“Have utmost concern for what’s right rather than who is right.” John Wooden How did the human race become top of the food chain? How did we find ourselves in this position, where we have completely transformed the world, leaving our mark in every continent. We not only beat out stronger, faster and more aggressive animals, we also beat out other human species to be the lone human species on earth. How did that happen? It happen for many different reasons, however two stick out in my mind as most important. Firstly we were able to break down complex problems, and build tools to allow us to overcome these problems. Imagine the board meetings held to discuss the products needed to take down a wooly mammoth!!!!! Secondly, we developed the understanding of co-operation. We quickly learned that if we work together, and use the tools we built to create a solution, we could be ultimately successful. We therefore became better hunters, we created settlements with a shared purpose and defined roles that benefited the whole colony. Hunters hunted, farmers farmed and so on. This cooperation was born out of survival, however it’s necessity is still prevalent in the relative safety of our modern world. In this very safe bubble of Western society, where the most people look after number one, it appears that we have lost the want and the need to work together. Social media provides an illusion of togetherness and closeness to people, however depression and social anxiety is growing. The World Health Organisation is currently saying that the most common form of illness in the next 20 years is going to be depression. We have it all, seemingly, however we are missing something fundamental. I see it constantly when coaching basketball and in the work environment. The willingness to work together with somebody for mutual benefit seems all but lost. We need human connections to enable us to thrive personally, however we seem to have lost this understanding. We need each other as much now as we did when we were hunting mammoths. So, what can we do to develop a cooperative mindset, so we can truly work to not only our own advantage, but the advantage of others? We live in a world of quick hits and life hacks. Click this button for 2,000 instagram followers, do this for instant radiant looking skin, get a six pack in a week!!!! These are the messages being seen by millions of us daily over all the social media platforms. The message is slowly sinking in that we don’t have to try, we don’t need anyone else’s help, what we need to do is send £9.99 in order to receive this special, once in a lifetime fix that will make you awesome. This is in true opposition to what is needed to create cooperation. Cooperation takes time, patience, communication and time (I know I have said time twice). The problem is we don’t take the time to actually work out how or (even more importantly why) we should work together. Let us look at a couple of scenarios where we are introduced to new potential partners. In different aspects of our lives we act very differently to meeting new people, and my main question is should we? The first scenario is the job interview. In the modern day job interview the competency based interview reigns supreme. In this interview you spend hours developing your CV or application form to convince your potential employer that you have all the correct skills, honed through all the right workplace experience to be able to deliver the work required. Then you spend an indiscriminate amount of time meeting your potential employers face to face and reiterating your amazing skills and the amazing work you have completed with these skills. You tell them you are a team player that can work on your own initiative and you can use all Microsoft Office software. You get offered the job, start work, and six months down the line everyone realises that you don’t fit into the team, you are unhappy with your work and you spend more energy fighting the establishment and your boss than you do being creative, productive and happy. Why is this? For me, the whole employment process focused on what you can do and how do you do it, rather than looking at why you want the work, why you would work passionately and diligently everyday and why you would be a good colleague. You may have the skills, but you have personality traits, or points of view, or behaviours that will not make you friends in the team you will be working with. Contrast this with a first date. On a first date you spend the whole time trying to find out about the other person. Their family history, where they grew up, what they like and don’t like and what they are passionate about. You spend the time getting to know them, at least at a superficial level. You are trying to make an educated guess at whether or not you would like to spend more time with this person. You do this through story telling, showing pictures of your family and sharing your dreams. Sometimes you decide after the first date, no thank you, we would not work, sometimes it takes a few dates to decide this and sometimes we look back smiling 10 years later, mortgaged to the hilt, with three children nipping your heals for cinema money, more chocolate and another new toy. The point here is when we are on our first date we are laying the foundations of cooperation, we are asking the pertinent questions that allow us to decide whether this person is worth spending more time with. We are looking at aligning our values. So what can we take away from all this? I believe the following are all very important aspects to building and maintain a cooperative relationship, whether it is at home, at work, in our friendships or when we play sport:
In the modern world cooperation is something that everybody talks about, but very few actually do. It is a skill that is becoming a lost art, however it is one that should be cherished, developed and grown. It is vital for our survival. So go out there, cooperate, create and grow. Peace and happiness.
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AuthorMy name is Andy Smyth, I have spent the last decade working in the field of Sports Development, where I have had the pleasure of working to grow leaders within local community sports clubs in Scotland. Archives
August 2017
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