Being part of a team, like a football team, or even if competing in an individual sport like swimming, makes you part of something bigger than just yourself. Much of the wisdom gained from being part of a team is the disciplined pursuit of greatness. Working as a team can bring exponential results.

Adding to this, you can derive energy when you’re part of a team. You can get energy by watching a peer struggle and you decide to help them out or, on the contrary, if a peer does better than you, this pushes you to persevere and finetune some of those weaker skills you’ve been avoiding.

When you lead a team of people and you miss the mark, the target, or the goal, your team members look to you for guidance. How do you get the energy you need to get back on track in a difficult moment? One way is to pull the team together and remind them that you all need each other. True, everyone works on their own and basically, you’re all individuals hired to do a job in an area in which you’re presumably a subject matter expert.

However, when a challenge comes up, it’s nice to be able to rely on a peer or on your boss for guidance and ideas. This is where the team effect becomes potent. It’s potent because you can’t do it all on your own, and by having your peers support you, this can create a phenomenal boost.

Another angle I like to emphasize is when it comes to the team effect cliche: “A team working together is much stronger than the sum of its individual parts.” I know you’ve heard this before. In my experience, the effect happens over and over again, and it proves that when you work as a team, the results are amplified. Look at any team that has accomplished a significant milestone and you’ll find a group of individuals who don’t hesitate to disagree with, challenge, and question one another.

Yet despite the tension and the pressure, they come together, combine their expertise and experience and prevail: They create something unique, beautiful, or disruptive. Even if you’re exceptional at what you do, even if you’re a superstar, even if you’re best in class, one day you may not be at the top of your game for whatever reason. It could be poor timing, a bad vibe, terrible weather. You might be too tired or have had a break down. You won’t be top dog when you need to be and you won’t be able to perform at your optimum.

If you had the foresight, the generosity, and the good judgement to help out a fellow team member in the past when they had a terrible run, rest assured that your act of altruism will come back to help you when you’re faced with a setback. If you’ve achieved a victory and praised your team members for having helped you, acknowledging their merits, then this is when you fully understand why the team effect works. It works because team members help out fellow team members. *

*Excerpt from:  Section 8 The Team effect: Can it push you forward? From Demigods, Aliens and Ordinary people. To order your signed copy or copies for your team, please visit: https://www.paul-renaud.com/paul-renauds-books/ .