In high school I competed in Dragon Boat Racing. A team of 20 students paddle a long, wooden canoe over a distance of about 500 metres. Schools from around New Zealand come together each year to have their teams compete against one another.
One thing our coach taught us early on was that the size and strength of each individual is unimportant—no one person can carry a team to victory. But what is most important is paddling in unison. Complete synchronisation is a force multiplier.
One person sits at the front of the boat and beats a drum. The first two paddlers—who each sit at the front of a 10 person paddling line—time their strokes with the beat. Every subsequent paddler looks at the person diagonally in front of them and matches their stroke. If this is done perfectly, and all paddles hit the water at the exact same time, and each paddler has the exact same stroke length, the dragon boat flies.
Dragon Boating taught me a lesson: I’d much rather be in a great team, than in a team of greats.