Synergy is a term I learned early on in life as it was a buzz word in my family for a short while. As a ten-year-old I thought it was one the coolest words I had heard in my entire “lengthy” life as a child. I remember going to school and telling my friends about it, and they asked me what it meant. Being the center of attention and realizing the opportunity in front of me, I told them it was a way to say cool, just as any kid who was looking to be the new trendsetter in elementary school. I don’t recall how many days went on where I heard kids in the halls saying that they have synergy, but it was at least a week before a teacher corrected someone. At least you could say that my friends and I had some decent synergy on the subject of spreading false information, as harmless as it was. However, synergy as we know, “is a cooperative or combined action, and occurs when diverse or disparate individuals or groups collaborate for a common cause” (Abramson, Moran & Moran, 2014, p. 266). It’s been quite a long time since I was ten, (approximately 19 years) but now I hear the word more than ever before with video games and the evolution of the esports industry.
First, lets dive into video games. They’ve been around quite a long time now and are evolving every day at an extraordinary rate. One game in particular was huge in my teenage years and early twenties, this game was World of Warcraft. I was encapsulated by how you could control a character that you named with its own special abilities. Its genre is known as a massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). Another way to describe how this game works is that if you’ve ever played dungeons and dragons or even know about it then just picture actually being able to control every movement in that character within a video game. As the genre states, this game was massive. Millions of players and a hyper competitive player vs player environment. As I progressed being a competitive player myself, I wanted every advantage I could get. The first thing I did was start to search online, “who best works with a warrior?”. Then that fateful word showed up again, synergy. I immediately began playing with other class types like druids, or mages, who best synergized with my own class, the warrior. This went on for years and I was able to climb higher in the ranks simply due to my team having more synergistic qualities than another, it was my first real experience feeling what synergy really meant. What I didn’t realize at the time was that there was more to it than just picking an artificial character that worked well with you.
After a while I was tired of playing the same old game as it deteriorated in popularity and picked up a new one called League of Legends. This game caught my eye by how enormous its professional scene was. It can also be credited for the massive growth in esports that we’ve seen in recent years (Cook, 2009). It’s considered a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) and matches take place on what’s called the Rift in five versus five scenarios. The game is not simply about killing one another more than its about precise movements and team synergy. With my previous knowledge I was able to pick up this game and choose what are called champions that benefitted my team the most. As I mentioned earlier though, there is more to it than just picking the artificial character that worked best with your team. I was encapsulated by the professional players and began noticing what made the top teams the best. It wasn’t necessarily who picked the best team composition, but mostly who in real life could communicate with each other best and know each of their teammates strengths and weaknesses to pick up each other slack and carry them to victory.
In conclusion, synergy is more than what it looks like at face value. It has engrained itself in so many different aspects of our lives, from choosing a spouse to finding the right employees and all the way to choosing a character in a video game. As prevalent of a word this is in todays age maybe there’s a ten-year-old out there right now telling his friends what the word actually means.
References:
Abramson, N., Moran, R., & Moran, S. (2014). Managing cultural differences (8th ed., p. 266). Routledge.
Cook, C. (2009). Legislating from the Bench | Harvard Political Review. Retrieved 26 February 2020, from https://harvardpolitics.com/online/legislating-from-the-bench/
Hi Eric
I was fascinated by your explanation of synergy and how it has worked for you in the context of a game. Noticing that you make choice of characters online to collaborate with you, how do you overcome the various challenges that are presented by having cross-cultural teams? Since I believe you must be working with such a team and as Moran et al. (2004) explains, cross-cultural teams are highly likely to experience constant conflicts with each other due to differences in opinions or even possible barriers in the element of communication. As a leader, I believe you must take actions like encouraging the teamwork, providing the resources for strong communication and further giving room for open discussions to thrive. What specific strategies have you employed?
Reference
Moran, R. T., Abramson, N. R., & Moran, S. V. (2014). Managing cultural differences: Leadership skills and strategies for working in a global world. New York: Elsevier.