Posts Tagged ‘territory’

Invisible Boundaries

Sunday, July 5th, 2009

We all surround ourselves with all manner of boundaries; we have our personal space, the things we accept and those we don’t, those people we listen to and those we ignore.  We are allotted cubicles at work, we have our seat on the sofa, our parking space in front of our homes and many more..

Regular readers will remember that Cooke Towers is situated deep in the heart of rural England and normally we just listen to the birds (& me) twittering and the joyous sound of petrol driven strimmers.  Last night one of our neighbours had a big party and at 1am we could still enjoy the sound of their ribald remarks and cheery goodbyes.  It sounded like they were in the bedroom with us!

It was odd how  to note how it felt to have the privacy of one’s bedroom breached by all this noise.  It felt like a personal assault, as opposed to just bit of a nuisance.  I’m sure this was because some primitive bit of my psyche was trying to defend our territory. 

I’m sure this kind of reaction is at the root of many of the problems we have at work and at home.  What examples do you have of this kind of territoriality and what tactics have you tried to deal with them?

“Life is uncharted territory. It reveals its story one moment at a time.”   Leo F. Buscaglia

 

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I’m a celebrity… part 2… Grrrr!

Friday, November 21st, 2008

Tonight’s little anthropological insight was about territoriality.  They brought two new people in yesterday who didn’t handle their entrance to the group very well.  and triggered the group’s territorial instincts.  New groups are observed to go through four phases:-

  • Forming [where the group is being careful and relatively polite and cautious]
  • Storming [where they start vying for position]
  • Norming [when they establish a natural pecking order]
  • Performing [where they can work effectively together]

If someone enters a group they change the chemistry and dynamics and this sends the group of in another micro-iteration of this process.  Interestingly, the viewing public recognised and responded to the inappropriate cues and ‘judged’ the malefactors and put them in the ‘trial’.

“The well-run group is not a battlefield of egos.”   Lao Tzu