The Enthusiastic Employee: How Companies Profit by Giving Workers What They Want

Chapter 10. Teamwork

	“We must indeed all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”
	--Benjamin Franklin

	“When he took time to help the man up the mountain, lo, he scaled it himself.”
	--Tibetan Proverb

Human beings are profoundly social animals. Characterized by a need for membership and identification with others and getting pleasure from giving and getting help, it is natural that healthy people cluster into groups, spending most of their lives in association with others, especially family members, friends, and work associates.

This book is about the workplace, not about relationships per se. Yet, the quality of social relationships in the workplace—its “social capital”—is of enormous importance, not only because of the ...