Working As A Team

Working as a Team

Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed.

Ecclesiastes 4:9

Andrew and Louise Carnegie’s life was a whirlwind. They were married on April 22, 1887. As a captain of industry in the nineteenth century, Andrew was building a formidable American steel company that gave the couple more money and prestige than they could have ever imagined. And they didn’t take it for granted. Andrew’s father was a weaver in Scotland, but when steam-powered looms put him out of business, Andrew’s mother went to work to support the family, opening a small grocery shop and mending shoes.

“I began to learn what poverty meant,” Andrew would later write. “It was burnt into my heart then that my father had to beg for work. And then and there came the resolve that I would cure that when I got to be a man.” Resolve, indeed. When his mother, fearing for her family’s survival, moved the family to America, settling with her two sisters in Pittsburgh, then a sooty city that was the iron-manufacturing center of the country, Andrew caught a vision and eventually built a steel empire that became unstoppable, not to mention unimaginably lucrative.

Fond of saying that “the man who dies rich dies disgraced,” Carnegie turned his attention in his later years to giving away his fortune. On one occasion, Andrew Carnegie was approached by the New York Philharmonic Society for financial support. It was one of Carnegie’s favorite charities, and he was about to write a check to wipe out the Society’s entire deficit. Suddenly he stopped: “Surely, there must be other rich, generous music lovers in this town who could help out. Why don’t you raise half this amount, and come back to me for the other half,” said the great philanthropist, thus inventing the matching gift.

The next day, the treasurer came back and told Carnegie that he had raised $30,000 and would like now to get Carnegie’s check. The patron of the arts was immensely pleased at this show of enterprise and immediately handed it over. But he was curious. “Who, may I ask, contributed the other half?”

“Mrs. Carnegie,” came the reply.

Evidently, the two were well known as having a common vision. What about you and your spouse? Do you share a common vision, common goals? Are you known for working as a team? Think about ways you could be more united in spirit and in outlook.

Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision.

—Andrew Carnegie