Trust in your team
[pro-player width='530' height='253' type='video']http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipr_ev3JVEk[/pro-player]
This past week, my wife and some friends went to the Cirque de Soleil. If you are unfamiliar with the show, its a high intensity, acrobatic, crazy body contortions show. As we watched people fly through the air and land on small beams or flipping on the trapeze to be caught by the next guy, I could not stop thinking about how crucial everyone is to the success of the program.
This was one of the best illustrations of trust in a team I’ve ever seen. One of the stunts was six guys. 4 guys held two balance beams on their shoulders while the other two did crazy jumps and flips…and yes, landing back on the balance beam. For the grand finale of the stunt, one guy jumped incredibly high (I’d estimate 18 feet in the air) and did 3 flips, but he didn’t go straight up. He moved to our left a few feet so the two guys holding the balance beam on their shoulders had to move over and place the beam exactly in the landing pattern of his feet. It was unbelievable. (Look at 51 seconds on the video to see what I mean)
My next thought was: how do you build trust like that? I think it happens not on “game day”, but during practice. I think the evidence of trust shows up on game day, but its built the other days of the week. I also think there is a correlation between the amount of time spent working together and the amount of trust present. This was not a stunt they chose to bring someone out of the crowd to help with. And I understand why.
I think there are some great team building exercises that could come out of this. (I want even suggest the two girls that could bend backwards like people can bend forwards! I’m not sure if they had back bones!) Gather your team and fling them 20 feet in the air and promise to catch them. That will build trust like nobody’s business. This could be the new trust fall.
Long term success depends on everyone on the team trusting the guy next to him. How are you building trust with your team?
