تفسیر درس

Collaborate – Commentary

Just recently I was listening to one of my favorite songs. The name of the song is ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again.’ It’s a popular song by The Who. If you ever watch the TV show CSI, you may have heard that song. What I noticed as I listened to the song were all the different parts. I noticed the drummer, for example, there are some great drum parts in that song. The drummer was kind of a crazy guy and very energetic.

The drumming in that song is fantastic. Then I noticed the bass playing. Often we don’t notice the bass in songs, but again I noticed the bass and the bass was fantastic. The guitar was obvious. It’s a classic guitar song and the singing as well, it’s got the great classic shriek in this one part of the song is also fantastic. As I listen to each of those parts, and how they all came together, I could really feel this idea not just understand it intellectually, but feel this idea of synergy.

Each part was great, but by itself not a song. If you just listened to the drums only, if you turned off everything else, probably still a little boring even though the drums are quite great and that’s true for all the different parts, but put them all together and it’s a classic rock song, one of the best. That’s what synergy, what collaboration is all about. We use the Beatles example in our main lesson and I’m using another music example. The reason I’m using music as an example is that it’s a great metaphor for collaboration, because we can all easily understand that in music you need collaboration. You need all these different parts and that they all work together to create something that is fantastic as a whole.

We can see that in a song, even though each part might be quite good, that it’s not complete, there’s something missing. You need all those parts together. You can also see another important point about collaboration and that is that each part and each person has a specific role. We talked about, in the main lesson, that it’s necessary for team members to be complementary. You don’t want a team where every person is the same.

We’ll continue with our music metaphor.

If you had a group and every member only played the guitar, it probably wouldn’t be as good, that song won’t get fooled again if you had four guitar players, it might be good I don’t know, but I doubt it would be as good as having a drummer, bass player, guitar player, a singer and even some keyboard in that song too. So having different strengths, different qualities, different members, they all complement each other. That is usually a much better formula for collaboration.

The drums, the bass, guitar, singing and keyboards they all work together complementing each other, making each other better. Now, related to this, and we didn’t talk about this so much in the main lesson is that it’s important that each team

member have a clearly defined role based on their strengths. Let me give you the music example again, because it’s obvious. In most songs, depends on the type of music, but let’s say in classic rock, like the song from the Who or the Beatles. In most songs the bass is not the loudest instrument in the song. It’s not usually up front, meaning the most obvious. There are a few exceptions, but generally the bass is a little behind the guitar and the singing. It’s a little less noticeable. It’s still very important, but the bass player has a role. They create a kind of rhythm with the drummer, but their role is to be a little behind the guitar and the singing, generally.

And the drummer has a role, they do a certain thing and again they’re not usually that’s in the front, the most obvious or the loudest. Again, different kinds of music might have different roles for each musician, it’s not an exact rule the drummer must always be doing this and the bass player always doing this, but what is key is that every musician understands what they’re supposed to do in the song and they don’t interfere with each other.

If everybody tries to be the loudest and most obvious then it usually sounds terrible. Some need to stay back a little at times and then at other times they’re more in the front and more loud and more obvious and then some types of music like jazz, they might take turns. Maybe the guitar is out front first and then the bass comes whatever, but the point is they all have roles and they have to respect each other and they have to know, in this project, in this song I’m supposed to do this and not that.

So when you’re talking about collaborating in business or in any other part of life, you have to make sure everyone on the team understands what they’re supposed to do and what they’re not supposed to do. There are some people who, they want to do everything. They want to take over everything. They might even be the most skillful, but it’s still usually a bad idea to let someone try to do everything. They need to have a role and they need to stay in that role and let the other team members do what they need to do.

We also know that this works in sports. Let’s say basketball. In basketball you have five people on the court, five people playing at the same time. Each one has a specific job and if they try to do someone else’s job it will cause a lot of problems. So we can use the example of the Miami Heat, NBA professional basketball team, and one of their players is LeBron James, he’s really fantastic. He’s really good. But he has a role. His role is not generally to move the ball around the court and dribble (meaning move it, bring it up from one end to the other), that’s not generally his role.

