I recently read "The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork." Although the book has some valid points, it fails to grasp workplace reality from a subordinate team member's perspective and experience. (I was a team-oriented manager for 12 years and then became a team member. I was shocked at how I and other team members were treated by egocentric, domineering, and abusive bosses who weren't team-oriented. Recently, I've seen national surveys that verify that unfortunate reality.)

This book maintains an old-style "us and them" view of teams by assuming that management is mostly competent and benign, and that team members are often the source of problematic behavior. The book does this through such outdated concepts as "the weakest link" and "the bad apple," directed mostly at team members. Ironically, the places I've worked were the opposite: The employees were mostly decent, hard-working people and the managers were mostly incompetent.

This book uses too many back-slapping Forltune 500-type stories as well as sports and war stories to score its points. For example, Enron is cited glowingly as "One of The Best Teams in the World." Anyone who follows business news knows how ridiculous that view is!

The book title and content indicates that these 17 laws are indisputable. Yet, after reading this book, I can say that the title is arrogant; the book is too long on simplistic ideas and bravado, and too short on relevant, real-world understanding that would make a difference for most struggling teams.

This book is like so many others written by those in a management position for years. It lacks the current experience of "in the trenches" subordinate workers to be a credible work. The author even writes in Chapter 11: "I don't have a computer--I don't even know how to use one."

Save your money and take your fellow team members out for coffee. Have a heart-to-heart talk to smooth out your conflicts and problems. That will be a far better investment of your time and money.

I found the book The 17 indisputable laws of Teamwork to be an easy read. I felt the book related to the common person very well. John C Maxwell uses numerous language and memory techniques that help to create a reading experience that the reader will be able to remember long after the last page had been turned. This book was separated into 19 different chapters. The first of which is simply an introduction. The next 17 chapters are separated into what John C Maxwell considers the 17 components needed to make a good team. The final chapter is what Maxwell calls his "Afterword" and this just wraps up the book. Each of the 17 chapters is entitled with the law that will be the focus of that chapter. The chapters all start out with a brief description or explanation of the law. The second part of the chapter is two or more examples of how this law is implemented in general society. Then there are supporting examples or small situations that support the law. The last part of the chapter is where Maxwell explains the reason that this law is a law. The only flaw that this book seems to contain is how Maxwell puts everything in laymen's terms. In many characteristics this can be construed as a good thing however when it is done to the point of this extreme it makes the reader almost feel like they are not gaining much by reading the book. The one concrete thing that every reader is guaranteed to walk away with is a general understanding of what aspects make a successful team, however there is a good chance that many people will not walk away with more than what they opened the book with. I still believe that this was a good book however it could have used some more technical terms and some more key facts.

In the 17 Indisputable Laws Of Teamwork, John Maxwell focuses on building a winning team using strategies based on interviews with some of the world's top CEO's. It is 265-page self-help type, in which he describes the 17 laws to be used as a guide by individuals in any setting, whether it is business or personal. Maxwell writes the book using simple language trying his best to connect with a large audience.
Maxwell breaks the book into 17 chapters in which each chapter represents a different law. In each, he includes the essentials for teamwork followed by suggestions and how to apply them. In each chapter Maxwell includes two main examples and then several smaller examples related to the topic.
Maxwell starts the book explaining the law of significance and writes that one is too small a number to achieve greatness. He works through every law although some of the 17 are quite obvious. Some are learned at an early age and some are just common sense not only for a "team player," but anyone, in any type of relationship. For example, law number 9 reads: The Law of Countablitly, teammates must be able to count on each other when it counts. This type of common sense information is spread evenly throughout Maxwell's book. Another example of Maxwell's not so unique language is written into law number 8: The Law of the Bad Apple. The subtitle then reads: Rotten attitudes ruin a team. This chapter's main point "Attitudes have the power to lift up or tear down a team," seem too obvious and make the chapter useless and boring.
Maxwell closes the book by explaining that good chemistry cannot occur until all 17 laws or strategies are applied. I feel this book was overall an easy to read guide with good examples and even better suggestions.

