What your pencil can teach you about teamwork
It’s Monday morning. You’ve barely had your coffee, and you’re already refereeing a showdown over a glue stick.
On your left, a student clutching it like it’s the last life vest on the Titanic.
On your right, their classmate, arms crossed, lips pursed, delivering a death stare so intense it could curdle milk.
Welcome to teamwork.
During my career, I’ve seen teamwork in its rawest form—from teaching kids, lecturing undergrads, to leading adults working together to deliver a movie. It’s like watching a nature documentary—unfiltered, occasionally brutal and full of surprising survival tactics.
When kids are first tasked to ‘collaborate’ in the early years of school, they usually fit into two camps:
The only child, a lone wolf. Not all, of course, but some of these kiddos hold onto a shared set of coloured pencils like a squirrel clutching its last acorn before winter.
Then there’s the youngest of four, who practically come pre-installed with negotiation skills that would make a UN diplomat blush. They’ve been sharing space, toys, and maybe even clothes since birth. They know the unspoken rule of survival: move quick else you won’t get a slice of pizza—or worse, you’ll get stuck with the green controller. You know, the one that always glitches.
When kids work together, it’s like watching early humans invent fire. There’s confusion, a bit of danger, and when it finally works, a sense of magic.
But getting there?
It’s messy.
Kids are natural soloists—born conductors of their own one-kid symphonies. Getting them to play as an orchestra takes skill, an armful of snacks and lots of practice.
We tell them teamwork is important, but why?
Because one day, they’ll be in the real world, where collaboration isn’t just a box to tick on their ‘learning habits’. It’s the oil that keeps the gears turning.
Need proof?
Look at last weekend’s Trump-Zelenskyy argument - a masterclass in what happens when teamwork derails. Two powerful figures with different expectations, everyone talking, no one listening, and the whole world stuck watching the fallout.
Just like watching two kids try to build a Lego tower with one insisting on a castle and the other dead set on a spaceship. You can almost hear the blocks crashing to the floor.
But, you don’t need to look at the headlines for teamwork lessons— just look at a humble pencil.
Yes, a regular old pencil.
Back in the Cold War, Leonard Read wrote I, Pencil, a story told from the pencil’s perspective (because why not?). You see, no one person on Earth knows how to make a pencil from start to finish. It’s a global relay race of collaboration.
The wood? From cedar trees in Northern California, felled by loggers with steel blades made from blast furnaces.
The graphite? Mined in Sri Lanka, mixed with Mississippi clay, packed by workers who never meet the machinists pressing it into perfect, pencil-thin rods.
The eraser? A blend of Indonesian rapeseed oil, Italian pumice, and enough chemistry to make your A-level chem lab jealous.
Add the miners, shippers, mill workers, factory techs, lighthouse keepers, and the folks pouring concrete for the dam that powers the pencil mill.
It’s not just an intro to supply chains for A-level economics students—it’s a sharp reminder (pun fully intended) that:
"No one person—no matter how smart or how many degrees they have—could create from scratch a small, everyday pencil, let alone a car or an airplane." *
Meanwhile, my students are struggling to share a glue stick.
Teaching teamwork isn’t just about getting through the group project without tears (theirs or mine). It’s about learning to listen, finding compromise, doing your part well, giving others the freedom to do theirs, and helpfully plugging any gaps in between.
So, next time your kid or your colleague complains about a group project, lean in.
Ask them what they learned—not just about the water cycle or the Spanish Armada or the meeting’s outcome, but about managing tricky teammates, sharing ideas, or dealing with the person who always insists on being in charge but never has a plan. You know, like a backseat driver with a broken GPS—loud, lost, and convinced they know the way.
Because if we get this right, we won’t just end up with better group projects.
We’ll end up with better grown-ups.
The kind who can negotiate playground disputes and peace treaties with equal finesse.
And, who knows? Maybe even share a glue stick without turning it into a hostage situation.
Nici
P.S.
Share this with your favourite teammate, the manager juggling a group project that could use the pencil's story, or the friend who’s living a collaboration nightmare (before they start wielding the glue stick as a weapon).
P.P.S
*Read Lawrence Reed's introduction and Leonard Read's ‘I, Pencil’ essay here:
