Teamwork pt. 1

Teamwork is a quality that we all need to learn, if we want to be successful people. Teams have classically been part of cartoons for a long while. Image fromDespair.com

It’s probably not a huge surprise that some of my favorite types of cartoons consist of adventures of mutant or super-powered teams. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, He-Man and The Masters of the Universe, Voltron, and Thundercats, are just some of them. One special characteristic of each of these teams is that they all have to accept that there are weaknesses as well as strengths of each individual, and without the combination of the strengths, they cannot hope to defeat the challenges with which they find themselves. In the introduction scene to the Ninja Turtles cartoon, the theme song specifically notes each turtle’s strength, “Leonardo leads, Donatello does machines, Raphael is cool but crude, Michelangelo is a party dude.”

In Ninja Turtles Episode 85, Leonardo Lightens Up, the turtles realize that without Leonardo’s leadership and focus, they cannot defeat the villain, G. Cleff. Donatello had invented a personality modifier, which was used against Leo when the other three were getting tired of his bossy attitude when Splinter left him in charge. As the title of the episode emphasizes, they lose Leonardo as their leader, when he becomes a jokester and goes off to have fun. They get defeated due to the lack of their normal dynamic with Leo as their team captain. It isn’t until Master Splinter returns that they can return him to normal and finally defeat G. Cleff.

I’ve found that this lesson is also true to real life. If there is a group working toward defeating a particular challenge, like a recent group project I had been assigned to participate in, there are multiple areas that need to be filled with different personality traits. We had a few that stepped up as team leaders, me being one, but there was one who became the main honcho. There were a couple who didn’t know what they were doing, so we just decided for them that they would do a particular part when we were ready to begin that part of the presentation. One of us was especially eager to type, while we were brainstorming ideas and once we got rolling on the essay part of it. Another got hyped up when we decided to add movie clips to the presentation. On top of that, we needed to have some stress relief from time to time so that’s another area that was filled in with a goofball that got dressed up to resemble Mr. Rogers. All in all, our presentation and the work leading up to it, could not have been done so well, had we not teamed up and did things with our own areas of expertise. We were also blessed enough to have been grouped with such diversity to have been able to do so.

RSS Posted by ParkerT at 11:37 PM