Article at a glance:
- Conformity and alignment are not the same thing.
- You can be uniquely YOU while still being aligned with the higher purpose of a team.
- Being yourself actually ENHANCES your ability to contribute to the whole.
Time to read - 4 minutes
What can Dead Poets Society teach us about being ourselves while working together as a team?
As it turns out, a lot!
We love this movie for a lot of reasons. It has so many insights on individuality, challenging paradigms, and finding your own voice.
At Redmond, we’re all about collaboration. So how do we do this while being our unique selves? Is that even possible?
Conformity vs Alignment
One of our deepest desires as humans is to fit in and be liked. After all, humans evolved in tribal culture where rejection by the group probably meant becoming a lion’s dinner, so fitting in was a matter of literal life or death.
While today, we know we (probably) won’t get eaten by a bear or freeze to death if we think differently from our peers, the desire to belong is still coded into our genetics.
In the movie, Mr. Keating (played by Robin Williams) takes his students out into the courtyard and asks three boys to walk single file in a few circles. While each boy starts with his own stride, soon, they fall into step with each other, walking so perfectly on a beat the other students could clap to it.
Mr. Keating pointed this out and then encouraged all the students to walk around the courtyard in their own paths, their own stride, and their own style.
This is interesting, because, what about working together as a team? What about being part of a functional organization or society? Don’t you need some level of conformity for that?
At Redmond, collaboration is a big deal, but we try not to confuse this with conformity. Instead, what we’re really going for is alignment.
We want everyone to be completely themselves, to pursue their unique 3 Circles journey and discover the contributions only they can make. This requires them to get to know themselves and be fully themselves.
All the while, we align with the same purpose: to elevate the human experience by living our core values. This doesn’t mean our core values have to match up perfectly with your core values, but they should complement each other. If we have the same purpose, we can use our different strengths to pull together in that direction.
After all, a team of draft horses don’t have to all be the same color to successfully pull heavy loads as a team. They just need to use their strength and pull together.
Your perspective, your unique voice
“I think you have something inside of you that is worth a great deal.” - Mr. Keating
At the end of a lesson, Mr. Keating assigns homework: he asks each student to write an original poem to read in front of the class during the next session.
As you can imagine, efforts varied.
When the students read their work, every voice was valued. Even the sarcastic student whose poem was “The cat sat on the mat” received a thoughtful response from Mr. Keating when another teacher might have sent him to the headmaster’s office for being a punk.
Mr. Keating was fine with a sappy poem, and the short poem the kid probably wrote in fifteen seconds before class started, but what he couldn’t abide was silence. The only time he pushed back was when a student said “I didn’t write a poem.”
He called the student, Todd, to the front of the class and asked him to say what was on his mind even if it didn’t make sense. Turns out, the student had a lot to say, and a riveting poem burst out, with Mr. Keating’s encouragement.
We need your unique perspective because no one else has it. We can’t get it anywhere else.
Here, we expect you to share what you’re seeing, even if you don’t know what it means, and even if it doesn’t make sense. If it stands out to you, pipe up and let’s figure it out together. If you have hesitations, say so.
Your perspective is not more important than everyone else’s, but is just as important as everyone else’s. (This is a great reminder especially if you tend to be low on candor.)
Conformity vs Individuality is False Dichotomy
At Redmond, we’re all about challenging paradigms. So let’s challenge the false dichotomy of individuality and collective accomplishment. The more we understand ourselves, our strengths, and where we’re helpful, we can make an even greater contribution to the whole while feeling even more fulfilled!
