Tag: Competitions

Team building

I invited a new classmate to join our volleyball team. Thought I kill two birds with one stone: we could use a tall guy, and I couldn’t bear seeing him unfriended during recess. Turned out he couldn’t play well, but we got to be friends for life.

We pitched in to buy a professional ball. Took it out for a test-drive.

Before I even got my chance at that spanking new white ball, it bounced to the street, ran over by a car, and voila! Memory of shared disappointment.

But Team!

Then we went out and had some lunch. The neighborhood gangs there just walked up and started to punch each of us to the ground. Back then, one of our oldest classmates had a brother in the army. He went home and took out an M-16 to scare away the hoodlums. Team!

Later in life, I have always been a team player: my brother got married, OK.

I would take care of mom, heck with my broadcasting career! Team.

The Boat People died at seas? I stood up and joined two other graduates. Together, we rolled up our sleeves, and spent our summer in hot, crowded and often times, violent (due to cramp living) prison-turned-refugee camps.

Team!

When it was my turn to lead, a joint Chinese and Vietnamese team (historically at war as nations) I made sure we spent a lot of time around food,

sharing meals and sharing deals. Team.

Families broke down because they forgot that Team came first.

Great teams just don’t happen by accident.

It needs everyone to commit to a common goal, and yes, it needs to define clearly who it is competing against (Apple vs IBM, MCI vs ATT or Samsung vs Sony).

Team needs various personalities to achieve optimal results.

But personality conflicts cause headaches.

Team leaders should embrace diversity of opinion, temperament and  ( emotional and social) intelligence.

Let conflict boil to the surface. Team’s fiber could withstand some strains and be made stronger as a result.

You know your team is fully functional when it moves as a unit: each knows his/her SWOT. Team leaders are not always right. They just know how to draw out the best in each member.

Team has its learning curve and maturity as well.

Even the best team can’t stay together forever. When you get teary at goodbye, you know you had a good team experience.

I would trade a B teammate over a A lone wolf any day.

No wonder Southwest Airlines consistently outperform its nearest competitor.

People who work there seem to and do have fun. They sing to, they smile at and they serve you as if each flight were their last. Because of this, we have yet seen SW last flight since their opening day.

We did not choose our families. But team does pick you as much as you let yourself be changed by it. Nothing worthwhile is accomplished without great teams. And no rewards greater than that of a team bringing home the first prize. Esprit de corps. That’s what it is all about. The high-fives or the tap on your shoulder when you are down and out (World Cup Final).  Come on! Focus! Next play!

Ask my tall classmate whose first handshake ends up lasting a life time.

When men cry

At the last World Cup, the team from Netherlands, who lost, cried.

Ten years ago, at the World Trade Center, women and men cried (white dust on black suits).

And last night, I cried, while watching The Best of Youth, an Italian saga of a family coming of age since the 60’s. So much idealism, and helplessness.

Men don’t share the pain, and are not supposed to cry ( King Harald V of Norway cried openly, and this got a mention in Newsweek’s “What Now Little Country” piece).

They might email, text and tweet but not tears.

But this near-double-dip Recession should make both  men and women cry.

e.g how a push for sub-prime housing (NJNI , no job no income) turned the world on its head.

Now they are seeing an uptick in sub-prime auto loan (spreading out to 63 months).

When the unexplainable occurred, we blame it on the gods.

Archille. Made by the gods, and return to them.

Matteo, one of the main characters in the Best of Youth, exuded both gallantry and sadness.

He tried to carry the chip on his shoulders, at the neglect of his own well-being.

The uncompromising solution: jump to his death on New Year‘s Eve (most suicides are over the holidays).

His brother cried. His family cried. The entire Italian cinema viewers cried.

You had to be there to feel the force of emotion that had been built up from the beginning.

(the fireworks, the caller-ID rejects, the failure to pin down the bad guys who eluded justice, failure to de-institutionalize a friend…).

Last night, on PBS Nightly Business Report, a commentator was wise-cracked when suggesting we should have been thankful

that consumer sentiment ( euphemism for “when men cry”) was at its lowest just as it had been at the beginning of the Recession.

Turned out that his suggestions were not financially related at all.

He proposed thanking loyal customers who stuck around.

In short, gratitude as a substitute for economic incentives.

Meanwhile, another fresh face, the handsome man from Princeton, is to take over the top Economic Advisory post (First Harvard, now Princeton as long as they are from an Ivy League school).

Tough men don’t cry.

Only when the dream died (World Cup championship for instance).

This time around, just make sure the American dream lives on, flickering but not put out.

(At least, Henry Ford understood this when he decided on high wages for workers, who in turn, could afford to buy his model T’s).

That way, whoever imploded just went quietly. Don’t we wish an Italian-style on current malaise (where men are allowed to cry).

That way, they won’t go postal (or cut the grass violently w/ chain saw).

In today’s world, it’s hard to pin down who the bad guy is. Hence, no catharsis.

Except for one clear-cut case, this past summer, in Pakistan, when the world

agreed, that crime doesn’t pay. No tears were shed on that one, men’s or women’s.