How Many "I"s in "TEAM"?

I once led a remarkable team of eight young creators and innovators, all in their first decade. They had little experience, loads of energy and no shortage of inspiration or determination!

They had chosen a project for a competition: To create out of thin balsa wood sticks a multi-legged platform of specific height that was to hold up as much weight as possible.

It was a very difficult challenge with many components. Fortunately, ignorance is bliss! While brainstorming, lightning-bolt inspirations, beginning with “I think….”, would be shared enthusiastically with the team as a possible solution to the challenge. Invariably one of the group would respond “There is no I in Team”.

At the end of that chapter, the team had created an intriguing structure that had a few different styles of legs (they couldn’t agree on a single leg design and time didn’t permit for enough testing and rebuilding to determine, and replicate, the strongest model). At the competition they found themselves up against similarly aged rivals with astoundingly beautiful and intricate structures that had required a level of planning and dexterity that was, we knew from our endeavours, remarkable. Everyone on the team saw, knew the truth, and with knowing looks between themselves, remained silent.

Undaunted, knowing theirs was an original created by themselves, they presented with pride.

Their structure held more weight than one might have imagined. They trouble shot and performed as they had planned. They had fun, and they did not win.

They came home knowing full well what had transpired.

More importantly, they knew that the winning medals really belonged on taller individuals. And they knew the members of the winning team, parents and judges, knew it too.

At the end we looked at all the members of our team and recognized the unique gifts, the strengths, of each. Their success, and indeed they had succeeded mightily, had required determination, initiative, resilience, creativity, innovation, collaboration, belief in themselves, and humour. Their pride in their accomplishment in the face of potential humiliation was testament to their resilient success.

There were eight profoundly unique “I”s in that team. And every single “I” contributed to their success.