MythBusters: Myth #2 The Sum is Greater than the Individual Parts

There is an old story about a horse pull that took place at a county fair many years ago. The winning horse was able to pull 4 tons while the second place horse pulled about 3.75 tons. The owner of each of the horses decided to see what the horses could pull together. Most people thought that the result was going to be obvious, 7.75 tons. Everyone was shocked when the two horses pulled 22 tons. The sum of their efforts far outweighed their individual parts. That is synergy.

Synergy (from the Greek syn-ergo, συνεργός meaning working together, circa 1660) refers to the phenomenon in which two or more discrete influences or agents acting together create an effect greater than that predicted by knowing only the separate effects of the individual agents.

It turns out that synergy does not apply only to horses. Teams have benefited from this idea of synergy as well. Hollywood has dramatized this in many classic movies.

Hoosiers: a small town basketball team plays for a state championship against a bigger school with bigger stronger and faster individual athletes. The small town team because of their commitment to each other and the solidarity that they formed through perseverance, prevailed.

Remember the Titans: A football team has to deal with many social issues of the time because now black students and white students are placed together at the same school. Thanks to a tough coach and time to truly get to know each other the team builds bonds that push past the racial barriers that have been put up by their town and even their own families. They share a common goal and push each other to finish a perfect season. Even though in the movie the perfect season discussed is one with no losses, the real perfection is that a bunch of teens were able to put the chaos that surrounded them aside, to not listen to what people were saying around them, and make the team what they wanted it to be....a place where everyone cared about their teammates because they were their teammates, not because they were black or white.

"These are movies, not real life," is what you might be thinking. Is real life so different? As a player, can you think of conflicts that took place all throughout a season that damaged the season beyond repair? Can you also think of a team where everything just clicked and it seemed like you could do the impossible? Unfortunately most of us can think of more teams that fell to conflict than the teams that we just felt honored to be on. Why is that? Is it just personality conflicts, or do you just have to get lucky to be on one of those great teams?

Great teams do not happen by chance! It takes players and coaches working hard to make the team great. It takes support from parents, administration, and fans to make the team great. Great teams have leaders on the team that the other players respect. Great teams look forward to sweating together at practice in order to make their team, their teammates, and themselves better. Great teams share common goals that they must stretch themselves to reach, rather than settling for goals that take little effort to attain. Great teams form bonds that reach beyond acquaintance on a team, but more like family: protecting, supporting, confronting, as needed. Essentially, great teams take hard work by every member.

Do not define "great team" by wins and losses. Do great teams tend to win more than they lose, yes, but at the end of the season you should not have to look at a record to know if the team you are on is great or not. If at the end of the day you can say that you and your teammates worked as hard as they could, you are on a great team. If at the end of the season you are sad, whether you won a championship or not, because you will not have the opportunity to be with your teammates everyday, you are on a great team. And, great teams accomplish much!

Now, back to synergy. I am sure everyone who is reading this has been at a place in their athletic life where they felt like they could do no wrong, everything is clicking. Imagine looking past the individual and being on a team in that zone. Outfielders coming up with incredible catches, undersized players hitting homeruns, clean-up batters squeezing in winning runs, non-starters encouraging their teammates from pre-game warm-ups to the end of the game, managers working behind the scene to make the team better, parents and fans cheering on the entire team, coaches respecting the players enough to help them become successful, a community that exudes sportsmanship and an attitude of service. That sounds like a team that far exceeds its individual parts. That is the picture of a team I want to be a part of.

"Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up!" Ecclesiastes 4:9-10

Mythbusters: Myth #2 The Sum is Greater than the Individual Parts.....Confirmed!