We tend to still believe in the lone genius – someone who does it effortlessly and quickly, without the help of other people. If anything, we may not believe in it, but we desperately hope that it might be us. That if we only found that one thing that was perfect for us, then we’d succeed and make a bunch of money and be celebrated and loved and accepted.

Sad to say, there’s no one who is self-made. Even people with incredibly brain power need others to help them succeed. They might be able to best anyone in chess, but they need the media to care. They need people to manufacture, market, sell, and distribute their clothing. They need sewage workers to make sure their toilet flushes, and power companies to supply power to them. 

They might be able to do the math to land a shuttle on the moon, but they need someone to build the shuttle, or to mine the ore that goes into making the metal that the shuttle will be built out of.

If we can acknowledge that there is basically nothing we can do completely by ourselves, then it makes leveraging the collective power, wisdom, and strength of a team easier. What does leaning on the collective look like for your organization?