STEP 10: Teamwork

(Brian Dangerfield's 15 Steps to Greatness #9, 2009)

To fit everything in before the end of the school term, we’ve had to skip Step Nine: Money Management. Luckily, this step can more or less be summed up in the following advice: buy low, sell high. Now that we’ve got that established, let’s move on. Have you ever tried to ride a tandem bicycle by yourself? How about playing in a ‘rock band’ with only one instrument? Yes, there are times in life when one person just isn’t enough to get the job done, and that’s when you have to swallow your pride and work with other people. In a team. Using teamwork.

They often say there is no ‘I’ in ‘team’. Therefore, by logical extension, there is also no ‘I’ in ‘teamwork’. Teamwork is not about excelling as an individual, but about doing what is best for the group.  Often in life, we are faced with tasks that cannot be done alone. This is when we must work as “a team”. Each team member does a piece of that task, or ‘micro-task’, working as “a team”. Micro-tasks are assigned to team members based on their relevant skills or level of ability. Remember the school science fair at school? Remember how your friend would do the experiment, you would do the write-up in nice handwriting, and the kid with the learning disability would be in charge of finding a cardboard box? Remember how you each put your name on the presentation, despite the fact that Johnny Nelson clearly didn’t have the mental capacity to contribute anything of worth and really shouldn’t have received equal credit? When you have these separate elements working together in harmony, that is the true meaning of ‘teamwork’.

In my underrated autobiography Living Dangerfieldsly: The Brian Dangerfield Story, I talked about how my wife Maria and I made the perfect team whilst on tour. She would drive us around the South Island while I sat in the back, preparing my notes. Before a seminar, she would arrange the tables and chairs while I was backstage, getting into my Greatness Zone. With this magical formula we were able to keep things running smoothly as we hurtled through the bright lights of Palmerston, Twizel, Greymouth, Reefton, Geraldine and Gore.

Sadly, the days of such teamwork are gone. I mean in New Zealand in general, of course. I was recently in Asia and let me tell you, we have a lot to learn about working together. Did you know that in Asian countries, the needs of the group are always put above those of the individual? In fact, many Asian people are known only by their family name, because in Asian cultures, members of the same family are believed to be the same person! With all the selfishness, exploitation and greed we see in the Western world, we could improve things immensely by following the Asians’ example. I urge you, take my advice on teamwork and you will not only increase your own greatness, but the overall greatness of New Zealand itself.