TEAM

For the past few years I felt very exhausted, tired and unhappy with my work. I have been running the office like a one man show even though I have staffs and a legal assistant. There were times when I cried in my room and almost shouted for “help”. My face already spoke on my behalf “I am miserable!”. In 5 years staffs came in and out like a Hudson River flow and till to date in total there were 11 staffs who already left my office. I kept asking myself what had went wrong?

Instructor Training Programme (ITP) 2010 gave me the answer to my challenges. I don’t have “a team”. Yes, a team. I never realise about it until during recent ITP. I have a great learning that to succeed I must do it in a team and the team must be well connected. After the first part of ITP in May 2010, I started to work on my team at the office. I committed to support, more sharing and built the trust among us. The result that I got is team members will ask among each other to go beyond the limit and beyond the ordinary. More support and strategy can be gained in a team. To achieve success with a team is easier and faster rather than doing it alone. However, sometimes happen to be that a few of the team members are a bit slow or have difficulty to catch up. This can be a dilemma to those who are very fast player as this can be a hurdle for them to achieve result faster. So one have to ask whether he or she want to leave the team and do it by himself or herself or stay on and give more support to the team.

I would like to highlight that there is a difference between team member who is a bit slow yet committed to play 100% and team player who has no commitment to play full tilt. In latter scenario, members who are committed 100% sometimes will choose to leave the team since it does not work for them anymore. One of the distinction that I got about “team” is when there is synergy among the members, they will be able to go through all the obstacles and reach the finishing line together as a team. That’s what I call “Success”.

Previously I thought that team with strongest members always succeed. But it does not always work that way. Why? When there is no synergy, no connection and no alignment among the members then they will play individually which make it easier for the opponent to block the individual player. For instance World Cup Football 2010 shown that a team with great players did not get into the final because there is no team work, no synergy, every player wanted to show their own skills and I didn’t feel their connection among each other. That team was “Brazil”. Compared to the Champion team i.e Spain, the latter one definitely soul to soul connection and even though I was some hundred miles away from the venue yet I really felt and get – this is the “TEAM”.

After ITP 2010, I resumed my work and I acknowledge my staff for her works throughout 5 days when I was not around. She was speechless and I asked her “didn’t your previous employer said that to you”. She replied “No”. After 5 years, finally I have peaceful mind leaving my office for a few days and for the first time during recent ITP I never called my office and had not received any phone calls from the office. Today I said “Shida, Thank you very much and I really appreciate you”.

– Halimaton