Monday 2 January 2012

One Team. One Dream: The Power of Collaboration

Blog article from Combine 360 Blog!

"The strength of the team is each individual member.

The strength of each member is the team." - Phil Jackson

When a school in Toronto recently decided to ban balls from the playground because a parent got hit with a stray soccer ball, I considered for a moment the possibility that the terrorists were actually winning. As I considered how ludicrous this seemed, "stop PLAYing on the PLAYground!" (you heard me), I also considered how far we have to go to spread our message and teach people about the importance of moving. There has been a lot of press and public debate and even Saturday Night Live got in on the act to inadvertently help get the message across in a humourous way.
 A community can be a place you live, a place you think and a place you act. Communities share ideas and beliefs and work toward a common goal, often sacrificing individual needs and wants for the community's success. Social media and the internet offer an amazing opportunity to spread a community message with Facebook and Twitter acting as a platform for delivering individual and community messages. Each individual can positively or negatively affect the community and the community can strengthen or weaken each individual. we also call this a team!
In the world of health and fitness there are many philosophies, ideas and avenues of thought that led people down different paths but ultimately, for the most part, the goals are the same. Be healthy, stay healthy, perform to the best of your ability, and live your life with passion. In sport and in life we have basically the same goals and the formula is simple. Train, get better, perform to the best of your abilities, repeat.
As a community of health and fitness professionals we constantly search for more efficient ways to motivate people to move more often, move more efficiently and to help them get better. As coaches we learn something new everyday that helps us accomplish these goals. Unfortunately, at the same time other communities continue to make it easier for people to move less, eat more and to stop playing altogether. Their formula seems to be even simpler; sit, eat, repeat (a lot)! Hardly a formula for success.
                 "Dont Just make the team. Make the Team better" - Peter Twist
When Peter Twist began developing his vision of coaching Pro hockey players to get better in the off-season he quickly realized that he could help them get better and help more players get better if he began to find like-minded coaches to help him achieve these goals. He knew that community of coaches could accomplish more than he could accomplish on his own. As this community grew, the impact started to spread much further than hockey players and other athletes. Along the way he discovered that, in many ways, EVERYONE IS
AN ATHLETE.
This coaching community learns from sport science research, from the industry, from other coaches, from our athletes and from each other. Everyday. As educators we teach what we learn and as coaches we coach what we know. Everyday. If something does not work we find something better that does, and we get better. Everyday.
"Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than the one where they sprang up."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes

This Combine360 community is a team that works toward common goals. Individual strengths combine to make the team better. Through collaboration the team helps offset individual limitations. This team learns together, grows together, celebrates success and overcomes failures. In this team, together I'm better, together YOU'RE better, together WE'RE better. Together we can be one team, with one dream.
Once you have a common goal the formula is simple, learn, get better, share, grow, repeat. I have no doubt the kids at that school will soon be throwing and kicking once again. I am sure their team will not let them down.

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