The nucleus of a team is the individual

resources, market forces, weather conditions, competition and budget constraints.
However, one fundamental aspect is often ignored or under-valued by many people despite the fact that it plays a very critical role in determining the success or failure of organisations and even nations, leadership.

An organisation may have employ five people or as many as 100 but it is fact that its outlook or performance hinges on those individuals operating in various leadership positions such as the directorship, management and all the way to the bottom of the structure.
Whether the company’s results and performances are impressive or not depends on leadership.

A nation may have 10 million people but still, the fact remains that it should have individuals occupying key positions and determining the course of events.
Economic stability, for example, as well as peace, unity and even from the other end, hyperinflation, uncertainty and strife are all products of individuals within the nation that occupy key positions and contribute to the results.
That therefore places major importance and value on the development of our leaders in society, institutions or even in a family.
To try to invent a cliché, I would say, “You develop an individual, you develop an organisation”.

This is so because modern-day systems and values are more elaborately rooted on the existence, operation and performance of groups, clusters, networks, camps, synergies, and more such formations.
But there is one technical and illustrative term to sum up all the nouns here and that is “teams”.

Behind all successful organisations across the world are teams that make it happen, that work daily to achieve the success.
Behind failing nations are also teams whose records and characteristics would obviously be poignantly explaining the failure.
For the purpose of this article’s scope, it is pertinent, however, to underscore that if we take teams as components or molecules, the element becomes the individual.

The smallest particle of the compound called a team is the individual. The nucleus of a team is the individual.
That therefore means, by way of using the emphasis of scientific existence of molecules or compounds, their nature is determined by the elements or particles they are built of.
The teams in our organisations or nations have the individuals that make them as the determinant of what they become, successful or failing, united or chaotic and so forth.
It therefore goes without saying that what any society, leader or parent does to the individual determines what goes into the team. What we put into the individual, we harvest out of the team’s output.

That is one of the reasons corporations today spend serious budgets on developing their members as individuals.
Recent surveys have revealed that there has been an increasing shift from traditional practices of doing business.
Where owners of corporations or investors almost always resorted to pumping huge amounts of funds into buying assets, equipment as well as other requirements they are now working towards investing significantly towards development of their human resources.

It is a challenge for leaders today, as much as it is for everyone at individual capacity, to be very clear about dealing with pertinent issues of individuals’ capacity in the face of the unprecedented levels of competition yet coupled with increasingly shrinking space or access to opportunities.
One of the net effects of the order occupying the world today is the higher margins of numbers of people across all societies that are succumbing to pressures and become eliminated from the thick competition in its various modern-day forms.

So, that is why it is very crucial for us in any case to now place more emphasis and attention to individual development.
As simple as it may sound or is misunderstood by many people, the subject of individual development now ranks among the top aspects of human existence in the world today.
Development of individuals has higher returns that using the power of money to buy followers and alliances.

The individual is very complex, even beyond his/her own understanding but my emphasis in this article is on the key aspects and factors about individual development that determine what kind of organisations we have, or even influence the failure of a whole nation. An individual, either deliberately or not, develops along the path of life to have a character, a personality, an intellectual capacity and a value system.

These are what one takes to the team or teams they belong to and so if they are broken or corrupted, those teams would be getting that kind of contribution from their member, the individual.

If you put together a group and the majority of the members have weak characters, the organisation they lead is set to manifest the effects of lack of determination, courage and resilience, which are the traits of its members, the individuals. The result obviously becomes fragility of that organisation and also failure.
One of the key aspects of personal development, which becomes a part of one’s value system, is communication.

Unfortunately, it is evident in most societies that at individual level, most people are seriously under-developed in terms of communication standards and habits.
Most of us struggle with punctuality, honesty and even etiquette to a huge extent that these account for an unbelievable high number of marriage breakdowns, corporate ills and even national crises.
But it all starts with an individual growing up in Harare or Chikombedzi to adopt and develop poor standards of communication or failing to treat time with the respect and the importance it requires.
The individual gradually gets used to being late for meetings, being late with submissions and that is what he will take to the organisation which one day decides to appoint him as company secretary or general manager.

Another individual is allowed by the system to grow up living a life of abusing everything that comes through their hands from money to resources and even people.
If the same person cheats their way into leadership at any level, this will lead to the downfall of that organisation, city or nation.
On the positive side, well-groomed, disciplined as well as developed communicators become pillars of strength in any group or team they join because of their high standards and values.

These individuals drive their organisations, town councils and even nations towards success through what they stand for, good attributes and personalities.
It is very important to constantly ask yourself where you stand in terms of development as an individual because what you are determines your outcome, it influences the results of the teams in which you are a member.

One must consciously and deliberately invest time, effort and resources into developing their faculties, skills and even communication levels to avoid being rendered useless and irrelevant by the high levels of competition today.

Inevitably, organisations must be urged to increase the budget that they put towards individual development of their members because the capacities and attitude of those individuals determine the success of that organisation.
Understanding that it all starts with the individual and giving the required attention to this starting from personal level will surely improve societies and raise the standard of leadership towards better results.

• Pascal Nyasha is a motivational speaker, entrepreneur, leadership coach and business consultant. Call 0773 003 912 or email: [email protected]. Connect with Pascal on Facebook.