A Team Player

I was raised to be fiercely independent and unemotional. ( I almost put some type of modifier in front of unemotional, but 'terribly' or 'awfully' aren't appropriate.) “If you don't make your own decisions, you are allowing someone else to make them for you!” is one of the life lessons I remember hearing as a young boy. I guess it stuck, maybe too well.

In today's world if one is not a “team player” one is, by default, an outcast. Never tell a future employer that you would rather make your own decisions and accept full responsibility for the the consequences if that decision happens to be wrong. It seems that independent thought has become a socially unacceptable asset.

Amadeus Mozart, Homer, Michelangelo, Vincent Van Gogh, Albert Einstein...well you get the idea. Were they a member of some huge team who gave us the Sistine Chapel, Starry Night, or Requiem?

No, these were all creative thinkers who preferred to “do it their way”.

I believe there is a place for team thinkers, group brainstorming, and understanding the needs of the many.

I just wonder why the ones who believe that a team is the only way to accomplish a goal do not allow that we independent thinkers may well be able to accomplish that same goal with a lot less overhead.

More on the unemotional statement later.