About 2 years ago, I participated in a training program I'll never forget. The leader divided us into two teams. Each team's task was to fire a whack of darts into each number on a dartboard. The leader of Team A was given instructions that his team had to hit the numbers in a certain sequence. He then related the sequence, number by number, to his team.

The leader of Team B was told that her team could hit the numbers in any sequence. Her task was to encourage and motivate us (I was on Team B) to achieve.

We fired away. Team B won. Team A complained about their rules and that Team B won because we were free to hit any number in any order. They felt that the results didn't fairly reflect their ability.

What did we learn?

After the whining died down, we reflected on what we learned: