*Sorry I've missed many posts, I will be putting it up later on if anyone who is bored to death enough to read my reflections on chapters they read a while ago.*
I felt that in "The Team Message" segment, there was a lot of emphasis on 'making' everyone level. I found this kind of interesting and also something that I haven't been conscious of.
First, I have to admit that I've never been in a team sport, or a school club that had a certain, clear goal to work for. So I probably lack in experience compared to most people.
Well, I was in the koto-club through junior and senior high, but we never had to 'create' a shared identity. At least we didn't think we did. It had 10 club members at the MOST, we were basically the outcasts in school, so we had a pretty strong bond without much effort. Most of the students' at school didn't know the koto-club existed, even some teachers would mistake us for the tea-ceremony-club because of our yukatas. So, we all had strong feelings towards the club, its survival as a school club, and each other.
We never had communication problems like informing and getting everyone involved, since it was hard to miss/forget/purposely exclude someone when you only have 10 members in the first place.
However, we always have had a great leader : our coach.
She actually is every example that came up in the book-at least so far-and in class, including the common-enemy example Yusuke gave. Our coach is an experienced koto player, of course, and she has taught generations of the koto-club. And, I never noticed this until it came up in RW, but she did most of the things suggested!
She knew each of our talents/weaknesses, and she implicitly let everyone know by mentioning it during our group practice. At a difficult part of a piece, she'd stop the group practice for a minute, and make everyone play that part individually. She yell straight out what's wrong if you weren't doing it right, she'd complement you with joy if you were good at it.
She also would have us talk about the mental image we each had for the piece, a few weeks before performance, and at the last rehearsal we'd come up with a 'keyword'. It wasn't a goal exactly, it was more like something to look forward to in our own performance.
Also, this is the thing I hadn't even considered before I read L@E, but, she values little parties and get-togethers a LOT.
In the 6years I was involved, we never missed one Welcome-new-members-party, Farewell-senior-members-party, not even a Uchiage-ζγ‘δΈγ- after a performance. I always loved these, but never really considered them as playing an important role in teamwork. But come to think of it, without that it would've been nearly impossible to have the strong bond we always had.
There's a lot more I want to talk/brag about my koto coach being a great leader, but this is getting long and sidetracking from the book, so that will be in a different post.
Anyway, I was gobsmacked when I noticed my coach had done all this mentioned in L@E, although I don't know if it's on purpose or if she was born with Super-good-leader-genes!
Hoping to find more surprises in the rest of the book :)
