What interested me in martial arts as a child was that skill gave you almost a super hero level of invulnerability. In the movies, the expert martial artist would fight groups of people and come out on top. As an adult training in the martial arts, the better and better I became, the more I realized that this was a fantasy. In a real fight, even someone exceptionally skilled has the odds heavily stacked against them as soon as another opponent appears.
To make a math comparison, a normal person’s threat in a live environment is a 1. An excellent martial artist might raise their threat to 1.5. Once another person comes in, the odds are now 2 : 1.5, add another opponent and they’re 2 : 1.
Regardless of how excellent an individual is compared to other individuals, they rarely compete well against a group (or someone with a weapon.)
This is what makes leadership such a powerful skill. It taps into the power of groups and aligns their resources in one direction.
Yesterday, I pulled in our PM to work on a forecasting system for the business. We both had ideas about how to approach it. What we arrived at, together, was different and better than either of our initial approaches.
You shouldn’t do everything yourself for a number of reasons. Just one of those reasons is that the result won’t be as effective as if you did it in collaboration with others.
Featured image is Ip Man & Bruce Lee. Used under public domain.