Do You Have a Dream Team?

The Dream Team ~ Creating Your Own

Many of us have heard about "dream team", however have you ever thought about creating your own dream team? The purpose of a dream team is to accomplish something with extraordinary results.

Why is a great question. Who? How? When? Where?  and of course What?

Creating and developing them takes a vision, persistence, courage, a plan and time.

So, let’s address the why a dream team? Lets take a work place example: I was hired to coach and trained 19 to 59 year old's all unemployed for 26 weeks or more on the how of job search or as I called it Job/Career Finding.

There I had of my favourite job search success stories. I had a 37 year old who wanted to leave the big city life behind and move back to her small town. One challenge was there was only one large employer in the region that paid close to the salary she last had.  They had no one on staff nor did they think they needed any one with her skill sets on staff full time.

So, we did a transferable skills inventory, favourite subjects and topics inventory and she loved business math. She had never formally studied the subject past high school yet was very accomplished in the position she'd been laid off from (laid off due to business issues outside her scope of work). So I asked her to call the company where she wanted to work (she was friends with switch board operator) and she quickly found out that the company book keeper was due to retire in 4 years, and the CFO (Chief Financial Officer - accountant) was due to retire in five  years.

So, her plan was to meet with the book keeper and the CFO. It was a small town so small that some biked to worked for many months of the year. She pitched them the idea that she would a) get her book keeping certification within a year, then start working on her accounting degree. Long route yet in the end she got hired as the part time book keeper who decided within 22  months of the meeting to semi retire early. She by then had her certificate. He then retired. Then she was nicely underway through to get her accounting diploma. Within five years she was the CFO. A slightly longer route to get a career position yet to live in small town, surrounded by family and friends plus be able to walk to work most days of the year! Awesome. How did a dream team help her? Everyone she knew in the small town remembered her from her volunteer and community activities. Every decision maker in the company she eventually worked for over time was only one person away from her dream team of influencers and decision makers. She had built a dream team before she left home and did not even know it. All I did was get her to consider  how she'd get hired by the firm in her home town.

My second example is of a Dad who's through his older daughter discovered his youngest daughter had an urgent medical condition. The parents where approached by the older daughter who stated the younger sister was not being "normal". The Dad said she said "Dad its like if she was a computer she freezes, then auto reboots and forgets where she was before the reboot." Well the parents listened and got the doctor off to the family doctor who quickly got the young one off to a local expert who quickly concluded her condition was too complicated to deal with the limited technology and expertise of a small medical community and hospital.

So off they went to a regional centre. There the regional expert with higher quality equipment gave a diagnosis. However, he stated he only did one of these types of procedures a year. This is when the Dad's Dream Team came into play. The Dad placed a call to a medical specialist who'd been on his care team when the Dad had some serious health issues. That professional lined up diagnostics, and under 24 hours later an appointment with a world famous professional  specialized in the exact issue the youngest daughter had. How was the medical professional on the Dad's Dream Team? The Dad had offered up about 9 days of time for the Doctor and his vital medical cause. In all over 12 years. Things moved very quickly after that. The daughter had her diagnosis confirmed by the second surgeon and the surgery happened all under 45 days. Amazing.  The end results where remarkable. Within 180 days after surgery the daughter was symptom free and was functioning at 98%. Also with much help from her Mom and Dad she made exceptional progress recovering and healing so that her reading skills due to the neuro-plasticity of her brain came back to her age appropriate level. The Dad’s Dream Team cut months of her treatment cycle. Plus allowed for her to get best care in the country.

Dream Teams are not something we all have considered in our lives. Yet the dividends they can pay us are often astounding.

Consider just a few of the ways a Dream Team can impact our journey:

• They can accelerate time lines getting faster results
• People issues can decrease
• Increase the size of the opportunity
• Dream Teams help create safer outcomes
• What else have you found to be true for you?

Let me leave you with the following thought. Who have you sought out to support and encourage you? What would the focus be on? When will you start to build your first or next Dream Team?

What is the focus going to be?

•  Health
• Physical,
• Mental
• Wealth
• Safety
• A Hobby to add balance into your life, develop a new skill set,
• Fitness
• Healing
• Volunteering to meet more people, contribute back to the community
• Happiness and Joy

To name a few…

Learning to thrive is a life long journey. A dream team can assist support you in a critical area.

So Imagine Yourself with more Resiliency for Life. It is possible. A Dream Team can help you make it happen.

Michael Ballard

In the midst of winter, I finally learned,

there was in me an invincible summer.

A Camus