Every time I hear the word teamwork, my mind automatically resonates it with workplace.. and in some rare cases I might link it to schools or universities. The mind is so autotuned to believe that teamwork belongs in workplaces.
Last weekend I was doing some craft work with my 4 year old. He wanted to put together some icecream sticks and make squares. We did it well, him and me. Gluing together 4 sticks to make a square and colouring them with his new found love for sketch pens. Never even realising once how good a team we were and how beautifully we were working together in tandem.
Until came a time when the little one wanted to put those squares together to make a “box”, a cube basically. Now, 2 adult hands and 2 baby hands were not enough to hold those shaking swaying sticks together and keep them glued in place. We came up with a strategy but we needed more hands…. our teamwork started to fall, out of place just like the squares. We finally decided we needed 2 more hands to help. We had to add a new team member in the middle of the project.
How frustrating it can be to explain the objective, the expected outcome, provide a background, the process you have been following and what you intend to follow, all in the middle of a project. New hands come with different experiences and different thought processes. All this can feel like a waste of time… to add someone new midway and explain all that! Can’t four hands just somehow put together the cube themselves and won’t it be faster?!
That’s when you need someone to take the lead and my four year old was prompt to take charge. And thank God for that.
We achieved a beautiful and colourful cube in much less time with 6 hands working together. And a lesson learnt on how teamwork is important in every aspect of life.