Let me begin this week’s post with a mundane activity that often gets overlooked, but that, personally, gives me a great deal of satisfaction: a proper highway merge. They happen every day — a car signals their intent, enters the on-ramp, accelerates to the proper speed for the surrounding traffic, and smoothly moves into the available open space in the lane. Do it correctly, and traffic keeps moving without any problem. Do it poorly, and traffic is disrupted. Now take it one step further: the on-ramp is actually an entry/exit combo, where there’s an extra lane so that entering traffic can merge onto the freeway and exiting traffic can make their way off. It seems simple, but I find it very cool when I’m in such a merge, another driver and I both signal our intentions correctly, then we essentially switch places in the merge lane and head our separate ways. It’s a little thing, but I love it. So satisfying.

Why is it satisfying? Because two complete strangers, each piloting more than a ton of machinery down the highway, manage to 1) follow the rules of the road, 2) pay attention to each other, and 3) complete a cooperative maneuver safely and smoothly. It’s one of those fundamental tasks that serves as evidence of human ability, even without taking into account the technological marvels of the machinery itself or the road we’re driving on. We manage to cooperate without incident at 50 miles per hour or more. It’s the kind of thing that makes you wonder why people struggle so much when the traffic lights go into flashing-red status for a boulevard stop, or why they can’t deal with a school bus coming to a stop to drop off students and halting traffic, or why drivers sometimes cannot figure out how to “zipper” to merge exiting a parking lot or consolidating into a single lane on the road.. Why is it so hard?

There’s a key term in the paragraph above: Cooperate. A compound word literally meaning “work together.” Cooperation is a concept in short supply in current American culture for a variety of reasons. I’m not here to delineate any of those reasons, to decry anything about the U.S., or to discuss political, economic, or broad cultural issues. Maybe sometime in the future. But today, I’m talking about cooperation, or lack of it, in terms of how it impacts our individual lives and the goals we pursue, through the lenses of both my voiceover career and my education career. One of the fundamental problems in both of these worlds is the logical opposite of cooperation, competition, which, at its core, is rooted in individualism. Individualism and self-reliance have their place, but too much of them often gets in the way because you’re too interested in beating someone rather than working with or helping them. In other words, when you’re self-centered, you focus on competing, not cooperating. This produces conflict, and it can actually hinder your career.

Competition is ultimately a self-centered notion. Yes, it is possible to have cooperation in competitive sports, because the members of one team have to cooperate among themselves to succeed against the opponent. But that’s the beauty of team sports: in order to compete, you have to cooperate first. It’s also one of the things I have always loved about being involved in band. Talk about the “3 Cs” of success: Collaboration, Communication, and Cooperation, all in service to learning to perform with musical excellence, both on the marching field and the concert stage. And yes, band can be a competitive venture, but ensembles that may not score at the top of a given recap sheet can still build success because they >>ta-da<< work and grow together. Ask any band member — or a member of a successful athletic or other team — and their memories usually don’t focus on a particular trophy, but rather the other people with whom they worked and sweated and cried and cheered and busted their tails trying to reach their goals. Sure, championships groups will always hold on to that achievement, but what truly makes it special are the people with whom you achieved.

Along the way, the most infuriating people you encounter are the ones who refuse to cooperate. Who won’t commit to the goals of the group. Who focus more on themselves than the team. Honestly, it’s why the concept of “cooperative learning” gave me proverbial hives as both a student and a teacher — place me in a group of 4-5 people, and I guarantee that I will work hard on the task at hand, even if it’s a little silly (I’m wired that way), but I also guarantee that at least one of the people in the group will NOT work hard, will not pull their own weight, and will be essentially an empty seat. I’ll bet you, dear reader, can remember a time or two when you had a deadbeat group member, which is why you, too, hated “group work” in school. Because there’s always someone who’s self-centered, selfish, or otherwise in conflict with the intended purpose of the given group. Maybe this person is competitive, or maybe they’re just naturally contrary. But they disrupt the collective efforts of everyone else. The concept doesn’t just stay isolated in school environments. Somewhere, there’s a company whose employees are expected to work together on projects, and there’s also that one person who just doesn’t step up and deliver for the group. Somewhere, there’s a professional athletic team with a player who is more concerned with his/her own statistics than with the performance of the team. And yes, somewhere there just might be a voiceover talent who places more emphasis on his/her “artistic concerns” than on the needs of the very people who hired him/her. And yes, somewhere there might be a teacher who isn’t helpful to colleagues, particularly new ones, and creates an unproductive competitive environment between him/herself and the other teachers “on the team.”

