Team Human

Posted on by Wynne Leon

I was talking with a friend who has a son and daughter, both in their 20’s, about leadership the other day. In her experience, kids these days have “be nice” constantly messaged at them.

My friend isn’t at all opposed to being nice, just trying to parse some meaning behind the recent election results. Her point was that some of the woke backlash may come from seeming to throttle the ambitions of many behind the “nice” message.

That discussion with my friend about different speeds and talents reminded me of the many mountain climbing rope teams that I’ve been on. The guides, especially the ones that are acclimated to the altitude, are so strong and could race up the mountain in a quarter of the time it takes the whole team to do it.

But they don’t because it’s not a sustainable pace for most of the clients. And it takes a whole team to carry the necessary equipment. A slower pace means more stamina for just about everyone. Without a doubt, it requires strong leadership to pull a disparate team together and get to the summit and back.

Climbing has the benefit of clear teams and a distinctive goal. The broader we go, the harder it is to pinpoint a unified purpose. As Mother Teresa said, “The problem with the world is that we draw our family circle too small.”

I’ve never been a particularly fast climber, but I’ve got endurance and can carry a load. Sign me up for Team Human.

(featured photo from Pexels)

28 thoughts on “Team Human”

  3. We do need to join together, Wynne, but I find the difficulty of our nation (and too many others) to join together with countrymen to be a topic of great complexity — far greater than the talking heads have been able to explain. Indeed, pulling together and condemning others is easily observed on both sides.

    It is interesting to me that the political talk shows make little use of psychologists and other well-trained observers of the human condition. There is much human history that documents wars of one group against another, of prejudice, of claims of superiority of one group over another, of racial animus, of religious persecution, etc.

    While there are no easy answers, I can recommend two books for the psychologically minded to read before they climb the mountain of trying to understand our too human dilemma: Erich Fromm’s “The Heart of Man” and Ernest Becker’s “The Birth and Death of Meaning.”

    Neither is new, but our current dilemma is an ancient one, a question of human nature and why it is so difficult to love thy neighbor and show kindness to the stranger.

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    1. Wow – what an insightful comment, Dr. Stein. You have such a good point about political talk shows not leaning more on psychologists. Why don’t they? That would be brilliant.

      I hope you’ll come on to the podcast to talk about the human condition and leadership. We’ll work on some prompts and send them over to you to see if you are willing! Thank you!

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  7. Love this post. It seems that we come across teams in all facets of life nowadays. But I think it’s more needed than ever for strong leadership to pull disparate teams together and recognize that one member may be able to race up a mountain, but another may have different talents. Great piece.

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  8. It’s a unique time when being “woke” has developed such negative connotations. Who knew that being socially and politically aware would become a bad thing? I understand the idea of being too PC, but it bugs me that “woke” has evolved into anything people disagree with. It’s really lazy thinking.

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  10. I love seeing another mountain climbing story, Wynne. Always packed with deeper meaning and life lessons. I agree with you, Team Human all the way. Whenever I see the backlash to “woke,” I just interpret it as someone feeling inconvenienced at the more marginalized being supported. And that doesn’t feel or sit right with me.

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