The Team.
There was a meeting.§
A lot of people weren't there. Maybe there was a perfectly reasonable explanation. Maybe some information genuinely needed to remain confidential. I'm not interested in pretending I know what happened behind that door. But it made me ask a much larger question: What exactly do we mean when we call ourselves a team?
Before I elaborate on this, let me first recap the last couple of weeks. The last couple of weeks, I have been essentially made a pinata. Being swung around from person to person with a bat. Our school, for grades 9-12 is having a competitions, which is called a Nukkad Natak. It's essentially a play, with a core idea that you are trying to convey. First I was put in a team, with some of my friends. I meant to export the chat of the group, as a joke, to put forth the indecisiveness of the group members.
After "leaking the groupchat", there arose an internal conflict, concerning itself with me leaking the GC. Then the other group, team 2 (My current group) saw an opportunity, in bringing me into their team and giving me the "lead" role of Donald Trump, the plot of their play revolving around how India was not a "Hellhole or shitty country" like Trump said it was. I was supposed to be mocked, spat at, roasted, insulted, and made fun of in front of everyone. Regardless of this, I agreed.
I agreed, thinking that this team would be way better. The moment i joined the team and we had or first meeting with me, as Trump, I realized that I was very wrong. The team was chaos. Not even worthy of being called a team. The moment I left my old team, they suddenly became hyper productive. I actually clapped out of pure respect for them.
My new team? I got no words.
Now a team isn't 50 dudes in suits, working on a single task aided by claude max 20x (though that would be amazing) nor is it defined by who has the loudest voice. It is defined by whether everyone has the opportunity to hear, speak, disagree, contribute, and influence the direction.
This is exactly why calling the Nukkad Natak "team" a team would be a mistake.
Though a lot of people have their own definitions of what a team is, a few core aspects that all teams have are:
- Proper communication between all the members
- Meetings, in which all are included
- No particular group running everything by themselves, and giving the remaining mundane tasks to the so called "inferiors".
A team can absolutely have hierarchy. It can have roles, coordinators, people with more responsibility, and people with more experience. None of that is inherently a problem. The problem begins when responsibility quietly turns into authority that nobody actually granted.
The teacher, responsible for organizing the Nukkad Natak each year, before deciding the teams, said that there would be no one leader, or ruler or dictator. It is a team, and must operate like so. Including everyone, regardless of their posts/roles in the natak.
That is not quite the case with our "team". Everyone wants to do their own thing, which is exactly what should be done. When I came into the team, everything was already planned. It was not. A group of 4-5 people, made a plan to go to a cafe, and plan out the plot. The part that kept bugging me for days, wasn't that I wasn't invited. It was the fact that I wasn't even informed. Sure, not all things must be told to everyone and anyone, but key events like the planning of the plot, where everybody deserves to have a say, must be openly disclosed.
Whenever the "team" went to practice, everyone was goofing around. That includes me too. Though I did not have a concrete reason to be goofing off, I did. My reason being:
No one is doing anything, might as well enjoy myself?
And enjoy myself I did. I goofed of for at least 2 hours in all the hours of practice that we had. Whenever the teacher incharge of Nukkad came to see where our Natak had come, he always left disappointed. Never a smile, nor a grin. Nothing that makes me feel like he enjoyed even a part of the Natak.
Cut to today ( August 14th, 2026). We had 4 periods to practice. 2 out of the 4 periods were wasted it horseplay. 1 period was wasted in arguing and the 2 de-leaders, preaching a shitty sermon, about how we are going to lose. How the other team was better than us. How we were just wasting time.
Out of 3 hours of practice time. We had ~30 minutes of quality practice time. When everyone was arguing, yelling, I was on the verge of leaving. Leaving the Natak. Not because I wasn't given a good enough role. No. It was because of something deeper. Dignity. I wasted countless hours, trying to give my best, when all I got was a bloody cold. I spent my energy, trying to offer help, trying to give ideas for the script, trying to help the team climb the ladder of success. They didn't want my help. Not at all. I can do a rather decent impersonation of Donald Trump. That is why I even agreed to help them. Anyone can speak english. Few can impersonate Trump. Now, I was told, that I don't have to do Donald's way of speaking.
One of the de-facto leaders, told me that I was seeking attention, telling people that I was going to leave. I would leave.
I wouldn't leave because I don't want the people who haven't done anything wrong to lose all hope.
Now, I can't change anything but here's the approach that I would have taken:
First of all, I would have first started off by talking by everyone, one by one, in person, individually. Understanding what they are looking to get out of the Natak.
Second, I would sit everyone down, and start brainstorming ideas based on the desired collective outcome.
Third, I would decide a plot. Not the storyline, not the script, but what concept the story will revolve around. The plot.
Fourth, I would gather people to get ideas on what the storyline should be. After everyone or a majority votes on the final storyline, we then and then only move forward to draft the script.
Fifth, I would start drafting the script, leveraging human ideas along with other generative models, to ease the production process.
Sixth, I would let everyone get accustomed to the habit of improvising, because in a play, improv is key.
And lastly, I would start practicing, along with delegating things we need done as in the slogan making work to different people to ease the process.
I am not perfect, and I am not saying everyone else is incompetent. I think we have capable people trapped in a system that rewards indecision. A team does not need a dictator; it needs people who listen, contribute, and take responsibility. Maybe my approach would work, maybe it wouldn't — but what we are doing now clearly isn't. Because at the end of the day, if we cannot act like a team, calling ourselves one means nothing.