His role is he scores, plays defense and does a lot of things, but there are other players on the team who are better at moving the ball very quickly. If LeBron James, even though he’s great, if he tried to do everything, the team would probably lose. The team would suffer. But he’s a good player and he understands that he has his role. He knows that his other teammates are good at other things and he lets them do that. It’s the same for any team.

So when you’re collaborating you need to be sure you know exactly what your strong thing is, what your strong point is. You need to know what you’re supposed to do, what you’re responsible for and be sure that you don’t interfere with the other team members and be sure they don’t interfere with you. So defined clear roles is very, very important.

Another important quality is commitment. Every member of the team needs to be committed to the project, committed to success, and they need to be more focused on team success than individual success. We see this many times in sports, football and soccer, as most people say. You may have a great player, but again they have to play with the whole team, one player’s not enough and if one player tries to do everything, usually it will cause the team to lose.

So one person trying to be the best and to have individual success usually will hurt the whole team. The great players, they’re great individually but they’re always committed to their team first, and you need to make sure your team is the same. When you build a team be sure everyone is focused on group success, and if someone is not focused on group success get rid of them. Goodbye, and replace them with someone else who is, even someone else who’s maybe not quite as skillful. It’s still better to have someone who’s focused on team success. It will help your collaboration much better.

We could also see this again in music. Let’s say you have a singer and the singer just always wants to be the star, in the front and always wants to be the loudest and always wants to get all the attention. Usually the songs, the music won’t be as good if they’re doing it too much and causing problems for the other musicians. It’s best when they’re all working together and everyone serves the song. That’s again something you see with great musicians, they don’t always play at their top ability. Sometimes the guitar player may play a little more slowly, a little less loudly and he could, simply because it’s better for the song.

It might be better for him as an individual to do something loud and fast and sound really fantastic, but maybe the song would be worse if he did that. So, the great musicians also know when to be quiet.

Now, let’s talk about you and what you need to do to build your team and collaborate this month. First, decide the general area that you’ll do this in. Is this going to be something for work? Are you going to build a team at work? It could be a volunteer team. It could be for some type of non-profit project you want to do. It could be something artistic, I don’t know, you decide.

• Step one, identify your own strengths in this area, in this field.

What are your strong points? Your personality, skills… we’ve had some past lessons where we really focused on this… building your strengths and influence. If you’ve been

around for several months you probably already know your great strengths, but if not, figure it out.

• Step two, we don’t talk about this a lot but it’s important for this month for collaboration, identify your weaknesses.

You probably already know them.

What are your weak points? They’re often the opposite of your strengths.

What are your personality weak points? For example, I don’t like dealing with details too much I hate that. If I have to do lots of little details, especially technical details, I hate it. It’s boring for me and makes me very frustrated. That’s a weak point.

You have weak points too, so identify your weak points.

• Step three should be obvious, you’re going to build your team.

You’re going to find other people. Do not find people the same as you, find people who complement you. So, for your weak points, find other people who are strong in that area. For example, if I was building a team I would want to find someone who was really good with details, who likes little small details and likes technical details. That person would be a better team member for me in many ways. They would complement me and I would complement them. So find people who are strong where you are weak and they are also weak where you are strong.

• Step four, define your project.

Pick a specific project, something that has an end. We’re going to make this. We’re going to do this.

Step five, define your roles.

Have a team meeting and define your roles. Decide what each person will focus on. Be sure each person is focusing on their strengths. So if you’re a big picture person, like I am, you like the big picture and you like to look at the whole big strategy then make sure that’s what your role is on the team, don’t let people give you small detail jobs because you’ll do a bad job at it and you’ll hate it. So make sure your role fits your strengths and make sure that’s true for every team member. If it’s one other person or ten it doesn’t matter, make sure everyone has a clearly defined role and work that they’ll do that is connected to their strong points, their strengths.

• Finally step six, just do it.

Start working. Get it done.

• Step seven, share the results on our VIP site and in our forums.

Tell us about the team you built and what you decided to do and tell us the results. I’m very curious about it. I look forward to reading about it on our forums and social site.

See you there. Bye for now.