These words are very common in today’s competitive world. After three decades of experience in industry, I’d like to share my thoughts on the conflict between individuality and working as a leader in a team.
It is obvious that science, technology, and the arts are only steps away from geniuses. This article is just a sketch. Therefore, I will only focus on technology.
As children, we learn to work in groups. We use the same books, answer the same questions in exams, and are forced to do so from childhood. In very rare cases, students will express their individuality through the quality of their answers. But it’s often overlooked. After 10 years in junior school, most of us have developed stereotypes. Some people could achieve good marks that helps them make new steps. We don’t like the weak performers who follow a different route or think in a certain way.
This continues throughout high school, graduation, as well as in the real world of mass-production industries. Despite the flat education system, it is possible to find people with individuality. A few of these individuals are able to work together and become leaders. However, this happens mostly in mid-twenties. We lose a lot of people who could have contributed but, due to their egocentric individuality and their Orthogonal reasoning they are not successful. Most cases they become failures in life.
Practically everyone from the 5th birthday to now shows an individualistic streak.
The most important quality of a person is their imagination.
Uncontrolled imagination, without a well-correlated and organized knowledge base, is not a good idea. Data is pumped into a child’s mind, and rules are created to match the data. Later on, these information bases from different information archived will be correlated, and the person might acquire knowledge. It sounds very simple but is one of the most complicated processes that is still not fully understood. What we do to understand in today’s trend in hyper-specialization? We need to figure out how to use our mental faculties to link information.
Let’s consider a topper who graduated from an excellent engineering school. He is certain to have worked hard and has a clear goal in life. In some cases, he’s in demand. Soon, he’ll be a team member. This is again like school days. He has to follow the rules and he can only succeed if his individual thinking, which can help the group work efficiently, is ever heard by his leader.
So how are leaders selected? The leaders must be experienced for ex, Jason Hare Kingston and have been leading a team for five to ten years. Again, it’s the same story as in high school:
Does the leader recognize individual thickeners, support innovative thinking, and try to get in the heads of his colleagues and filter their imaginative suggestions and guide them so that the group performance improves.
Individualism cannot be tolerated in the military organisations, except in rare cases. The army is both the most efficient and economically productive organization in the world, and it can be used to combat wars and natural disasters.
To keep both individualism intact and to foster a sense of teamwork, Leaders organize Brain Storming season. This is a wonderful way to let the sparking individual ideas out. This requires that the team leader:
1: Should take the problem into his own hands and devise a solution.
2: Allow each member of his team to make suggestions, and then justify it.
3. Let everyone, rationally, criticize everyone else.
You should plan at least one day ahead to ensure that your team is ready for brainstorming. Leaders must understand that every person suppresses their individuality. This is the time to get to familiarize yourself with your team and select the person who will take over his place in the future. He will discover the pretenders that lack individuality and these people will be hard working workers who will do long hours if they are shown the way.
