I belong to my team

I read many articles and notes about team building and how to set up an A-Team to bring you to success. Too many buzzwords for me, so I want to express what I am and what I am not with my team. Without it, I wouldn’t be remotely successful in what I do.

What I am

A learner: Day by day because I see how my team (that nowadays is conformed by a very few direct members) would approach things, provide me insights or come with ideas that with my knowledge/experience/information I wouldn’t be able to come up with.
Down to earth person: I come with ideas that sometimes may be good, others may be great but of course, others may be ridiculous or inadequate for the outcome we are expecting. They give me feedback that allows me to land those beautiful thoughts that in my mind were marvelous and now they actually make sense and are actionable.
A mentor: I have the space to challenge back the ideas or activities my team is performing and challenge them to think and tailor their original rationale.
A shrinker: I am allowed to provide different points of view that weren’t considered at first hand and now actions or reactions from people may make sense or at least have a new perspective.
A better professional: Because I see them interacting with other people, they share their knowledge and wisdom with me and with their pairs.

What I am not

Freak controller: The game is this, I trust them and I know that at some point they will fail and they will need my help. I know their potential and I know that they learn from pitfalls, so these failures help everyone learn.
Passive: I need them to be unblocked or if they are going through a tough situation that I can mend or at least I can do something about it, I will do it. This doesn’t mean that I will fix the world, but they will know that I will give what is under my umbrella to move forward.
Ignore changes: It happens that the Operation we run needs changes, we will discuss and do them when sometimes we need to face hard times or even great times, but if the Ops needs it, we do it.
Procrastinator: I just can’t leave things unattended for my team, they go fast and I need to go faster than them. Of course, there are times when they follow me up and I need to catch up, but there aren’t that many.

I wanted to write about my team because it is the way I always worked, today they are the people that are, but I am where I am because of the team. People who believe in what we do and support common ideas and beliefs on how we should operate.