Ginny Wilson-Peters' Blog

“What caused the shift?”  I asked.

“We took time to pause,” he said.

I was talking with a friend who is leading a multi-national team in launching a new product.  One year into the project he noticed that key relationships had not really been forming as he had hoped among members of the team.  And so, he did the only thing that seemed natural in the midst of a time-sensitive project:  he created an opportunity for the team to pause.

Well, not exactly I guess, but what they did was commit an entire afternoon of their 3 days together to having in-depth and cross-cultural disucssions about themselves–not about the product–and not about their roles in the project.  No, the time was spent in getting to know one another on a more personal basis.

His experiment was hugely successful as the team built stronger relationships, which in turn is helping to move the project forward on schedule.

In his Peace Prize acceptance speech, “A Call for Universal Responsibility”, the Dalai Lama says, “Because we all share this small planet, we have to learn to live in harmony and peace with each other and with nature.  That is not just a dream, but a necessity.  We are dependent upon each other in so many ways that we can no longer live in isolate communities and ignore what is happening outside.”