Let's reminisce back to that incredible event in cricketing history when India won the ICC Twenty20 World Cup Cricket Championship 2007 by script ing a spectacular 5 runs victory over Pakistan in the finals. Having posed a challenging total of 157 runs with some stupendous batting from Ghambir, Yuvaraj, Rohit Sharma and Pathan, we eventually restricted Pakistan to 152 runs with some mesmerizing bowling from R P Ringh and Pathan. This was our first major victory since 1983 when we bagged the coveted World Cup by beating the till then invincible West Indies team. How did we achieve this implausible feat?
India always had the talent and the expertise to repeat history but never won a major event after 1983. But in 2007 one person by the name M S Dhoni made all the difference. By winning the Twenty20 cup he made a loud statement that it is not enough to have talented people in your team but it's more important to make them work together as a team by harnessing each others potential. Being the captain of the Twenty20 team Dhoni fostered a positivistic feeling and well being amidst his team members which catapulted the team to resonate in unison to perform incredible feats. That's the spirit of togetherness!!
A group of individual becomes a team when they start thinking collectively. They have a unified goal and all the team members consciously work towards it. The Webster's Dictionary articulates team work as "a joint action by a group of people where each person subordinates his or her personal interests to the unity and efficiency of the group". Teams are the only place where the laws of Mathematics are confronted. One plus one may not necessarily be two. It can be four, ten or twenty depending on the level of synergy which the team members have attained. The collective intelligence of a team is much greater than the sum of the individual intelligence of the team members.
Human potential cannot be fathomed and it is often revealed through team activities. An effective team should have clear goal, competent team members, a strong motive, a unified commitment, a collaborative milieu and a principled leadership. It is good to be individually brilliant with strong core competencies; but to work in a team one needs to harness each others competencies. Teamwork is mainly about situational leadership, letting the person with the relevant core competency to take leadership of a situation.
The legendary Henry Ford has once articulated that "Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress and working together is success". Individually we may be a drop, but together we are like an ocean.
Come....... let's go and build stronger teams!!!
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