Working together – Group work: Part 2
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Working together – Group work: Part 2
In part 1 of this series we looked at the possibility that we are all working in groups which in turn are working together on Earth, and that we all have a responsibility for group work on Earth ...let’s take an example:
The man in the corner shop sells a pie to a lorry driver, the lorry driver delivers the meat to the factory that makes the pies, the lady in the factory who puts the meat into the pies lives next to the farm where the cows are that are eventually slaughtered to make the beef to go to the factory to make the pies and so on – if you drew out this chain of activity just for one simple meat pie, you could find that there are literally 100’s if not 1000’s of us who are part of that same ‘chain’ of activity or business – working together – yet…:
…we focus on the pie, on the factory, or the farm, on the machinery, on the packaging, on the lorry, and not on the fact that we are a ‘chain’ of people who are interconnected and serving each other constantly, all the time, with no one being less in the ‘chain’ than the other.
We can’t have the pie unless we are all offering our services, working together as a group. Without that there is no pie.
If we focused on these links in the chain it matters not where you are and what chain you are part of because all the chains eventually link up and merge, just like the oxygen we breathe. When we breathe, it’s not our own individual oxygen, we can’t keep the oxygen just for ourselves each time we breathe. It mixes in the atmosphere and others breathe it too. We know what stale or polluted air smells like and how it affects us. Take smog for example. We can see, feel, and smell it. However, we don’t have our name and address attached to the air we breathe with a clean or dirty tag attached. It all gets mixed up together and we can feel that we can get away with not truly being responsible for our contribution to the overall ‘air quality’, or not being responsible for our part in group work on earth.
As many small groups that make up one large group on earth, what are the links we have to each other that we are not fully aware of? What part do you play in your team the:
- Farmer
- Office worker
- CEO
- Nurse
- Stay at home parent?
Every one of us is part of ‘group work on earth’ whatever part you play. And whatever we do, DOES makes a difference (in other words, it affects others and the whole group that we are) – hugely.
But what kind of a difference are we making? Are we ‘healing’ or ‘harming’ in the way we offer our services, or the way we work? There is NO middle ground here.
We are either offering a great service and working with one another with:
- Honesty
- Respect
- Care
- Dedication, or we are harming – even the slightest irritability can have an impact on another that we are serving.
If you feed the cows with something that is not truly what they need, then the meat that is used in the pie is affected, and this goes into the digestive system of many of our fellow ‘team members’ across the planet. If you are the owner of the shop and you sell the pie in a grumpy, disrespectful way, then that leaves a feeling of ‘distaste‘ – and when we come to eat that pie we remember that. The way we do our work affects far more than we realise.
So is it not possible that we are all responsible for our own contribution to the quality of what we offer in our work, and in that to our ‘group on earth’?
There are aspects of our world that are rotten, even when and where it looks glamorous, established and functioning well. We are one humanity, all links in the chain that hold us together, we breathe the same air. Where there is one weakened link, we are all weakened.
Until all groups are working together to serve and develop true quality in our lives that is reflected in our work, then no group is truly in harmony.
Without harmony there is no true service. Without harmony we are not working together, responsibly. Without harmony and responsibility we are adding to the rot on earth (even if we think we are not).
Perhaps there is more to group work that needs to be explored, and perhaps there is another way. After all, planet Earth cannot go on as it is, as it is very clear from the ‘global health report’ of humanity and the planet at present, that it is not working, and something has to change. What if we considered more deeply our responsibility as a group, and the way our workplace teams and groups are working together? Just maybe then things would flow a little differently on planet Earth?
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