“The collective thought is more powerful than the individual thought.”

(David Bohm)

Working together presents problems.

And I’m a fan.

I’ve been a part of some great teams and I really wouldn’t trade the experience.

But somewhere, buried deeply, a part of me remembers a quote by Michael Winner; ‘A great team is a lot of people doing what I say….’

I can easily find myself on the edge of groups, travelling fast but often travelling alone. Some days, egotistical control freakery and task focus gets the better of my deep need for communion and connection. It’s a paradox I’ve learned to live with, even using the confusion and loneliness it presents as a creative prompt to carefully calculate where my efforts will have most effect. Will I follow someone else’s path or follow my own? What exactly is needed here?

So I was taken by surprise as we debriefed a recent workshop. The question was, ‘Let’s take an appreciative view; what went really well?’

I searched.

Nothing. It didn’t feel like that.

The excitable exhilaration implied by the appreciative framing deserted me.

But it was a really good workshop.

Instead, I remembered feeling something else; perhaps a mix of resolution, solidity, authenticity, trust, coherence. And when one of our teammates was temporarily absent I felt it, noticing a shift in the quality of our relationships. David Bohm says that this kind of energy has been called ‘Communion’. He claims it is an indication of deep participation and uses the Greek word ‘koinonia’ to describe the idea of taking part in something bigger than the whole group, in fact, the whole, and experiencing it as an impersonal kind of love.

A kind of love that enables our collective ability to think well.

Which has nothing to do with ego or intelligence and everything to do with being together.

Notes:

A big thanks to my EDOC colleagues at Ashridge Hult, Amy, Nick, Katherine and Kate, for reminding what it feels like to be in a team.

More thanks to Peter Garratt of the Association of Professional Dialogue, who steered me towards David Bohm and koinonia. These moments of synchronicity go a long way to help me think that Bohm’s quantum world of enfoldment and emergence is an elegant way of thinking about life.

Have a look at David Bohm’s ‘On Dialogue’ or ‘The Essential David Bohm’ - both edited by Lee Nichol for insights into the man and his work.

See also:

Together