Gather the gold from groups 💰💛

We can find gold everywhere. Even in the middle of moving house, which consistently appears as one of the top five most stressful life events, in any google search.

Even as I took time off from working with groups for this really big move, I still found gold in groups.

We’d been in the same place for 12 years. That’s a lot of stuff. Enough to fill over 100 boxes. And cardboard boxes became our most valuable currency over the past month.

Initially, we grabbed any old box. If it was cardboard, vaguely square or rectangular-shaped, we took it.

We found them squished between recycling bins on the street. And we weren’t too proud to extract a few from those bins too.

Friends and neighbours saved them for us. They were our ulterior motive for befriending people as they moved in to our block, or reacquainting with them as they moved out.

As the reality of our move hit us, we hit social media. We struck gold in our local Good Karma group. Within seconds of posting my request, kind strangers tagged people who had just moved, or re-posted a link to photos of boxes up for grabs on local porches and balconies. There were boxes – read ‘gold’ – everywhere in this group!

We filled three car loads – the type of loads where you rely almost entirely on your side mirrors to drive safely.

As we went from house to house to collect our gold, and the space in the car shrunk, we sifted through what was on offer a little more carefully. Tea chests were really valuable. But we felt like miners finding nuggets when we stumbled on those super strong book cartons. I double parked to get some from a local book store.

We left behind the thinner appliance boxes and flat packs. Not all cardboard is equal.

Searching and sifting through boxes reminded me of collecting fire wood when we were kids. The ubiquitous kindling was often dumped in favour of a medium-sized piece of driftwood. This was the vital connector that would turn a spark into a fire before we put the log on to settle in for the night.

It struck me that this cardboard box treasure hunt was a bit like mining the ideas and information from groups we gather together to debate, discuss and deliberate. We just need to know where to look, what to ask and then how to start sifting through them.

And just like when I work with groups, it wasn’t only the boxes that were gold. It was the extras. It was things like getting boxes from another ‘Jacinta’ and the conversation we had about our parents’ creativity in choosing our name.

It was the care that people exhausted by their own move had put into sorting piles of boxes, according to size. The rolls of bubble wrap, the carefully folded packing paper that were thrown in.

It was the non-box owners who went out of their way to connect us with box owners in the group.

This felt like the extras I see when groups work productively together. The extrovert creating space for the quieter one to speak. Another sitting beside someone completely different to them, to get to know them and their view of the world.

My gold over the past month was cardboard. I’d love to hear what yours has been. How did you find it? Who helped you? What extras came with it?

Image: 'Unplugged' with one of my cardboard nuggets after the move.

I love bringing groups together to create gold. Be it ideas, information, stories or solutions. Like cardboard boxes, they come in all shapes and sizes.

If you’d like to have a chat, just email me with GOLD in the subject line.