You might suspect that I experienced that last one, and you would be correct. I mentioned in a previous post about how the first five years of my education career were rough, and one of the fundamental reasons was my so-called “mentor teacher.” As I mentioned previously, I was initially hired to teach government and economics, and I was handed a class of each consisting 100% of special education students…because, as the established government and economics teachers said, “we just can handle working with them.” This pair of teachers were the only teachers of these classes prior to my hiring, and as they put it, “we consider our classes a rite of passage for seniors.” Obviously, there was a fair amount of arrogance from the outset, and my assigned mentor — the government teacher — carried most of it. He was that teacher who considered his little classroom in the portable building to be his own little fiefdom where he had total control, and his materials and assignments were proprietary to the highest degree. Before the year started, he handed me his “lesson plans” from the previous year (printed on a dot matrix printer — hello, 1994), and that was essentially my guide to, I don’t know…how to teach government? That was the extent of sharing and collegiality from this individual. I quickly came to realize that A) he printed those plans for administration but didn’t actually follow them, and B) I was on my own. And I would eventually hear tales of him discussing the differences between “the two government classes” with his own classes as my students and his compared notes and assignments. It became a sort of competitive environment, perhaps even a little toxic. While I don’t think in hindsight that it hindered or sabotaged my career, I know it didn’t help it. And the conflict that persisted those first three years was eventually why I was moved over to world geography in year 4. Mercifully, after that move, I found other teachers with whom to collaborate and from whom to learn and advance my skills. That feeling of cooperation within the world geography team likely saved my teaching career. Had I been consigned to a lonely world filled with competition and resentment, I probably would’ve left the profession completely.

Fortunately, my voiceover career hasn’t been quite so rough, despite the reputation the industry has for being competitive. Sure, there are thousands of “voiceover talents” out there, but one of the things that I and many others notice is that voice actors are very giving and helpful toward one another. In a world that should be ultra-competitive, there is instead an environment of collaboration, transparency, and cooperation, even from the oldest and most established talents toward brand-new talents seeking their own paths. Not everything is free, but information and advice are abundant, and the atmosphere is more welcoming than you might imagine. But one thing that inspired this post came unexpectedly during a voiceover conference I recently attended. The conference was a great experience overall, and I learned a lot from a variety of people, but during a break between sessions, I overheard a conversation between two people who were lamenting their own difficulties in the industry, and the mindset was rather revealing, and little disconcerting given how helpful everyone at the conference was. One woman was discussing her difficulties at getting any traction with auditions and bookings. She recounted to her friend that growing up, she wanted to be famous “like Dolly Parton.” (Ironic given the events of Tuesday. RIP Dolly.) I didn’t really pay attention to any of the further details, but it seemed like the general point of the conversation was basically all about “me, me, me” and “my voice” and the overall view that she didn’t think anyone was giving her a fair chance in the industry. It really bothered me because the attitude was in serious contrast to just about everything I was hearing in sessions and conversations at this conference. I mean, what do you expect? It’s a welcoming industry, but it can also be a grind, so you have to persist and really work at all of it. No one’s going to get “discovered,” but literally look around you and you’ll find many people willing to help you figure out how to get your own career going.

Even before the events of Tuesday and the tributes to Dolly Parton, my initial reaction to what I heard was a mix of surprise and skepticism, because anyone who was a fan of Dolly knew that she worked incredibly hard establishing herself as a country singer and songwriter, and if things weren’t going her way, she never whined about it and just worked harder. And Dolly’s efforts were never about herself, but about writing music that appealed to her fans, doing things that served her community, and just helping others. The tributes starting Tuesday merely cemented those ideas with tales of how graceful and genuine she was as a person. So looking back, hearing another voiceover talent complaining and being self-centered drove home the notion that this person was really missing the point. You want to be famous like Dolly? Work your tail off. Bring something to the table that no one else can. Find an audience to serve, and serve them. And most of all, work well with others. Cooperate. Collaborate. That’s what leads to success. And that brings me back full circle to the point of this post. Individualism, self-centered behavior, greed…they’re forces that can motivate people in a free society, and certainly in a capitalist economy, but they’re not the point or the goal. Capitalism is supposed to reward you when you provide someone else something better than they can themselves. That’s why they pay you; that’s why they say “Thank You.” And you thank them back for the reward that you should have rightfully earned by providing quality. It’s a Win-Win mentality. Self-centered perspective without regard for someone else leads nowhere. Stop worrying about winning a competition or prevailing in a conflict. Stop adopting a Win-Lose mentality. Focus on how you can work with someone else toward a purpose that is mutual, whether that’s as simple as a safe, smooth transition on a freeway, as complex as planning lessons with teaching colleagues, or as creative as a project or event for which you provide a voiceover. Cooperate toward a greater goal, a collective goal. Play a part in a larger story, and serve. It’s satisfying.

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