Henry Ford once said, “If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” When our team members and business partners cooperatively unite our strengths, abilities, and perspectives, the collective results will invariably far exceed what can be achieved alone. Cooperation is the foundation for a thriving, productive, and positive organizational culture – a culture where I would like to work. What about you?
The consistent practice of cooperation in the workplace has desirable benefits, including:
Greater employee satisfaction, engagement, and retention. Supportive work environments where cooperation and collaboration are encouraged will tend to result in team members being more engaged, and with higher satisfaction and retention levels.
Higher quality work. Working well together leads to higher quality work as ideas are shared and team members support each other and strive for excellence together.
Increased productivity and efficiency. Teams that cooperate well can divide work based on individual strengths and support each other as needed, leading to faster completion and less wasted effort.
Improved problem solving and innovation. President Lyndon B. Johnson said, “There are no problems we cannot solve together, and very few that we can solve by ourselves.” Alexander Graham Bell said, “Great discoveries and improvement invariably involve the cooperation of many minds.” We can encourage multiple viewpoints and the free exchange of ideas and knowledge, which fosters creative solutions and supports innovation.
12 Keys to Successful Cooperation
1)Effective leadership. Those of us in leadership positions play a crucial role in fostering a cooperative culture. Team members take behavioral cues from us. We should model positive teamwork and collaboration. This includes positive habits such as encouraging participation and publicly thanking those outside our teams that help us. Besides expressing verbal appreciation, how about throwing a pizza party for a supporting team like IT that helped you on a special project? On the other hand, we need to avoid negative behaviors such as gossiping or venting about other managers and teams. Teamwork-minded managers treat cooperating managers as an extension of the team instead of adopting the “us versus them” mentality.
2)Shared goals and priorities. When we participatively develop shared goals and priorities, it gives us and our teams something to aim for, a true north star. It’s very motivating to work together to pursue goals that we believe in and personally value. Harvard researchers have shown that the most satisfying part of our workday is the feeling that we made progress and did something of value.
3)Role clarity and mutual accountability. Everyone on our teams benefits when roles are clear, where everybody knows who owns what and what they are individually responsible for. That paves the way for our team members to hold themselves and each other accountable.
4)Psychological safety. It is essential that we create a psychologically safe environment if we want to foster a true spirit of cooperation. What does that look like? An environment where people can speak up, admit mistakes, ask questions and ask for help, and experiment without fear of humiliation or punishment. As leaders we can help build this type of environment by modeling vulnerability (e.g., admitting our own mistakes or admitting “I don’t know”). We can also collect feedback from our teams on a regular basis, which shows we value their opinions and provides us with ideas on how to strengthen our team culture and performance.
5)Mutual support and emphasis on teamwork. Mother Teresa said, “I can do things you cannot, you can do things I cannot; together we can do great things.” We can help support teamwork and cooperation by sharing information, helping when needed, and providing appreciative and constructive feedback. As we model these behaviors, we can encourage our team members to do it likewise.
6)Collective sense of efficacy (team confidence). Efficacy is about our confidence in our ability to complete tasks we want to do. As leaders, we want to instill confidence in our teams that they can complete whatever needs to be done to meet the team goals. Celebrating successes collectively helps build team confidence that working together we can be successful. Remember the principle, “success breeds success.”
7)Clear and open communication. We can model and encourage open dialogue to ensure that everyone understands their roles, responsibilities, and goals. Effective communication can be challenging, as illustrated by the George Bernard Shaw quote, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” Using clear, direct, and honest communication is helpful. And it’s important to actively listen and ensure that all voices are heard (this has been a growth area for me; how are you doing?).
8)Foster a culture of trust and respect. Mutual trust is the glue that holds good teams together. Amy Edmondsen counseled, “Great teams consist of individuals who have learned to trust each other.” Adam Grant expressed similar sentiments by saying, “Great teams have trust at the heart of their success.” We can help build trust in our teams by being people of integrity, such as always doing the right thing (even if difficult) and by keeping our word. And we can model showing respect to everyone we meet – even those that may have different ideas or beliefs than us.
9)Provide ongoing recognition and appreciation. We all love positive recognition and receiving appreciation, don’t we? Margaret Cousins wrote, “Appreciation can make a day, even change a life. Your willingness to put it into words is all that is necessary.” We can express appreciation and provide ongoing recognition to individuals and to our teams collectively. We can also encourage peer-to-peer praise to spread goodwill, gratitude, and promote harmony among our teams. Peer-to-peer recognition can be done via placing a “kudos” jar in the breakroom where anonymous compliments can be placed and then have the notes read at staff meetings. We can also use electronic means (e.g., designated Slack channel, emails) to encourage team members to express appreciation to each other.
10)Provide right tools and design of work. To see our teams cooperating and collaborating well, we need to provide the resources to make this happen. This includes digital collaboration platforms like Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and shared directories and databases. If we have team members working remotely, hybrid, or have people often spread across separate locations, we need to provide remote work infrastructure. This includes reliable internet connections, video conferencing tools, and the hardware to make distance irrelevant.
11)Have frequent feedback loops. Ken Blanchard wrote, “Feedback is the breakfast of champions.” Feedback is important for us as individuals and for our teams to improve performance. There are feedback tools we can use to support ongoing coordination efforts. Tools like quick check-ins, standups, checklists, debriefs, and after-action reviews can all be used to support cooperation and develop a continuous improvement mindset.
12)Create collaboration spaces and gather regularly. We can create comfortable workspaces where our teams can work together without disruption to maximize collaboration. These spaces can be used for everything from planned meetings to spontaneous collaboration with everything in between. We also need to gather (meet) regularly to breed a sense of familiarity and community. Getting together is especially important for teams that may be dispersed, people that work different shifts, or those that travel often. Options for get-togethers include weekly or monthly team meetings, daily huddles, periodic team building activities, or random check-ins.
Concluding thoughts: Here is a Steve Jobs quote that resonates with me: “Great things in business are never done by one person; they’re done by a team of people.” Helen Keller similarly said, “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” Cooperation is essential to developing our teams and is truly a key to lasting success!
Wes Friesen is a proven leader and developer of high performing teams and has extensive experience in both the corporate and non-profit worlds. He is also an award winning university instructor and speaker, and is the President of Solomon Training and Development, which provides leadership, management and team building training. He serves as the Industry Co-Chair of the Greater Portland PCC. His book, Your Team Can Soar! has 42 valuable lessons that will inspire you, and give you practical pointers to help you — and your team — soar to new heights of performance. Your Team Can Soar! can be ordered from Xulonpress.com/bookstore or wesfriesen.com (under Book) or an online retailer. Wes can be contacted at wesmfriesen@gmail.com or at 971-806-0812.
This article originally appeared in the January/February, 2026 issue.
