Your part, not someone else's

Two ways to fail at doing your part. The obvious one is slacking: leaving your share undone. The quieter one is overreach — taking credit that wasn't yours, redoing a coworker's job to look better, claiming a win the whole crew earned. Both leave the work worse off. The first opens a gap. The second starts a turf war.

Cicero, writing on duty, set the line cleanly. Once shared things have been parceled out, "each one should retain possession of that which has fallen to his lot; and if anyone appropriates to himself anything beyond that, he will be violating the laws of human society" (De Officiis 1.21, Miller). He's talking about property, but the rule travels. Your shift, your section, your part of the report — that's yours to hold well. Reaching past it to seize what fell to someone else isn't ambition. It's a small theft.

This is the practice landing: do your allotted part, fully, and let others do theirs. A loading dock works because each person owns their stretch of the belt. So does a kitchen, a ward, a job site.

Trust on a team is mostly this — the quiet confidence that everyone is holding their own lot, and not eyeing yours.