Manage Well - Working Together

Its a basic skill -- the ability to work effectively with others.

Dear friends and colleagues

Two points need to be made. First, a basic principle. Together we can accomplish exponentially more than any one of us can do alone. To accomplish anything of substance or significance, we need to work together. We need one another and we know how to coordinate our efforts and collaborate in common cause.

But then the second point necessarily follows: that a fundamental capacity – a vocational skill – is the ability to work with others. To know how to bring one’s own talent and perspective to the situation but in collaboration and coordination with others. To recognize the limits of one’s own capacity and see those limits as not a problem or an opportunity to lean into the abilities or talents of another.

We are not intimidated by the skills and abilities of the other; we are not diminished by any inclination to compare ourselves. We reject the notion of the hero, or the MVP {most valuable player}. Rather we know that we only get where we need to get when we work together to make it happen. And this means that we celebrate the skills and abilities of the other. And that even if we scored the goal, we know it is meaningless apart from who set us up and apart from the goal keeper who kept the other team from scoring.

Which leads me to ask: where do we learn this? Where do children, young people and emerging adults learn this? How is this way of thinking and working cultivated? I ask this knowing of those whom I have had to work with along the way who simply had not learned it. Here they were, in their 30s and perhaps into their 40s and somehow this had never become part of their consciousness. They had not learned the basic principle and humility that comes with knowing how to work with others, how to lean into the capacity of others and how to coordinate efforts towards a common objective.

Where we do learn it? For some, no doubt, it is on the athletic pitch or court. They were involved in team sports and the coach made it very clear that they would only win when they were a team; they would only be their best if and as they learned to work together. This required knowledge of the other, a lack of trying to outshine one another, an appreciation of the contribution of other the other.

I’m a fan of soccer; and as I write this I eagerly await the upcoming World Cup. For me, one of the favourite moments in this sport was a goal scored by Inter-Miami against the New York Red Bulls. Simply exquisite. The first goal that Argentine Leonel Messi scored in the North American league: a master class in this very point.

Messi to Robinson to Sergio Busquet to Jordi Alba, back to Messi and then to some American teen-ager Cremashi, and then back to Messi for a tap it into the open net. The sequence is a thing of great beauty: not so much the finale, but the sequence of Busquet to Alba, back to Messi and then one last touch before the goal is scored I see three men at the top of their craft who know that they do not win unless they work together and, for what it is worth, they are very good at it. They are very good not only in their own right but at working together. They arrive in North American having played together in Barcelona: they know each other. When Alba does the over the head bicycle kick he knows precisely where Messi will be; the ball lands at his feet!. The point is that they did it together. Sure, Messi, but what made it happen was the joint effort.

If you doubt me:

Need I say more?

I wonder if another place we learn this is in the musical arts. The highschool orchestra, the choral group in the local church: the conductor leads, but also urges us to listen to the person on your right and on their left. No divas here; what makes this a magical moment is the blending of voices – the way in which we lean into and attend to one another even as we produce a musical piece that is exquisite precisely because we did it together. I wonder if Roger Scruton is right in the observation that the string quartet is the ultimate expression of musical art: you hear it; but in a small concert hall you also you see it: how the cello player is so attentive to not only the lead violin but to the second violin and the viola as well.

Perhaps we learned it as children: whether it is the Lego palace we build, or the sand castle on the beach, or the tree house out back of the house. We did it together and that was part of our joy – the sense of shared accomplishment. So that at the end of the day even the child can say the words, “we did it.”

I have been asked to provide commentary on the occasion of the retirement of two former colleagues. And no doubt one of the things I will highlight is precisely this point: they were not heroes; they were not divas. I will speak to how so much of what they did and accomplished was precisely because they knew what it means to contribute in such a way that they would lean into the ability and talents of others in common cause. They knew and know the grace of collaboration.

Gordon

Gordon T Smith, Ph.D.

Executive Director, Christian Higher Education Canada (CHEC).

Teaching Fellow, Regent College Vancouver

Website: http://www.gordontsmith.com/ cell: (403) 909 9372

Recent publication: In the Meantime: Living in Light of the Ascension [Cascade, 2025).

Upcoming:

Pastoral Calling Reimagined: Celebrating the Spirit’s Abundant Invitation (editor) (New Leaf, 2026)

To Be an Elder: Vocation in our Senior Years (Regent College Bookstore, projected 2026).

All Thngs Made New: Living the Metaphors of the Christian Life (Cascade proected 2026)