Although Kakashi extols and values teamwork, he doesn't understand the first thing about it nor does he even know what it is. And because he doesn't know what teamwork is, he can't teach it or recognize it when he sees it.

As a result, he ends up teaching the opposite of teamwork, because Kakashi's concept of teamwork is one person is the strongest and carries his incompetent team without much (if any) help or support from them.

Thus Kakashi's attempts to teach "teamwork" to Team 7 majorly backfire. Not only does he avoid teaching teamwork, Kakashi actually ends up teaching anti-teamwork, which naturally becomes problematic and eventually leads to the team falling to pieces.

Teamwork is about working with a team, cooperating with others and mutually relying on each other's strengths to overcome each other's weakness. Ideally, each member of the team needs to be equally helpful, equally useful, and equally competent in ability. And I think we can all agree that that doesn't describe Team 7 in their genin days. Everyone knows Sakura was significantly weaker than Naruto, and Naruto was weaker than Sasuke, and yet Kakashi, the supposed preacher of teamwork, didn't view this as a problem.

Kakashi meant well, wanting to teach his genin subordinates the virtue of teamwork, yet instead all he managed to teach them was anti-teamwork. Which in Sasuke's case, when paired with Itachi's interference and Orochimaru's meddling, served to split Team 7 apart and irreparably damage the team's teamwork, personal relationships, and group cohesion. The end result was that Kakashi's teaching methods caused unnecessary rifts between the triumvirate.

Certainly the primary factor in tearing Team 7 apart was Sasuke's choice to leave, so I'm not removing blame from Sasuke. Sasuke was fully responsible for his actions and the crux for what tore Team 7 apart, and the brunt of the blame rests upon Sasuke's shoulders. That doesn't mean that Kakashi's influence and actions didn't play a big part in Sasuke's decision, because they did. Kakashi's apathetic and disinterested leadership had much to do with Team 7 being torn apart and left in shambles.

And in wake of Sasuke's shocking desertion, rather than pick up the pieces and repair the shattered Team 7, Kakashi does nothing and lets it all fall apart (so much for teamwork).

The truth is Kakashi isn't interested in teamwork. He wasn't interested in teamwork during his Team Minato days, and he wasn't interested in the Team 7 days either. Much of Naruto's, Sakura's, and Sasuke's suffering could've been avoided had Kakashi took responsibility, behaved like an adult, and acted like the leader and teacher he was hired to be. Instead, he lazily shirked responsibility because he was too busy keeping his nose stuffed in a porn novel. Well, he did his job (sort of, not the teaching part, though), but he did the absolute bare minimum and his "teaching" was about as lackluster as one could possibly get.

As a result of his abysmal teaching methods, Kakashi always remained an outsider to his team. While Sakura, Sasuke, and Naruto became a family, Kakashi always remained outside of that. He was a friend to the three genin, but never family. Kakashi was never in the inner circle that Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke shared. Team 7 was a family, but not one Kakashi was a part of. In the end, Kakashi was never even that close to any of the Team 7 members except for Naruto, not coincidentally the most forgiving and patient of the bunch.

The popular opinion is that Kakashi was like a father-figure to the three genin and part of the Team 7 family, but that's not what Kakashi's role in Team 7's life was like at all. There's a reason why Naruto asked Iruka to act in place of his father instead of Kakashi. To be honest, even with his (eventual) favorite student Naruto, Kakashi's relationship to Naruto isn't all that spectacular either.

Kakashi may say he's teaching teamwork, but it doesn't matter what you say when all your actions and policies all point to the opposite. Despite Kakashi's well-meant intentions, all his teaching methods and actions were about cultivating anti-teamwork.

Which is problematic since children model their behavior after the behavior of the adults in their life. Kakashi's anti-teamwork policies were prominently in the spotlight and the primary example for Team 7, particularly for Naruto and Sasuke, who didn't have any other prominent adult figures in their lives.

This is particularly troublesome for Sasuke, because Sasuke rarely listens to people's words. It's generally only people's actions that mean anything to Sasuke (thus why he so stubborn and difficult to persuade to do much of anything via only verbal dialogue). Repeatedly we see Sasuke model his behavior after the behavior of the adults around him in his life, so it's unsurprising that he would begin to pick up on Kakashi's anti-teamwork methods. Sasuke doesn't use Kakashi as a role model much (thank goodness for that), but Kakashi's influence does create a rift in the team and is a big contributor to the team's disintegration and Sasuke's desertion.

While I'm not going to list out every anti-teamwork methodology Kakashi uses in this chapter, I will be referencing moments when Kakashi uses anti-teamwork throughout this book, as understanding Kakashi's anti-teamwork teaching style is important for understanding Kakashi and Sasuke's relationship.