No Player Is Bigger Than the Team!
By Park Nahm-sheik
No matter how high-performing individual players may be, they can never outdo the team. Let’s take baseball, for example. Even a star pitcher cannot hope to deliver his team from the jaws of defeat all by himself. The catcher, fielders, and batters must get his back if the team is to score a win.
Running other organized activities is no different. Managing a school, for one, is a lot like administering an athletic team. A good school calls for a competent faculty, an industrious staff, a supportive community, and a well-motivated student body working in unison.
A military outfit is run along essentially identical lines. A combat operation relies on (wo)men and officers in different MOSs working closely together. The infantry, the artillery, the signal corps, the engineering corps, and the ambulance corps all work in close association each with the other. Indeed, a frontline engagement requires extremely sophisticated teamwork.
“The blood of the soldier makes the glory of the general” speaks volumes about the equal importance of rank and file in all combat situations. It is quite clear here that what the team does is way more consequential than what the individual players do. Therefore, individual team members should watch out never to commit the silly, egregious folly of regarding themselves as superior to anyone else on the team.
All organized programs of any significance thrive and survive on input originating in their multiple participants. UN programs, for example, would be neither effective nor efficient if not for the dedicated participation of its multiple member countries. WHO, WLO, WTO, WFP, etc. etc. can only come to the help of the world thanks entirely to what is put in by all the UN member nations.
Let’s take a glimpse of some humanitarian projects of the United Nations. UNDP (United Nations Development Program) works to eradicate poverty, especially in the developing regions of the world. UN Refugee Agency is dedicated to saving the lives of refugees in dire straits (and protecting their human rights). UNICEF (UN International Children’s Emergency Fund) works to save children’s lives and help them fulfill their potential from childhood through adolescence. UN Peace-Keeping contingents help war-ravaged regions to navigate the path from conflict to peace. The UN Human Rights Council makes sure that human rights are properly protected all over the globe.
The same goes for numerous charitable NGOs operating outside the United Nations. I personally adore Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF – Doctors Without Borders) most of all. Like MSF are Green Peace, Feed the Hungry, Feed the Children, End Poverty, and numerous community chests/trusts. Habitat For Humanity is especially well-known the world over thanks largely to former US President Jimmy Carter’s exemplary engagement over several decades. Also deserving high praise is the Heartstrings Walk of the Republic of Singapore.
Korea too has a community-chest of its own known as 사랑의 열매, founded in 1998 as a community-impact welfare and charity organization with a network of sixteen local offices all across the country. None of the priceless contributions made by these charitable projects could have come to fruition but for the selfless work of numerous players working hand in hand to create a better community, whether global or local.
In fact, all human groups of any significance move forward on an essentially identical power train. A village, for example, is unthinkable without all the devoted villagers pitching in. The same is true of the family, which feeds off the input from its various members. The parents provide for the family as breadwinners and homemakers, so that the children can grow up healthy and happy into trustworthy future assets for family and community.
At this point, we may as well take a look at some historical examples of the team counting for a great deal more than any one of its members. Founded about a millennium ago by northern German towns and German merchant communities outside of Germany, the Hanseatic League worked to protect their mutual trading interests. AKA Hansa, the League dominated cross-border commercial activity in northern Europe from the 13th century through the 15th century.
Of relative recent vintage, NATO came into being during the Cold War era with a view to providing Europe with a collective security umbrella. It has since evolved into a center for pan-European cultural and commercial interchange as well. ASEAN happens to be the Southeast Asian equivalent of NATO operating along the same fundamental lines.
Lots of things around us also point to the team mattering far and away more than any of its individual members. A living being, plant or animal, would be inconceivable without its body parts, either internal or external. The parts here are admittedly indispensable, and yet they cannot outweigh the whole plant or animal itself ever. The whole is indeed way more consequential than even the sum of its parts.
In this connection, we may as well think of the saying that it takes a village to raise a child. What it means is that it is not just parents alone that bring up a child. Implicit in this famous African proverb is that child rearing is the joint responsibility of the entire community. In other words, nurturing children calls for a village-wide team effort, not just a parental endeavor. The spirit of UBUNTU is in play here.
To get something or anything worthwhile done, the whole team needs to pitch in with all players doing their best to turn in their respective shares. That a dwarf on the shoulders of a giant sees further of the two eloquently attests to the power of the team, as opposed to that of any of the individual players.
“No player is bigger than the team” embodies the power of symbiotic collaboration in attaining things of value we aim at as a society. Incidentally, we must remember here that as soon as the team leader somehow spirals out of control and takes all things into his or her own hands, for instance, the entire team gets dumped into a dark and damp abyss. The human body offers an interesting analogy here. Should something go wrong with the brain, which is the leader of the body, the rest of the body cannot function normally at all.
We are reminded here once again that no humans are islands unto themselves. We are all part of humankind in particular and of nature in general. None of us can ever do without the rest of the world, can we? Therefore, it is no accident that all living things thrive and survive in bunches or groups, rather than in isolation.
Wolves hunt in packs. Dogs, hounds, dingoes, coyotes, etc. loiter in packs, too. Lions navigate their habitat in prides. Fish swim in schools. Dolphins and whales crisscross the seas in pods. Ants, bees, and penguins live in colonies. Cattle, horses, and donkeys travel in droves or herds.
Interestingly, “birds of a feather flock together” is of direct and immediate relevance to the story of “No player being bigger than the team.” It aptly implies the human hunger for security through company. It is beyond dispute that couples are stronger and thus securer than singles. Union is strength, which gives rise to peaceful surroundings for all involved. Not even Hercules could contend against two, could he?
Seen in this light, the age-old institution of matrimony can be justified in terms of our quest for this collective security. Similarly rationalizable are the majority clan villages that have studded Korea until rather recently and that still do in many rural parts of the country. And so are ghettos and even clusters of houses of ill fame on the periphery of a town.
Herd mentality, AKA mob or crowd instinct, must be deeply and indelibly engrained in our subconscious minds. We thus are apparently born to seek and build up our fortune in tandem with the rest of our kind. It is thus arguably in our DNA to constantly search for better (read securer) company throughout our planetary journey.
“The company makes the feast” aptly celebrates this gregarious nature of ours. Also evidencing the value of company for us all is: “Companionship upon the road is the shortest cut.” It seems to be always best to be in company with somebody you are comfortable with, especially when you feel the need to be calm, safe, and secure. The lone sheep is in danger of the wolf, as they say. “Woe to him that is alone” according to The Ecclesiastes (4:10). “United we stand, divided we fall” was the way Aesop put it long, long ago circa the 5th century B.C.
The Author
Park Nahm-sheik has a BA in English from Chonnam National University, an MA in linguistics from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, U.S.A., and a PhD in applied linguistics from Georgetown University. He is now a Professor Emeritus after a long and illustrious career at Seoul National University as well as President Emeritus of the International Graduate School of English.
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(Photo: Shane Rounce on Unsplash)