Light ...........
Do we move towards the light or run .........
Cockroaches have been used in research. It is found in this strange research project, I always remember reading this, that they always run away from a light source FASTER when there is an audience of cockroaches!
My mind slips to the recent cricket wins by the English team - with a fantastic audience both live and on TV. Olympics and Football also come to mind. Home games are special and the home side often win. The big events seem to cultivate the breaking of world records! Lots of spectators!
I work with teams and groups. They are fantastic motivators for change - if they run towards the light! I would like to click a bit about this because most of us have been born and brought up in a family - our first group indeed.
Our family, if we had one as a child, is a big shaping influence on how we as a human develops. The shaping includes feelings, attitudes, behaviours and our early experiences of a climate of trust and a sense of belonging. Family can also be a place of conflict. I remember my three older brothers fighting and I jumped from the kitchen table to be in there with the action. The shaping is in action too. In the conflict - all in a developmental climate.
Groups are only groups if they have some common purpose. A queue waiting for a bus is not a group, but if there is a car accident, for example, just in front of that line of humans - they will start to become a group because they start helping and working together. Different roles emerge. Wondrous. I have sometimes designed a role play using that scenario - wow - such emotions......
A group works better and delivers more because there is an audience - and many more reasons of course .........
Teams are groups who work more than once together - maybe long term. I love group work and team work. As groups have humans active with some interaction, so have teams but with a greater dynamic. Our family has been a situation of social comparison, me and my brothers!, and so are teams. We are aware all the time about how the 'other' operates and as quick as a computer - make comparisons with the sort of person/worker/communicator we are. That is how we learn.
There is a cost to being part of a team, many. Conflicts abound and that is good. So we all share, and exchange in a team, the 'costs' and also the 'goods'. The goods would include material goods, psychological goods and spiritual goods. Each team member, in a good team, can have the first hand experience of moving from a breaker to a taker to a maker.
I remember leading a team in a large charity and including in our senior team a number of young trainees who took their turn at being the chairman of the team meeting for two hours. The learning in all that was wondrous - for the young teenagers too. A number of them have said to me, in later years, how they use the very same techniques which they had learned and tried and tested on us!
Teams - what a pain they can be - and what a joy. I could go on forever.
If you want to hire me to lead some team training - I will come and run a session for you!
Teams work harder, deliver more, work faster - especially if they run towards the light!
The CONTRA = Isolation.
Isolation is used in prison as a punishment just because we are social animals and we need each other. Experiments with animals and humans reveal what we all know, that we shrivel up and become less of a human person when we spend too much time alone.
hear this;
"My own garden is my own garden," said the Giant; "any one can understand that, and I will allow nobody to play in it but myself."
So he built a high wall all round it, and put up a notice-board.
TRESPASSERS
WILL BE
PROSECUTED
He was a very selfish Giant.
That is a wee out-take from the story of the Selfish Giant - read the full story here;
http://www.planetmonk.com/wilde/happyprince/selfishgiant.html
"Don't build walls
until you know what you are walling out
- and what you are walling in"
www.pipwilson.com
"work like you don't need the money
dance like no-one is watching
sing like no-one is listening
and
love like you have never been hurt"
