This past week we were busy preparing for the team building event we were planning. Part of the challenge involved children’s recreations of famous paintings that the teams needed to guess correctly.

Due to the fact that we were running low on children to paint them, I ended up putting brush to canvas. As I looked over the pieces we had selected, I chose a Picasso. That should be easy enough, I thought to myself as I set out my paints and brushes. Oh, I’d say about three brushstrokes in and I came to the realization that it was a wee bit silly of me to think it would be easy to reproduce a piece of artwork by a famous artist. Duh.

I believe we can appreciate the work of others much more if we try to do it ourselves. All too often we get wrapped up in our own work and fail to appropriately value the work of others. We look around us and think that we are the only ones who have difficult or challenging tasks. We take for granted the work that others are doing.

So, the next time one of your co-workers is explaining the work they did for a project and you find yourself thinking to yourself, That’s no big deal, I could do that, do it. You might just find out that it’s not so easy after all and you will gain a new appreciation for the efforts of others. Hopefully, they will return the favour.

There are more Picasso’s out there than you think.