This post is not about mountaineering. It’s about the importance of teamwork. For this reason I will rely on the well-known “The Law of Mount Everest“. It is an idea developed by leadership and teamwork expert John C. Maxwell in his famous book “The 17 Indisputaable Laws of Teamwork“ John himself sums it up by stating that “As the challenge escalates, the need for teamwork elevates“. That is, the greater the challenge you have, the greater the need to work as a team. And Maxwell uses the analogy of climbing Mount Everest to explain that the only way to overcome great difficulties or achieve great challenges is by working as a team. Tenzing Norgay – the Nepalese Sherpa guide who accompanied Sir Edmund Hillary on May 29, 1953 in the challenge of being the first mountaineers to summit Everest – sums it up perfectly; “On a great mountain, no one abandons his companions and sets out to conquer the top alone”.
I am fully convinced that most of the important challenges that you will face in your life, you will have to face them as a team. Now, how to successfully work as a team? To achieve success, Maxwell recommends asking 3 questions:
- What is my dream? It is the beginning of everything. Define what you could achieve. Basically clearly define your aspirations, your goals.
- Who is on my team? This question helps you understand your current situation and see what kind of people you should add to your team. The more ambitious you are with your dreams, the better team you should have. A great dream with a bad team is a failure for sure.
- What should my dream team look like? You must achieve a level of team that is aligned with the characteristics of your objectives.
However, in most cases, it is not easy to have a team in line with the defined objectives. To do this, Maxwell proposes:
- Develop team members. Help them grow and develop personally and professionally. Without any doubt one of the most important responsibilities if you lead the team.
- Add key team members. Quite often, even if your team members improve significantly, you will have to add talent to your team. Identifying the right talent to complete your team and being able to hire them will be very important.
- Change the leadership. Sometimes it is necessary to change the team leader depending on the situation and the objectives.
- Remove ineffective members. Many problems in teams start with those toxic members. Identifying them and knowing how to separate them from the team is essential to achieve the objectives set.
Definitely, if you want to achieve important challenges you will need a very good team. Because as John C. Maxwell says “teamwork is at the heart of any great achievement”.