In a format that is similar to the "21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership" Maxwell walks us through the essential elements of teamwork. He uses examples from business, ministry, sports and families to bring us principles for building and developing teams. In a style that is true "John Maxwell" he draws interesting and relevant stories from history and from current events to explain the "laws" that he has developed. Maxwell makes great points about how this fits many settings, including a church staff. Here's some examples; - From the "Law of Significance" chapter, "individuals play the game, but teams win championships." If a Sr. Pastor is not leading, each pastor just runs his own area of ministry. Very little communication, interaction, etc. So, it is very much like a professional team that has a lot of players, even great players, yet can't "win the championship" because they are not coached into being a cohesive team. - Under the "Law of the Big Picture" he says, "Members of a team must have mutually beneficial shared goals." Church staff members generally want to serve the Lord, but their understanding and implementation of the church's "mission statement" may NOT coordinated with each other, nor led by the Sr. Pastor. Maxwell goes on to say that the "goal" has to be more important than the "role," meaning the "power of the position." - "All players have a place where they add the most value" is the subtitle of the "Law of the Niche." This seems to be something that many pastors may not understand, but which DOES fit church settings quite well. We can have a great team with lots of potential, but "players" in the wrong "positions." As Maxwell pints out, we will not reach our potential this way. - The "Law of Mt. Everest" says that for each level (of difficulty) that a team reaches, a higher degree of teamwork is required. As a church is growing, they need to know that we don't just need more people, such as adding another pastor, but we need a stronger TEAM! -In the "Law of the Chain" he makes a side comment that "one of the differences between leaders and followers is action." An effective leader must take action. He can't hesitate and avoid "confrontation" SO MUCH that it freezes him. - The "Law of the Compass" says "Vision gives a team focus/direction and confidence." This is a truth that, but if it is not understood by the Sr. Pastor, can cause a staff to wander without the "compass." The leader also shouldn't surprise the team with a "new' (never before announced) direction. Maxwell says, "Great vision precedes great achievement.' - The "Law of Communication" says that teammates have to be constantly talking to each other. We "cannot be effective" if we don't talk regularly. "Interaction fuels action" is how Maxwell put it. True in any setting. - The "Law of the Edge" touched on several things that fit. The difference between failing or struggling teams and truly successful ones is often "the leadership." There are many great advantages to having effective leadership! Maxwell has said that "everything rises and falls on leadership." Finally, one of the things that Maxwell says is that "few people are successful unless a lot of other people want them to be." We can't be successful as loners or disconnected individuals, no matter how great our individual expertise or "potential" is.

I found this to be an outstanding "how-to" book on leadership. But then, Mr. Maxwell's work is always outstanding. I highly recommend this to anyone who wants good practical tips on teamwork and leadership. By the way, for anyone who is interested in an easy read on the philosophical principles that support "The 17 Indisputable Laws ..", I also recommend the book, "West Point", by Norman Thomas Remick.

Building on the successful formula of his earlier work, author John C. Maxwell (The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership) has delineated 17 "laws" for managers who want to develop successful teams. That number may be arbitrary, but Maxwell successfully uses his laws as a springboard to weave together inspiring tales from Navy Seals, mountain climbers, Colin Powell, George Washington, Jimmy Carter, major league coaches and others into punchy chapters that any aspiring leader can use. This book provides the right mix of factoids, inspiration and leadership pointers to make it a bestseller. Even better, coaches and leaders who use these tips should be able to build better teams. We recommend this book to coaches, mentors and team leaders.

It's quite amazing that this book is a business best-seller. The book contains nothing new and, in fact, the 17 so-called "laws" are just overblown statements of the obvious. For example, in the Law of Significance, the author "explodes" the myth of the lone ranger by stating that "the belief that one person can do something great is a myth." Really? In the Law of the Big Picture he says, "people who build successful teams never forget that every person on the team has a role to play and every role plays its part in contributing to the big picture." Another insight? I could go on. However, equally important, the book does not contain any new research or even interviews with key team leaders. The conclusions, such as they are, come from secondary sources such as the popular press and the author's personal examples, none of which seem to be based on any real business experiences. I returned the book to Amazon.

If you have read John's 21 Irrefutable Laws of a Leader, there is absoloutely no need to pick up this book. It is very fundamental stuff that correlates with the before mentioned book.