One of my favorite quotes by writer Peter Senge (1990), describes synergy as “…the coherent light of a laser rather than the incoherent and scattered light of a light bulb.” He is, of course, talking about the power that is produced when synergy has been created through alignment.
When there is synergy among the members of a team, the sum of the whole becomes greater than the sum of the individual parts.
I’ll never forget being a worship leader in a church, and creating my first worship team at that church. A person in authority who was not a fan, decided to diminish my efforts by appointing two people to my team that were not in the least bit musically inclined. Matter of fact, one of them, a very smart educated psychologist, was what I recognized to be tone death. In other words, he simply could not hear notes. I thought I was doomed coming out of the gate.
And then something very incredible happened when I decided to work with what I had, instead of complaining about having two less than musically-talented people on my team. The outcome was more than surprising. We created unique harmony patterns from their lack of musical ability. They simply sang without regard to notes, and our synergy filled in the blanks.
Since that time, I have often reflected on what really happened back then. I know now that we were able to achieve success because we shared one vision as a team. That sharing of vision created alignment that produced synergy, which for us was power to produce uniquely beautiful music.
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