Business cycles bring new buzzwords. These words give birth to mandatory interview questions. In the interview, candidates come prepared. It is easy to anticipate some of the buzzwords in the interview conversation. Today’s words of teamwork, collaboration, and creativity will give way to variations and new words in the future. The challenge for everyone involved in the interview process lies in conviction. Does the interviewee believe? Is the interviewer convicted of the interviewee’s belief?
I wish that I could say that I was absolutely certain in every interview of the answers. Regardless of my role, I have my doubts about how convicting I am or how sure I am that someone believes. Most candidates are able to say the words in the right way. They have the rhetoric memorized. They know the body language they are trying to convey. Somehow my body senses that they are talking beyond their belief.
As a suggestion and as a reminder to myself, I would offer the following ideas.
Teamwork and collaboration are more than ideas. They are principles and ideals that offer to change our hearts from the inside out. Real meaning in these words is found in action. They live in and through relationship examples.
When we think we can go it alone, our belief does not change the fact that we are part of community (team). In our arrogance and in our doubts, we belong. One writer captured the sentiment this way; “If Foot said, ‘I’m not elegant like Hand, embellished with rings; I guess I don’t belong to this body,’ would that make it so?” (1 Corinthians 12.16)
The fact that we belong while not believing presents an opportunity and challenge in the present. I come with my fears, uncertainties, and doubts to the idea of trusting and living in community. The fact that I already belong is an invitation that becomes alive with my embrace. It is in walking in a community that I understand teamwork. In trustful doing together, collaboration lives. The stories that follow convict others as well as myself that I believe.
