I didn't know it then, but in this period of my life I built a foundation which I use to this day.
I learned that I couldn't win alone. Being in a team meant we were committed to a common goal, and we depended on each other to reach it. Put your own needs above the team, and we lost.
I got used to distributed and remote-only teams common in many companies today. We used Ventrilo and mIRC instead of Microsoft Teams and Slack. We met in person during the school holidays to get to know each other even better. The energy and mood in the basement when we won were unforgettable.
I didn't know about psychological safety back then, but we had it somehow. We had it because we stuck together over time through victories and losses. We learned each other's strengths and weaknesses and how to leverage it to our advantage. We respected and wished each other well. I learned that teams take time to form and become effective.
I didn't know about Tuckman's forming, storming, norming and performing stages, but I now know from my experience back then that the model is not linear. In one moment we were high-performing rock stars, but in the next we were middle in a storm. Nurturing a team is a continuous never-ending job.
I always go externally to learn from the best in class, just as we did 20 years ago playing Counter Strike. As a team we didn't start off great. We learned and became better by playing games and studying HLTV recordings from the best teams and players in the world.
I learned the importance of having a game plan, but more importantly how and when to change and adapt it when the circumstances required it. We had a plan A, B and C and when none of them worked out we relied purely on experience and intuition.
I learned that great skills and experience was not enough, it also depended on the surrounding environment. The graphics card, screen, mouse, mouse pad, configurations, headphones, and chair mattered, a lot. We needed the right tools and a support system around us. Parents cooking dinner and transporting us and our computers to wherever we needed to be.
So want to learn more about teams? Play computer games!
