Hello ,Working together with the photographer to get a news story on the air was one of my most satisfying experiences as a TV reporter.
Daily, on a tight schedule, combining words and pictures, we worked to produce a story compelling enough to keep
viewers like you from switching channels, or turning off the TV to go eat dinner.
Can Ants Teach Us How to Work Together? |
It took several years on the job for me to learn to work as a team with another creative professional. In those early years, some of the photogs, as we called them, must have hated working with me.
But once I got this teamwork thing down, I saw clearly that when two people work well together, the result is far better than two people tugging at their own vision. Better aesthetically, and more rewarding. Working together demonstrates our humanity.
Maybe you know about ants, how every ant selflessly does their own job and the whole colony works together to achieve a common goal. But did you know that different species of ants who hate each other co-exist and work
together?
Compare that to the United States Congress.
The battles in the Irish Parliament this week make me feel a little less embarrassed about the bitter gridlock in American politics. But mostly, I'm sick at heart about why we can't do better.
In 1939, after Germany's Kristallnacht pogrom against the Jews, a Republican Senator, Elizabeth Norse worked together with a Democrat Senator, Robert Wagner, on legislation to allow 20,000 German Jewish children to immigrate to the
United States.
Members on both sides of Congress came together to support the legislation, including former President Herbert Hoover, who'd led efforts that restricted immigration ten years earlier.
I wish this story had a happy ending. But opponents mobilized against the bill. President Theodore Roosevelt remained silent on the issue and congress killed it. I wish we would learn more from
history.
Below: Kindertransport evacuated Jewish children from Nazi Europe to Great Britain. (Photo courtesy of Getty.) Did you know during the Salem Witch Trials in 1692, citizens of New York City righteously criticized the authorities in Salem for convicting people on the basis or hysterical witnesses, executing them on little actual
evidence?
Did you know 50-years later, New Yorkers--fearing not the devil, but a slave revolt--conducted their own witch hunt complete with hysterical witnesses and deadly justice. Remembered as the "Bonfires of the Negroes," 17 blacks were hanged, along with 4 white "ringleaders," 13 African slaves were burned at the stake and 70 more shipped to the Caribbean and sold. I wish we could learn more from
history.
Enough depressing stories. Please and share a time
you've overcome fear, or difference, or indifference, and worked together for better. Email me or post in the comments on my blog.
Incidentally, the leaders in ant communities are always females.
Great Stuff About Working Together |
Here's something fun. In this video, you'll see fire ants build a raft in the Amazon jungle. When disaster strikes their colony, they work together to build a raft to float across floodwaters and save the queen, the pupae, and the future of their
colony. See it here...
Are you in charge of an organization? Here's a revolutionary plan for turning systems upside-down and actually running things like ants do. Check it out here...
Thanks for you time! Have you read a great book? Tell me about it. Have a burning question? Let me know. Until next week.... If you know
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