Moving forward as a team allows you to go faster, further, to surpass individual limits. Yes, it may seem a little obvious, but I have personally experienced it in my two careers.

I firstly experienced it throughout my career as a top-level sportsman, notably with my three teammates Max Morinière, Daniel Sangouma and Jean-Charles Trouabal. The four of us developed a real team spirit, something very intense that brought us together at the time and still binds us together twenty years later. A true team spirit that enabled us to surpass ourselves and to experience our best moments as athletes: the European gold medal and, more importantly, the 4 by 100 metres relay world record, in Split in 1990. It is an even greater souvenir than my indoor 200m world record of 1987, because it was shared with my three friends. I can promise you that my happiness really was much more intense!

That world record symbolises this state of mind. In 1990, all four of us were at an extremely high individual level, and the rivalry to win titles was very strong. Daniel and Jean-Charles were close to winning the 100 and 200 metre races, but were beaten by Britain’s Christie and Regis. So it was up to our four-man team to go and win what we hadn’t managed to win individually: the European title, with an exceptional performance that resulted in a new world record. We were excellent individually, but we were better yet as a team!

It was our trainer who made us understand that we had a real chance as a relay team. He was able to convince us that the team could perform even better than four individual runners. We were better as a team because we were not only confident in our own personal ability, but also in each other’s abilities. On the day of the race itself, it was this confidence in each other that helped each one of us surpass ourselves. We’d never run as fast as we did on that day! We needed to have total confidence in each other to go beyond our personal bests and find our Holy Grail: win the race and set a new world record. 37’’79: four hundredths of a second faster than the previous US-held record set six years previously… an exploit only made possible through teamwork.

There are analogies between those days and the professional universe. These days I am in charge of supervising IT projects within SG CIB, Societe Generale’s corporate and investment banking division. My work involves a lot of management and finding a crucial balance between consensus and directive. The challenge is to make sure everyone is pushing in the same direction. The team is made up of people who are all experts in their field, and here too the aim is to show that the work achieved by the team is greater than the sum of the work achieved by each person.

Of course a lot of effort is required, and success will come from the awareness of each one of us, and notably the top managers who will have to become ‘trainers’. Today, this vision is present within SG CIB and throughout Societe Generale: let’s use it and adapt it, because together we can go faster and further!

Bruno Marie-Rose is a retired top-level French sprinter who notably broke the 4 by 100m relay world record along with Max Morinière, Daniel Sangouma and Jean-Charles Trouabal in 1990. He has worked for Societe Generale since 2004, and has also been the President of the “Ligue Nationale d’Athlétisme” since May 2010.