a reflection on towers and success

I thought that I might "dare to be different" today by writing in red.

Well, we put our craftsmen skills to work last night as we attempted to build a tower out of boxes, tape, and yarn. Yes, you can go ahead and say it, "What kind of a tower can you build with that?" I asked myself the same question.

It turned out alright, although we didn't win a prize or anything.

See the thing I have come to realize about group activities and class presentations is that they all sound the same. We all blab on about the same leadership stuff, like: goals, teamwork, vision, foundations, motivation, etc. But I don't think that we actually get it- we just sum up a bunch of unoriginal boring concepts that have been preached to us in all of our classes instead of bringing to the table something inpiring, original, unique, and specific! We always talk about these broad topics, but never dig much deeper. It gets old after a while, don't you think?

I think that my group failed the tower building exercise, not because we are bad builders or sloppy spokesmen- but because we only focused on the requirements (height, stability, decoration, etc.) and we had no idea what we were working to be as a group. We didn't know what we were trying to represent. We weren't creating a tower that represented the team- we were creating a tower that represented what someone else wanted us to be. Yes, there are neccessary requirements that must be in place- but until we work with the vision and goal of our team in the front of our minds, all we will be is what someone else is telling us to be: that is UNoriginal.

We were trying to determine how the tower represented us AFTER it was built, when we should have known who we were as a team BEFORE we ever started building. I believe that the tower would have truly represented us if we would have established who we were first. - We were all working aimlessly, just trying to make it big and tall -and then trying to fit our team into this model tower, but what if the tower we created WASN'T us.... what if we are infact something different than what we created.

Basically, know who you are and who your team is- then when you have to come together and create something great, it will respresent you EXACTLY! Each team is going to be different, hopefully. We're all made up of lots of different people. - I doubt that any 2 people in the class are exactly the same. Therefore, each team made up of extremely unique people should be extremely unique themselves! But we will never see that if we continue to try and fit a "leadership" mold by saying all of the same leadership things.

DARE TO BE DIFFERENT!!

(even if it means writing in red)