Teaming

Teams. It seems teams are a part of every facet of life. I have been on teams, coached teams, and been kicked off teams. The common thing about teams is that association with a team teaches a life lesson that is useful in many circumstances.

When I was young, I was on football teams, baseball teams, basketball teams, softball teams, track teams, etc. Although the term Track Team seems a little strange since track is an individual event. But now that I think about it, Tennis Teams, Swim Teams and other individual-like sports have a different definition of a team.

So, there are the kinds of teams that promote a sense of belonging to a larger organization, like the track team or, I suppose, being schizophrenic. These honor the individual effort but don’t rely on teamwork per se to accomplish their objective. Sure, one track team beats another by virtue of points accumulated, but let’s not split hairs. Teams like a football team or basketball team count on each other to be able to conquer opponents, douse each other with champagne and blame each other for extraneous misconduct. No team, no event, no rape.

Being old now, I coach teams more than I participate on teams. Sports teams, that is. I am on management teams and the like but they are usually called task forces, panels, or juries. I derive great joy from coaching my children on teams but I try to involve them on different teams for the experience. Caitie’s teams have been fun to coach and I have learned how to manipulate them so they gain a sense of teamwork and a subsequent desire to assist each other and do better because they feel they are a part of an entity they care about. I used to be suspect of leadership but have a whole new take on that topic – for another blog.

In college I was forced to assemble teams for group projects. This was particularly difficult because I was always the team captain and always did the bulk of the work. As my education progressed, I figured out that I was going to be put into teams in each of my upper-division classes. I was also fortunate to find another guy who was a leader and who worked/shouldered his share of the project load. He and I coordinated our schedules to have the same classes. We would purposefully sit on opposite sides of the room and ‘recruit’ team members. When it came time to assemble teams, the teacher would invariably leave the formulation of the teams up to the students. This was perfect for us. We knew we would be on the same team but would strike up casual interviews with the others in the class to see if there were others whom we deemed worthy to be on our team.

Our dialogues went something like this: “Oh, I hate teams. I always get stuck doing all the work…” (hoping for a ‘me too’) or “Do you know if this class is hard? My GPA needs a boost…” (hoping for a ‘none of these classes are hard’) or “If we pull an all-nighter, do you object to wearing see-thru pajamas?” (hoping for ‘that’s all I have and I don’t wear underware’) – the last one was for female candidates only.

We ended up assembling great teams that accomplished strong results because we recruited well. Was that cheating?