Flocking Together: How Community and Camaraderie Boost Creative Success
Those that follow me know that I love Pelicans. They are amazing birds and there are so many leadership lessons we can learn from them. I have blogged previously about them in Pelican Leadership Lessons and Leading From The Optimal Height. I am in Georgia doing some work right now and yesterday was watching these incredible creatures while spending some time on Tybee Island.
Lately, I have been doing a lot of studying the literary discussion group from the 1930s and 1940s at Oxford University that included C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien – the Inklings. As the tide came in yesterday morning there were groups of Pelicans putting on a show of their collaboration and holding each other accountable. Both the Inklings and Pelicans served, in my mind, as analogies to each other, and leadership.
The Inklings were known to be a close-knit, supportive community where members shared and critiqued each other’s works regularly, fostering mutual growth. The accountability that came from this included honest feedback, but the strong relationships and camaraderie enabled encouragement, cheerleading, and a collective pursuit of artistic and intellectual excellence—much like a flock of pelicans working together while fishing or migrating.
Pelicans are social birds that travel and hunt in groups, relying on cooperation for survival. They often communicate and coordinate their actions, holding each other accountable to stay organized and effective. Pelicans collaboratively move fish into groups for successful hunting of food. Pelicans, just like the Inklings did, thrive on their relationships to collaborate and work together toward a common goal —literary creation or efficient foraging.
The synergy of the relationships encouraged the support of one another in the Inklings. This support provided accountability; not in the form of punitive pressure, often associated with accountability, but by ensuring progress through collaboration. The Inklings shared purpose can be compared to that of the Pelicans. While the Pelicans shared purpose is survival, we know from research that many of the great literary works from Inkling authors would not have happened without their social group of accountability.
So, let’s be cognizant of the power of cooperative, communicative, and mutually supportive relationships that enhance our efforts through camaraderie and shared accountability.
Byron's Babbles 
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