Lift Where You Stand - Teamwork

Monday's lecture was really insightful for me. My favorite part of his lecture was the five stages of relationships that he shared with us from John Maxwell. I can see these aspects of relationships in my life more clearly now. I think his point in sharing that was that we need to be more invested in the relationships we created with different people. Another thing he said was that we shouldn't be afraid to fail in these relationships because then we will know if we can trust different people. As a leader, I believe we should try to be open with people and also be genuinely interested in their lives. If we only have surface relationships with the people we work with, our common goal will not only be unsuccessful, but could also be different for each person. When we take time to truly get to know people, we can use their strengths to help in certain tasks of a project.
It is a scary thing to just trust people when you know that there is a chance of failure, but if you give people that chance you and that person will be able to learn. I believe at one point I had a near-solid relationship with a friend of mine and we trusted each other with almost everything. When that trust was broken between us, it was really hard to be good friends. I think that because of that experience, sometimes I'm scared to invest so much trust in people, but I am going to try and being willing to fail again so that I will continue to learn.
I also enjoyed what he said about goals - that if you tell someone your goal, you will have them on your team and they can help you reach that goal. As a team, goals have to be CLEAR to everyone. It's also good to realize that in accomplishing most goals, you have to take "mini-goals" and do them step by step. It won't happen all at once. As a team player, you need to be a "fire-lighter" by encouraging the team in what they do. I think this happened in lab this week when we did the hula-hoop activity. Because there were people in our group cheering and getting excited about it, it made everyone else want to do well and get the task done. His analogy of fire-lighters led into his story about James Earl Jones which I thought was really inspiring. Just one person, his English teacher, gave him the confidence he needed to launch himself into the world. If you can see the potential in someone, you should tell that person and encourage them.
In conclusion, team work has to do a lot about doing your part - lifting where you stand, as President Utchdorf explains. We need to do our part as members of different teams and do the best that we can. When we try our best, others are inspired by our efforts and want to do their best as well.