By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to collaborate more productively. Reading time: 2:02

Swinging from the vine, Tarzan’s yell trumpeted throughout the jungle, blasting his personal signature in the movies with an ear-piercing, attention-commanding roar.

Yet in reality, Tarzan’s yell was comprised of three different male voices collaborating together to record cinema history.

Tarzan’s Scream Team is an instructive metaphor for the way the most effective leaders collaborate to assure their collective message is heard, understood and acted upon by the broadest set of followers.

Collaboration enhances overall performance. In the jungle and in the sky. Take a look at the North Star. It’s revelatory to note that

the North Star is really a collaboration of three stars in orbit around each other. They appear as one star because the North Star is so far away — 430 light years away. Their collaborative shine beams across those trillions of miles so well it guided mariners for years on the high seas. Indeed collaboration enhances performance.

Collaboration helped Roger Bannister crack through the 4-minute mile barrier in 1954.

Bannister bounced his running voice off two other fellow runners to become the first human in the world to cover 5,280 feet on two feet in less than 240 seconds. He collaborated with Chris Brasher and Chris Chataway who paced him into the history books.

Indeed, collaborating enhances performance. See Nose-to-Nose Collaborating.

As Oliver Wendell Holmes, the supreme court chief justice and author noted: “Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprang up.” Sir Issac Newton agreed, saying: “If I have seen further than other men, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

Even in the jungle.

Today’s ImproveMINT

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