Diffusing Strength

I work with high school students and I learn something new every day.  Sometimes they teach me lingo, sometimes they teach me hand shakes, but most often they teach me about being a person.

The other day I learned that groups with pull are really threads that have braided themselves together.  This makes the group strong and influential and sometimes very scary.  The thing is that each part of the braid joins the group for its own reasons.  In fact, people group together for reasons they may never share with one another.

• I’m lonely.
• I’ve had a bad day.
• I want to be in control.
• I want to laugh with you.
• I want in (on the joke, on the cool, on the love…)
• and any other reason you can come up with.

When people act together, they become something other than themselves.  They become a unit that sometimes can be seen as only a one-purpose unit.  This makes it really hard to reach individuals and have personal impact.  The solution, of course, is to engage each part of the group as individuals from time to time.  Not only does this strengthen the individual, but it also strengthens the whole.

When personal needs are met (you have a leader, you have a place, you are the joy, you are the cool), the group purpose becomes less about meeting personal goals and more about meeting group goals.  I want my choir, as a whole, to perform excellently.  In order to do that, each member must be recognized and addressed individually.

I learned all of this while having one-on-one conversations with some really talented and unique individuals.  Each one shared a surprising and different reason for being a part of their own influential group.  Each reason was deeply personal regardless of the commonalities in their group.  I never would have guessed that diffusing the strength of their group would make such a huge impact on the morale and strength of the greater team.

There is, indeed, strength in numbers, but it must include a healthy dose of personal resolve.