I am in the midst of mind-numbing group editing, Debate is raging among 11 opinionated seniors on whether it is best to say that culture, relationships and experiences are recursive, circular, interconnected or intermixed. Our task is to deliver a report to our resident association with recommendations to sustain the enviable and dynamic culture of our senior community.  At the moment, we are a perfect example of dysfunction.

Despite the current editing trial, I confess that I simply LOVE group work. Melding disparate agendas to a common task, learning to really listen to one another, and the ultimate synergistic production of something better than any one of us could have written is a joy, an amazement, and an addictive thrill.  

The first such experience I had was as a faculty member of a new community college. The college president wanted to explore the idea of marketing the school—an idea new to higher education in the years of overwhelming baby boomer enrollments. Marketing of non-profit institutions was a radical idea. Our far-seeing college president created a Marketing Task Force including faculty and top administrators—an uneasy mix in the best of times. Each had a powerful agenda to participate. The liberal arts faculty wanted to enhance enrollment in their favorite academic subject areas while academic deans were looking for the rationale to dump expensive career programs. As a novice faculty member, I was quickly chosen to chair the group—the sacrificial lamb who wouldn’t interfere with the machinations of the others. Lacking in group skills and experience, I was about to be overwhelmed.

Not all groups start as dis-united as this one, but every individual in most groups has a very different perspective on the task at hand. Getting those perspectives expressed, finding the common thread, and charging into the unknown together can bring those perspectives together.

During long, contentious meetings, the Marketing Task Force determined to do a sample marketing project, to define a model of how academic marketing might be implemented across the institution. The college’s Radiology Technology certificate program was chosen for our marketing project, as it was one the deans hoped to discontinue. We read together the revolutionary work of non-profit marketing guru Philip Kotler; I even consulted him personally upon occasion. We collected enrollment and cost data on the program and evaluated the program’s strengths and weaknesses. The data clearly identified a strong local market for graduates of this program (much to the deans’ dismay) and laid out areas of weakness which could easily be remedied.

Our final report earned me an award as a faculty leader, but the idea of marketing and the report itself was shelved upon the resignation of that president.  However, the experience was permanently transformative for me. I had learned and practiced leadership skills, I had tasted the thrill of creating a coherent, quality group project. My career would continue to dangle opportunities to lead strategic planning sessions and task forces for change. Each of these increased my optimism that people can work together for a common good, that group decisions can be better than those made by individuals alone.

As this current project nears its completion, I feel again the unity of the group, the community we have forged. Our connections to one another have deepened; our bonds are invisible but real and may be more lasting than the product we created together. The experience becomes a spiritual one, akin to the joy and thrill experienced by singers in a choir, musicians in an orchestra, or even athletes on a winning team. That strong sense of interconnectedness, of being a part of a larger whole, and the optimistic belief that humanity can transcend individual self-interests to form invisible, intellectual connections are essentially the framework of my own spirituality.  With many others, I believe that a focus on our common human connections will ultimately resolve our divisive political situations and lead us more clearly to robust problem solving. My experiences are not new or unique. Here are some famous quotes which express similar sentiments: Feel free to share your favorite reflection on connectedness.

Martin Luther King:  All I’m saying is simply this: that all mankind is tied together; all life is interrelated, and we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of identity. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

Dalai Lama: Being concerned about other people is especially relevant in today’s world. If we consider the complex inter-connectedness of our modern lives, how we depend on others and others depend on us, our outlook will change. We’ll begin to see ‘others’ not as somehow distant from us, but as people we are in touch with, people close to us; we will no longer feel indifferent to them.

Carl Sagan: Cosmos is a Greek word for the order of the universe. It is, in a way, the opposite of Chaos. It implies the deep interconnectedness of all things. It conveys awe for the intricate and subtle way in which the universe is put together.